CAR,
All I can say is that even when prices were crazy high, few properties were sold by very old people or their families. From what I have seen, homes make up most of an estate in a lower end area but in an area like this, the elderly have other assets and arent as reliant on selling to fund a retirement.
This is and has been a very small niche market as long as I can remember around here. There are plenty of buyers ready to leap on those so they would be contested anyway. Banking on that as a strategy is a bit of a crapshoot in my eyes.