I guess that is the difference between the foreclosure tsunami and the private seller tsunami. The private sellers will hold out for an unreasonably high amount while the banks will just sell it.
Still, the number of people who want to sell is very telling, methinks. The burden of making monthly payments for a house priced x on a house worth 0.7 * x is starting to take its toll and there truly is no way out. The future implications to the economy are bad.
People will either continue to divert funds (that could otherwise go into the economy) toward paying off that debt; sell the house at a loss; or get foreclosed on.
Different people have different pain thresholds/timelines and so the pain gets spread out over a long time.
So, the private seller tsunami isn’t really a tsunami. Just a slowly rising tide.[/quote]
Interesting analysis. And it fits what I’m seeing.
I’ve seen a lot of houses go on/off the market with only inconsequential drops in price. A lot of denial about what the market is – and enough desire to sell that they keep their houses on the market. (Lets face it – keeping a house “on the market” clean is a PITA – so you wouldn’t keep relisting if you didn’t feel some pressure to sell.)[/quote]
Yep. Still lots of delusional sellers with their wishing prices out there. We’ve also seen a lot of people who have been listing/desliting for a few years. They are “waiting for the market to come back.” Unfortunately, what they’re really waiting for is the bubble to come back, and that is very unlikely to happen in their lifetimes. It’s amazing how long some people can live in denial.
Of course, the media is largely responsible for this level of ignorance. They’ve gone from calling the housing bubble a “bubble” to calling it a “housing boom.” They don’t explain that the “foreclosure crisis” is a DIRECT result of the high housing prices; instead, insinuating that the “foreclosure crisis” could somehow be solved by higher prices! Someone has told them to change their talking points, so we’ll probably have to live with the ignorance for a few more years.
