PORTLAND – After years of double-digit price increases, southern Maine’s red-hot housing market is showing signs of cooling off.

Some of the region’s key real estate brokers say listings are up and there are fewer buyers. Homes are staying on the market longer, prompting some sellers to drop their prices.

“It may not be a bubble bursting, but from where I sit, the air went out pretty fast,” said Bill Trask of Coldwell Banker Friends & Neighbors in Standish.

Each week, Trask reviews the number of homes sold and under contract with his 27 agents. The numbers he found in late September were disturbing.

“I said to myself, ‘We don’t have enough business in October,'” recalled Trask, president of the Portland Board of Realtors. “For the first time in several years, we’re not on track.”

While other real estate professionals echo Trask’s observation that the market has slowed, the latest home sales figures from the Maine Association of Realtors reflect no such trend.

The median statewide sales price in September was $194,600, up nearly 10 percent from a year ago and double the $97,000 median six years ago.

It’s too early to say whether recent signs of a slowdown signal a trend or are merely a pause in the steady price climb. Realtors said the region’s real estate market and the economy remain healthy and there is little expectation that prices will collapse.

Some suggest that the market is in flux, changing from one that favored sellers to a market more friendly to buyers.

“Whenever you have more supply than demand, the market shifts,” said Dottie Bowe, operating principal at Keller Williams Realty in Portland. “I think we’re going into a more normal market.”

Leonard Scott, who owns the Assist-2-Sell office in Falmouth, said his home inventory has doubled over the past year and he expects the surplus will force sellers to gradually reduce their asking prices.

“I don’t think you’re going to have a big bang,” he said. “But you just can’t have 10 to 15 percent annual increases.”