This past Labor Day weekend, real estate agents may have had more sympathy for drivers stuck in the annual six mile pile-up around the Bourne Bridge: The housing market has been gridlocked for weeks.

Sales volume nosedived in July, even as prices stayed steady. Though many industry observers expected a dip in sales would follow the end of this spring’s homebuyer tax credit, the decline was more severe than many economists had predicted. Massachusetts’ 26 percent decline put it in line with the national figure of 27 percent. The national seasonally adjusted annual sales rate of 3.83 million units is the lowest figure recorded by the National Association of Realtors since the trade group began publishing its statistics in 1999.

Sinking volumes coupled with steady prices are indicative of a disconnect between buyers and sellers, sources told Banker & Tradesman. Buyers are leery of future price declines and want to ensure they’ve found a bargain before taking the plunge. Sellers, for their part, either won’t sell for less than they feel their house is worth, or can’t sell for less than what they owe the bank.

“[Sellers] can’t move forward on what they want to do if they don’t make a certain number. And the problem is that they just may never get that chance,” said Marcia Solberg of Macdonald & Wood Sotheby’s International Realty in Duxbury. “That’s the reality.”

Facing The Truth

The impasse is leaving many sellers, and their agents, stuck. That means more work for agents, who more often are finding they have to navigate through contingency offers and have tough conversations with clients about what they can and can’t afford.

Gary Rogers, an agent with RE/MAX First Realty in Waltham, said he’s gone so far as to advise some of his clients to wait rather than list, if they can. One particular client first approached him more than a year ago.

“If he had sold a year and a half ago, I truly believe he would have gotten $375,000,” Rogers said. By waiting, the property fetched $416,000 this spring. Still, that figure was less than the $420,000 the client had originally paid when he bought the property more than four years ago.

Telling a potential client that they might not profit from a sale is a difficult endeavor, and one that more and more agents are dealing with.

“It’s always a tough conversation, but the bottom line is the market dictates the price,” said Philip “P.T.” Vineburgh, founding partner of Charlesgate Realty Group in Boston. “But it’s definitely better to have that conversation right away than three months to six months down the line….People are a lot more willing [now] to get on board than six months ago.”

Having appropriate data on hand can help. Leslie DelMonaco, of the Century 21 Realty Team in Leominster, has created a worksheet for her clients compelling them to detail all their carrying costs, so when an offer does come in, it can be properly evaluated.

“I had one recently, they had a number in their head, $260,000, that they would not go below,” said DelMonaco. “I got the offer up to $250,000 and I said to them, ‘Your house has already been listed for five months. Your mortgage, your insurance, your utilities – what if it’s listed for another five months?’ When I put it all on spreadsheet for them, it did make sense.”

Still, many buyers are tough to convince. Vineburgh feels the best way to handle a buyer who’s sure his place will sell for more than recent comps is to meet them halfway, initially listing the home for a higher number, then quickly cutting the price once it’s clear there are no bites.

Contingency Plans

Some agents have also been advising clients to accept contingent offers, even if the buyer’s home was recently listed.

“I’m finding that people are more open to [contingent offers],” said Solberg. “But it’s taking more time to get the property sold, and things can fall apart. It’s happened to me a couple times, where someone else came along, and my buyer couldn’t perform.”

But contingent offers are still infrequent in the urban market, Vineburgh said, and at this point he still advises clients to reject them. With condo listings, which are more prevalent in cities, it’s far easier for a seller who wants or needs to wait out the market to rent their place in order to move themselves.

“Rather than wait another three or four months, especially if someone’s carrying the costs of a vacant place… If renting is a viable option for them we’re more than open to it, and have done it fairly frequently with listings over the past couple years,” he said.

The stuck seller problem is particularly prevalent when it comes to new construction.

“I know a couple builders who have come down to it where they’re basically not going to recoup any money if they have to drop the price down any further,” Rogers said. “So they haven’t.”

But the stalemate can’t last forever, Rogers said, and buyers may soon reap the benefits, acquiring new construction for the same price as older homes.

“Builders can only hold on for so long. The carrying costs are much higher for them than they are for the average homeowner trying to hold on,” he explained. “New constructions are selling, but they’re selling at discounts.”

For now, however, the market remains a tough one to navigate, even for experienced agents.

“I feel like things are in gridlock,” said Solberg. “It’s a whole different world, from when people used to find a house they liked and put an offer in and knew they could sell their house. It’s just stuck.”