America's housing market has gone from robust to just plain bust in the past 18 months. Real estate agents, home builders, mortgage lenders and anyone whose income is derived from home selling has been using words like "transitioning" and "stabilizing" to describe -- or perhaps spin -- the soft housing market that has slowed to the point of rigor mortis in some locales.

These are the times that try the skills of real estate professionals, says Jim Crawford, a real estate coach in Atlanta."It's a buyer's market without buyers," he says. "Of the top 40 markets, 36 are down. In Atlanta at this time of year, we should have a maximum of 52,000 homes for sale; we have 114,000. What's happened is, if you can't sell in Chicago, you can't buy in Atlanta. If you can't sell in Boston, you can't buy in Florida.

"Here's the squeeze: Rising inventories make it difficult to set -- and get -- your asking price. Buyers, caught in the same predicament, are reluctant to buy, hoping prices will return to earth shortly. How to attract buyersNow that the seller's market is officially history and competition is keen, how will you attract a buyer for your home? Incentives, of course. Builders, who have new homes sitting vacant on which they dare not lower the price for fear of setting off a domino effect, are already raising the bar with real-dollar incentives to attract buyers without reducing prices.

According to Gopal Ahluwalia, vice president of research for the National Association of Home Builders, 56 percent of builders surveyed in June said they were stepping up their amenities, 45 percent were offering to pay closing costs and 26 percent were buying down mortgage points. Overall, 71 percent of builders said they were offering at least one of those incentives.That's your competition. Are you ready to meet their bid and raise it?

Check out builder incentivesAs quickly as the housing power shifted, the incentives that builders and home sellers use to market their homes have changed as well."The incentives today are different," says Dianna Kokoszka, vice president of Mega Achievement Productivity Systems at Keller Williams Realty.

"The big-screen TV worked for a home builder many years ago. Now builder incentives are $40,000 to $50,000 off landscaping in the front, new appliances, 1.5 points if you go through our mortgage company and an allowance if you use our decorator."Case in point: This year, Prudential New Jersey Properties launched its Power House buyer incentive package that includes one year of an American Home Shield Warranty, a mortgage buy-down, a "closing gift" of 0.5 percent of the sale price and a minimum 3 percent commission to the selling broker.Kokoszka says today's buyer wants money-in-pocket value, not frills and playthings.

If your home is competing with nearby new construction, be prepared to offer the same or equivalent incentives as the builder."What happens with builders is, if you came in six months ago and bought a home for $400,000 and I come in today and can buy that same home for $350,000 and your home is not built yet and you haven't closed, you're not going to close easy and we're going to have a problem. Builders have to keep that price constant or going up," says Kokoszka. "So if you bought for $400,000 and they know I'm not going to buy for more than say $350,000, they will say things like, 'If you go through our mortgage company, we'll give you $30,000 off the sales price and a $20,000 allowance at our decorator.'

So now, when we talk, I paid the same price as you and all of the Housing and Urban Development settlement statements say the same thing."Crawford agrees: "A consumer today is very savvy. They have lots of points of comparison for neighborhood home value, some by the MLS and some free data. They are not impressed by all the extras. A lot of the people who are leading the charge for incentives have not been in real estate long enough to know you cannot do a lot of incentives anymore.

"The other competition: foreclosuresThere's another challenge: Many of the real estate agents who swarmed like moths to the hot housing market since 2001 may have never witnessed a down market."I have heard that about 70 percent of all Realtors in the marketplace today have never experienced a market that we are in right now," says Kokoszka. "They are used to putting a sign in the yard and having five offers on the table the next day."And, similar to the down market of the late 1980s, home sellers must now compete not only with builders, but with foreclosures, thanks to all those subprime loans you've been hearing about.Earle Gibson, a real estate broker in California wine country, says foreclosure trustee sale notices run three full pages a day in the local newspaper.

"In Vallejo right now, there is an inventory of well over 1,000 single-family homes and maybe 10 closings per week, while each week we add probably 20 new listings to the market," she says. "Everybody's hurting. It's like, who's the lucky agent this week?"Gibson likens her high-priced turf, which includes Napa, Sonoma and Marin counties, to a high noon stare-down between home sellers and prospective buyers, both of whom can afford to wait for the other to blink.Courting agentsWhich is not to say there isn't considerable strategizing going on.

But now the power meetings are between listing agents and their anxious sellers on how to flag the attention of agents representing qualified buyers."In order for a home to sell once, it has to sell twice: You have to sell it to the Realtors and then the Realtors sell it to their buyers," says Kokoszka.The best way to sell to a Realtor is via an increased commission or a sales bonus.Gibson confirms that the courting of buyer agents is in full swing. "We're seeing more back to the split of (more favorable) 6 percent commissions, but we're also seeing, in the confidential area of the MLS, bonuses of $5,000 or $10,000 to selling agents, to try to lure them," she says.

Many brokers won't touch agent bonuses for fear of fraud litigation. Such bonuses also tend to artificially inflate the value of a property, warping neighborhood comps and creating a problem for lenders if the mortgage-holder defaults.But Crawford knows firsthand how strategically nudging the commission split can work to a seller's advantage. He once had a frustrated seller who was willing to drop his asking price $15,000 below what he paid for the house. Crawford suggested instead that he increase the commission 1 percent to 4 percent.

The house sold within two weeks, at a considerable savings to the grateful seller.That said, romancing real estate agents alone won't sell your house."Incentives will work in moderation, as a tool, but they're not going to take the place of a right price," says Crawford. "It has to be priced right to start with, then it has to show right. Otherwise, it's not going to sell."