Agents I talk with from different parts of the country are telling me similar stories these days about investors who aren't as excited about buying properties as they were months ago, and how they're much slower to act now than they used to be.

At the same time, many sellers still want the prices their properties would command if appreciation and speculative buying were still as hot as they were months ago. And in putting these two factors together you have what could be one of the worst situations investment agents can be faced with -- buyers and sellers who are basically indifferent about making a deal.

Low cap rates were making sense in many markets throughout the country while annual appreciation was still going through the roof. But now that rapid appreciation has tapered off in many areas, all the potential buyer is often left with to consider is a property with a low cap rate that won't appreciate like it did before.

For many prospective investors that's not much to really get excited about, despite the fact that the sellers still want the inflated prices they were used to getting until only recently, and if they can't get these prices anymore many of them are content just holding onto their property -- unless there's a bona fide underlying need for them to sell.

It used to be in many areas across the country that a property could come on the market listed at a high price, and then in just a short period of time the market would catch up with the listing price and the property would then sell for the full price, and sometimes for even more than that. It was as if buyers could just put the photos of 10 different properties on a dart board, throw a dart at the board, and feel confident that in buying whichever property the dart landed on, they'd be considerably wealthier a year later for having done so.

But in the midst of this market transition, the market for users buying properties still remains strong in many areas. It's still difficult to find the properties to sell to these companies as the supply of these properties for sale often remains tight.

The reason the user market remains strong in many areas is because users aren't buying properties as a pure real estate investment. They're buying buildings to operate their businesses out of, which is very different from buying based on cap rates, cash flow, and anticipated appreciation. Most companies would rather own their buildings than lease them. And it's this desire along with the profitability of these businesses that allows the companies to buy their buildings for reasons that have no relevance to pure real estate investors. Pure real estate investors buy because of the overall financial return they anticipate from the property, as they have no business they'll be running for profit out of the property.

With this in mind, you must do everything you can to get people out of their state of indifference over buying and selling right now.

When you take new listings for sale, you need to do so at prices the owners will negotiate downward from. Until recently buyers would pay the full asking price for a property and sometimes even more, but that's happening less frequently nowadays. Buyers are back to wanting and expecting to negotiate listing prices downward, and if the sellers refuse to budge off of their asking prices, this will make it increasingly more difficult to negotiate a sale.

I know it's been awhile since many of us have encountered this kind of negotiating in our marketplaces, but this is what used to be called a "normal" market, one where negotiating downward from the listing price was what occurred on almost every sale.

When buyers are feeling more uncertain about what represents a good deal nowadays, when they're able to get the owner to negotiate his price downward, this makes them feel more confident that they've really found a good deal. And sometimes the very act of negotiation itself is the glue that makes the deal go down as both sides feel they've worked hard to get what they wanted from the other person.

Observe what's going on in your market, gather important statistics and data on where you see the trend going, and present this information to your people as a report on where their market is now headed. When you're able to show people where things are moving to based on solid, verifiable evidence, they're more likely to agree with you, and they're more likely to take action.

While keeping this in mind, one of my coaching clients recently ran a report on how many investment properties had sold year-to-date in the first six months of last year vs. in the first six months of this year in his own territory. And the results from the report indicated that the number of closed transactions decreased a full 50 percent in his area when compared with what happened year-to-date last year. And now with this information, along with other information and trends he's put together, he's making a case to his owners that they should sell now or be prepared to wait for years before they'll ever see these prices again.

This is the kind of action you need to take during transitioning times like these. Determine where the market is headed, make a compelling case with data, statistics, and information that's completely verifiable, and compel your people to take action.