In today's Wall Street Journal, author Jonathan Clements offers some good advice:

Cutting deeply. Despite all this, sellers are loath to cut their asking price, which is the reason prices have barely budged — so far. "People focus on what their home was worth two years ago, or how much they've sunk into it, or on their desire not to bring a check to the closing," notes financial adviser Bert Whitehead, author of "Why Smart People Do Stupid Things With Money."His advice: Ditch these emotional hangups — and unload your property now. "If you really want to sell your house, you have to cut deep," Mr. Whitehead says.Good advice? Here's how to decide for yourself:

• Ask your real-estate agent how many properties are on the market in your town today and how many sold in each of the past six months, advises Chris Mayer, director of Columbia Business School's Milstein Center for Real Estate.

"If there are 2,000 houses on the market and 200 houses sold last month, that means it's taking 10 months to sell a house," Prof. Mayer says. "That's pretty simple math, but nobody ever does it. If you price your house like everybody else, it might take 10 months to sell it."

• Suppose you price your home like everybody else and it does indeed take 10 months to sell. Figure out how much you would be out of pocket over that stretch, either because your home is vacant or because the mortgage has become unaffordably large.

In a slow market, pricing to be just "one of the pack" is a losing strategy if you are a committed seller. Of course here on Maui the high selling season is just beginning and people tend to be very optimistic. But if you are a committed seller, you simply must be one of the best two or three values in your property class to get regular showings. Those regular showings are necessary to obtain offers.