You may be seeing the combined impact of no/low money down loans and California foreclosure laws. People have no incentive to lessen the harm of a decline in prices by dropping their list prices.
Think about two different scenarios:
-You buy 500k$ house with no/low money down to flip, but you apply for your loan with the house as a primary residence. If your house is foreclosed on, it doesn’t matter to you whether the market price after foreclosure is 475k$ or 200k$– in either case, your loss is identical. The only “skin” you have in the game is your credit rating- the bank takes the financial hit. So you list the house above your purchase price, keep paying the teaser rate (which is comparable to rent anyway), and hope that some fool takes it off your hands before your loan resets.
-Compare this with a purchase of a 200k$ house that appreciates to 500k$ and that you now want to sell. All of the sudden, it matters immensely to you whether you sell at 475k$ or 200k$. You actually have some incentive to “chase the market down” and lower your price. A speedy sale becomes important because you actually have skin in the game.
