5year that is not the bottom line. The bottom line is that if the listings are short sales, (and most of the ones that are at the lower end of the price range), that many of them already have offers accepted by the seller and that they are being processed by the lender. Thus you should ask you agent to call the listing agent to see if they are still accepting offers. In some cases they may, and in other cases they may not, or they may only accept backup offers.
Also in cases where a lender does NOT accept a short sale offer what may be the reason? Well, the lender may have received appraisals or brokers property opinions that are much higher then the offer. Thus the lender MAY feel that they would make more money letting the property go to foreclosure and then selling. Alternately the lender MAY feel they will get another offer that is better.
I don’t think that the lender feels the market is turning anytime soon.
So the bottom line is yes these are listings, and they are for sale, HOWEVER, I think a fair percentage of them are only available as a backup offer.