As Davina Dilley knows all too well, Vashon — like many other parts of the country — has seen a shift in the world of real estate: It’s now, she says, a buyers’ market.

What’s the evidence? For Davina and her husband James Dilley, it became apparent when they put their house on the market last summer, hoping it might get snatched up quickly. At $539,000, the well-kept, 1,600-square-foot house — with a beautifully landscaped yard and woodsy, park-like setting — seemed priced right, Davina Dilley said.

Eight months later and after only a few nibbles, the Dilleys have lowered their price twice and are now asking $415,000 for their three-bedroom home on a wooded lane near Morgan Hill.

It’s a huge drop from their initial asking price, and yet the Dilleys aren’t too troubled by the adjustments they’ve had to make — in part because the same thing is happening in West Seattle, where they want to buy their next home.

“As a seller, you think, ‘Oh, the price went down,’” said Davina Dilley. “But on the other hand, we need to buy a house; so we’re glad the prices have gone down.

“Everything has dropped to a less inflated price, and everything is more reasonable” she added.

Several agents on Vashon agree with Dilley’s assessment. After a couple of years of what some might call an over-heated market on Vashon, the Island’s real estate scene has shifted in the last few months, and many are saying it has now become a buyers’ market.

The numbers tell part of the story.

As of the end of March, there were 82 houses on the market — a much bigger supply of homes than at the end of March in 2007, when buyers could choose from 47 houses.

At the same time, some agents said, buyers are holding off, waiting for the market to reach its low point before making an offer. As a result, only 12 house sales closed in the first quarter of this year, compared with 27 closings in the first quarter last year.

The average selling price is also lower. This year, those 12 houses that closed in the first quarter fetched a median price of $394,000; last year, the median price for the first quarter was $485,000, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Agents, however, say the numbers don’t necessarily reflect a drop in housing prices. What they’re seeing is that the houses that are selling the fastest are those that are the most affordable; higher priced houses — except those with a lot of charm or that are priced quite reasonably — are not selling quite as fast, they say.

“To me, it’s not that prices have softened so much but that the properties that have sold are different this year,” said Dick Bianchi, who owns the local Windermere office.

Beth de Groen, an agent with John L. Scott, said she recently had a listing that got an offer on the first day, a charming house with an asking price of $385,000.

“The really cute houses that are priced well are selling, pretty much as soon as they’re put on the market,” she said.

Denise Katz, an agent with Windermere, agreed. “If the perceived value is there, they’ll sell,” she said.

Still, the agents agreed, the situation on Vashon is far different than it was a year ago, when there were fewer houses on the market and buyers had a great sense of urgency.

“There isn’t that sense of scarcity that there was a few years ago,” said Jean Bosch, with John L. Scott. “Now, people are looking to make sure they’re getting just the right house.”

“For sellers,” said Marie Browne of Keller Williams, “it’s a price war and a beauty contest.”

The slow-down on Vashon mirrors both county and national trends. Due to a complex set of factors, including thousands of foreclosures stemming from the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, some analysts suggest the country is in what they’re calling a housing crisis. In those parts of the country that have been hit the hardest by questionable mortgage practices, housing prices have dropped significantly, and, even with record-low prices, sales are sluggish.

According to a national poll by the Associated Press and AOL Money & Finance released earlier this week, 60 percent of the respondents said they won’t buy a home in the next two years, up from 53 percent who made the same comment in September 2006. And more than a quarter of the homeowners queried said they worry their home will lose value over the next two years.

King County, however, has been only marginally affected by the national housing slump. According to a recent Seattle Times story, 37 percent fewer houses sold last month in King County than the year before, but prices fell only 3.3 percent.

And on Vashon, which agent Emma Amiad calls a “boutique market,” the situation is even more nuanced, some agents said.

On the one hand, the Island has been largely untouched by the sub-prime mortgage melt-down. Amiad says she knows of only two house sales in the last two years where the owners owed more than the house was worth, and in both instances, it was because the owners borrowed too much money on their home’s equity, not because they secured bad loans.

But on the other hand, agents said, some people who are trying to move to Vashon are coming from parts of the country where housing sales have tanked — and as a result, Vashon sellers find themselves caught up, if only tangentially, in the national crisis.

“We’ve had a number of contingency sales that failed because people couldn’t sell their homes in other parts of the country,” Amiad said. “Our market continues to be fairly strong, but it hurts us because someone can’t sell in Texas, California or Maryland.”

Bosch said she worked with one couple who bought a home on Vashon while trying to sell their house in another part of King County. That house in King County hasn’t sold, however, and the couple finally decided to put their new Vashon home on the market and return to the home they were trying to sell.

“The desire to be on Vashon is still pretty strong, but people just can’t get here,” Bosch said. “It’s all a big tangled mess.”

Still, now that the weather is getting warmer and the plum trees are blossoming, agents and sellers alike are detecting a different mood. Last weekend, at the Windermere office, for instance, it was like “a normal weekend,” Katz said, with the phone ringing constantly and people stopping in to pick up maps and gaze at a wall full of listings.

The Dilleys, too, are seeing a difference. At an open house this past weekend, several parties came through, some of whom were clearly looking closely at their house, lingering longer and asking more questions, said Davina Dilley.

With an infant and a toddler, the Dilleys want to move to West Seattle so that they’ll be strategically located between the children’s two sets of grandparents. Davina Dilley said she’s confident they’ll soon realize their dream.

“People are coming through and saying, ‘I think this might actually work for us.’ We’ll see when they actually make an offer,” she said. “But it’s good that there are some lookers who are more than just lookers; they’re looking to actually buy in this price range.

“And at this price,” she said, “I think it’s going to do it.”