In a Slowing Market, Price Is Only the First Step

Then, sellers must either fix the problems or lower the price, Hanson said.

Some agents routinely advise clients to start at or about 5 percent below the last sale. "A good agent will encourage the sellers to look at their bottom line" in deciding on price and how much financial help to give a buyer, said Margaret Ireland, chairman of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors and a managing broker at Weichert Realtors in Manassas.

"We encourage sellers to see what's comfortable for them to walk away from the table with," she said. "The key is being flexible. Some people are so set that 'I have to leave on this date,' and that that's the main thing they want. But if you get a good contract with a price you can live with and the settlement date is sooner than you'd expected, then you try to work it out."

While some parts of the region are still seeing prices "ticking up a little bit," if a house isn't getting any traffic, the price is too high, Ireland said.

"What I teach my agents is that if you've got 10 legitimate showings -- with agents that are bringing clients and not just agents coming to look -- and there are no offers, it's time to lower your price," she said.

Also, if a property sits two weeks with no interest, not even an agent dropping by, "it's time to lower the price," she said.

The amount of the reduction depends on the price range. "If it's in the $700,000-to-$800,000 range, you need a good $25,000 reduction," Ireland said. "For a house in the $1 million to $1.3 million range, it might take $100,000."

Holly Worthington, president of the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors and a managing broker for Long & Foster in Woodley Park, said single-family houses that sit for three to four weeks need an adjustment. The amount "depends on how much very similar inventory there is in that particular area." She defines the area as "that particular Zip code, because buyers generally look beyond a specific neighborhood."

In the condominium and townhouse markets, those with the lowest price win, agents say. "And it's getting that way for single-family homes," Worthington said.

If you don't want to waste time, go even lower than everyone else.

That's what Linda Zingg did in early May. She and her fiance, David Williams, decided it was time to downsize, but they didn't want to get caught in the market morass they saw building up around them in Manassas.

So instead of listing her three-story Colonial at the price advertised for two other houses on their street, or at the price that similar homes had sold for earlier in the year, she listed for $40,000 below the competition. She got "a tremendous amount of traffic" at the open house and sold in two days, Zingg said.