Where Have All the Sellers Gone?

I have buyers who cannot find homes to purchase. They have bid on homes in Plano, Wylie, Allen and other cities and have been outbid by full price offers. This seems to be true for resales and foreclosures.

One of my buyers purchased a townhome and the sellers are now in an apartment as they cannot find a home to buy. What they see is a few overpriced homes that just sit there.

I have published the listing and sales statistics for Collin County on my web site. There you can see that listings dropped over ten percent in one month and have dropped much more than that over several months. Compared to Q4 of 2010, listings are still down.

What will it take to get more listings? The problem still seems to be unrealistic price expectations of potential sellers. Most are not motivated to sell and prefer to sit on the sidelines until prices improve. One of my potential listings was looking for a 30% increase in the price of a home they bought here in 2009 (a foreclosure that they got a pretty good price on when I worked with them at the time.)

What might start to motivate some could be an improving economy that causes sellers to relocate or get motivated in some other way.

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