Not Even for a Car?

Their decision was dictated by the price of the house next door, they said. That house went on the market for $640,000. But within 60 days, their neighbor had cut the price to $550,000 and sold. The Contes felt they had little choice but to accept an offer much lower than what they wanted. They even kicked in $10,000 for closing costs.

"It's the one and only offer I've received, and I have to act on it because chances are I will not get another one and I'm up against a deadline," said Al Conte, who has signed a contract to purchase a home in Warrenton.

The Contes' house had been on the market for six months.

John Lesniewski could not wait that long. So he decided to auction off two houses he owned.

Lesniewski, a real estate agent at Re/Max 100 in Suitland, acquired the homes from clients of his under a guaranteed sales program, meaning he agreed to buy the homes if they didn't sell within a set time.

For each of the past 12 years, he has purchased about 7 percent of his clients' homes that way, he said. But last year, prices dropped more quickly than he anticipated and he ended up with an unacceptable 13 percent of the homes, he said.

To avoid getting hammered again, he hired an auction house this year to sell one house he bought in Laurel and another in Beltsville. He received about $40,000 less than he wanted for the two combined, but he accepted the bids because he needed the money.

"It was a failed experiment," Lesniewski said. "I don't fault [the auction house]. I'm glad I tried it. But I may have been in better shape had I handled it myself and had more control of the process. I should have kept the one in Laurel and rented it out. . . . It was an act of desperation."

The most desperate sellers tend to be those in lower-priced homes. They are the ones most likely to be competing with the growing number of foreclosures that once belonged to subprime borrowers, who were typically people with poor credit or little cash. The average subprime loan was about $200,000, according to Moody's Economy.com.

Borrowers with those loans started defaulting at an alarming rate in late 2006, which led to huge disruptions in the mortgage market. The turmoil kept some potential buyers on the sidelines and left others in the lurch as lenders shut down, yanked away the loans they approved or altered the terms.

Karen Crawford said all of that contributed to her decision earlier this year to raffle a farmhouse near Hagerstown that she and her husband owned.

The couple bought the house just before the market soured and before they could sell their previous home. Soon they found themselves stuck with two houses.