PORTLAND – The slowing real estate market is creating a dilemma for people who want to buy houses at discounted prices but are having trouble selling their own homes.

Looking to move into a smaller home, Cindy Benjamin last spring bought a three-bedroom Cape for $255,000, which was $14,000 less than the asking price. But seven months later, she still can’t sell her four-bedroom Colonial despite lowering the asking price from $425,000 to $378,900.

Real estate agents say the situation isn’t uncommon. While this is a good time to buy a house, it’s also a challenging time to sell a house.

“I bought at the right time,” Benjamin said, “but I’m trying to sell at the wrong time.”

Real estate sales and prices have been falling in Maine and nationwide.

Housing prices fell nationally in September by nearly 10 percent over a year earlier, the biggest decline in 35 years. The median price drop in Maine was just over 1 percent, but the number of houses sold in the state in September plunged nearly 19 percent.

In order to buy a new property, many homeowners need to sell their old homes first.

With many analysts predicting further declines, seller-buyers need a reality check, according to Cathy Manchester at Keller Williams Realty in Gray.

Start with price, Manchester advised, by reviewing the current inventory of homes on the market, how many are in your price range and how long they’re taking to sell, on average.

“You have to know what you’re up against for competition,” Manchester said.

Unless they can handle two mortgages for a while, most people need to unload their current home before they can afford to put a new house under contract.

When the real estate market was hot, sellers might agree to a contingency sale, making the purchase contingent on the buyer selling his house in a set amount of time. But with sales slow and plenty of inventory, that practice has fallen out of favor.

“Sellers now realize that’s a waste of time,” said Leonard Scott, owner of the Assist-2-Sell agency in Falmouth.

In today’s market, he said, a good strategy for people who can handle the hassle is to sell their home and then find short-term rental housing. That leaves time to locate the right house at a good price – and there should be plenty to choose from this winter, he said.

For Benjamin, she tried to make the purchase of her new home contingent on the sale of her old house, but the seller declined.

She recently got an offer for her old house, but the buyers wanted to make the sale contingent on selling their house.

“I told them I just couldn’t take it off the market for 30 days,” she said.