America's housing market has gone from robust to just plain bust in the past 18 months.

These are the times that try the skills of real estate professionals, said Jim Crawford, a real estate coach in Atlanta.

"It's a buyer's market without buyers," he said. "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 that prices will return to earth shortly.

Now 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 have new homes sitting vacant on which they dare not lower the prices for fear of setting off a domino effect. They offer incentives to attract buyers without reducing prices.

"The incentives today are different," said 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."

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.

Crawford agreed: "A consumer today is very savvy. They have lots of points of comparison for neighborhood home value, some by the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) 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."

Also, similar to the down market of the late 1980s, home sellers must now compete not only with builders but also with foreclosures, thanks to all those subprime loans you've been hearing about.

Earle Gibson, a real estate broker in California's 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 said.

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, each of whom can afford to wait for the other to blink.

That is not to say that 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," Kokoszka said.

The best way to sell to a Realtor is via an increased commission or 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 said.

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.

However, 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 buyer's agent's commission 1 percentage point, 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. It has to be priced right.