Six months into their quest, they happened upon a three-bedroom Victorian with a front porch and a picket fence on a small lot in Sea Cliff. The two-story house, with its chair rails, crown moldings, fireplace, back deck and “cute gingerbread touches,” had everything they wanted, but its $579,000 price tag put it out of their reach.

“It was too pricey for the size of it compared to what we had seen,” Ms. Novellano said. “For this kind of money, it wasn’t worth it.”

After looking at a few more homes that either cost too much or needed too much work, they decided to suspend their search. In October, a month after they visited the cute Victorian, Kathy Wallach, an associate broker in the Cold Spring Harbor office of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Properties, sold it for $550,000 to a family relocating from Ohio.

In the meantime, however, prices have been on a slippery slope, interest rates are at record lows, and rents are on the rise. And the Novellanos, like an increasing number of other buyers, found these factors conspiring to ease their purchase of a dream home that had once been out of reach.

Last September the Sea Cliff house abruptly reappeared on the market, as the new owner’s company was relocating him again. This time the asking price was $550,000, and the Novellanos were the first ones in the door. “They moved very quickly because they loved it,” Ms. Wallach said, “and with interest rates so low, they were able to afford it for $526,500.”

That was more than $50,000 less than the 2010 asking price. They went to contract three weeks later and moved in just before Christmas.

The average sales price on Long Island dropped nearly 10 percent in the fourth quarter, while the number of listings fell, according to a report recently released by Prudential Douglas Elliman. The median sales price of $339,000 was also down, from $356,050 a year earlier.

Luxury median sales across the Island were down 6.3 percent, to $890,000, from the previous year, with the biggest drop, 9.7 percent, on the North Shore of Nassau County. Island-wide, the number of homes on the market slipped to 18,447 from 18,742 in the previous year.

“While we were looking,” Ms. Novellano said, “we got a lot of encouragement from people to ‘buy now.’ ” She is glad they waited, even though she knows “we were lucky this house came back on the market.”

Others have similar stories to tell. In May 2010, said Carolina Boucos, an associate broker with Daniel Gale Sotheby’s, a banker from Merrick made an all-cash $1.9 million offer, in writing, for one of her properties, a Mediterranean listed for $2.35 million on two acres in Old Brookville. It had four bedrooms, four and a half baths, “smart house” technology, a wine cellar/humidor, a media room and an in-ground pool.

The seller rejected the offer. “We held out because we wanted the $2.3,” Ms. Boucos recalled. But the buyer took the verdict in stride. “Call me — I will wait for it,” was what he said.

A year later, after the financing fell through on a full-price offer, Ms. Boucos called the banker back and asked him if he wanted to raise his bid. He refused, but “actually wound up getting it for even less,” Ms. Boucos said, when the appraisal came back at $1.85 million.

“He really loved that house,” Ms. Boucos said. He immediately “tore it apart,” redoing the kitchen and opening up a wall from the foyer to the great room. (The work was the reason he needed to stick to his price, the broker said she was told.)

Despite happy-ending stories like this, however, some sellers have a hard time letting go of their houses for less than they imagined. In 2009, Joyce Coletti, an associate broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman in Long Beach, listed a three-bedroom three-bath split-level with a new kitchen, cathedral ceilings and a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, for $899,000. When she didn’t get any bites, the price was reduced to $849,000. That sparked a $750,000 cash offer, which the seller refused. Ms. Coletti — enamored of the place, which was a block from the ocean — put in her own bid of $650,000 without commission. Again, the seller said no.

When the listing expired, the seller took the house off the market for seven months, then decided she was ready to make a deal. On Jan. 3 Ms. Coletti relisted the home for $740,000, a drop of more than $100,000.

One of her buyers, who had seen the house the previous time at $849,000 but couldn’t afford it, came back for another look. His offer of $670,000 cash was recently rejected.

“We used to get those kind of numbers, but we are not getting them anymore,” Ms. Coletti said. “All the sellers have to wake up; it is not 2004.”