You know kev, we’ve been hearing of this phantom inventory now for most of the last 5 years. Having worked with the back offices of lenders that deal with foreclosed assets in prior cycles, I’m pretty sure there is no secret conspiracy to keep properties off the market. They really are that incompetent.

I don’t think it exists. But beyond that, at least in the handful of zip codes that i’m following, there is no shortage of listings. New listings are coming onto the market as fast, and closings are at occurring at an even faster pace than they have in years. I think that the possibility is that we don’t have an under-supply of sellers, but rather an over-supply of buyers. There should be data available to either confirm or dispute this.