[quote=hmc]bearishgurl, It’s REO/short sales that brought down the market in early 2009, right?[/quote]
Yes, there was a lot of distressed property on the market at that time, which caused nearby “traditional-sale” listings to either have to be reduced to compete or removed from the market. Since then, major US lenders have been participating in several government-sanctioned “programs” which have the effect of keeping a delinquent homeowner in their home and the property off the (foreclosure) auction block. So there haven’t been as many distressed properties of late marketed all at one time like there were in early 2009.
As a matter of fact, AN pointed out on the “How shall we buy our first house” thread that the current active residential inventory seems a little thin in the $>500K price range, acc to Redfin’s stats.
The distressed “shadow” inventory is merely trickling into the market nowadays. It seems as though these “too-big-to-fail” banks are “in cahoots” with one another (with the help of their collective trusty local RE brokers), so as, on a tract, not more than one distressed property of the same model is marketed at a time (to obtain maximum exposure and price).
More and more “traditional sales” are now priced in the ball park of what they should be and the sellers who don’t need to sell and/or don’t wish to sell at today’s prices are holding their properties off the market.
The successful “traditional-sale” closings in early 2009 were with sellers who HAD to sell at that time, IMO.
