Housing Inventory Shortage

It's not inflated... just no buyers at the valuation they want. They can sell at a lower price.. Same as a developer building a house. The might list at $500k but they could still sell at $400k and not lose money.

There's also the fact a lot of people got a really good interest rate on their homes and will not get anything like that if they decide to sell (i got under 3%, not a chance I'm entering the market again at 7%) so the actual amount of not-new homes available in the market is very low.

Home prices are very sticky. For mental and financial reasons people are very reluctant to price their homes below the rest of the market. During the 08 crash some houses were on the market for years.

There is a lot of friction in this market. Owners take a long time to reduce prices, and many just take their properties off the market instead of selling at what they subjectively consider to be a low price. Also, in affluent areas many purchases are cash deals without a mortgage by investors or wealthy private buyers. So, middle-class buyers are essentially being shut out of the market.

Well, it depends on whether it’s a buyers or sellers market.https://www.axios.com/2025/06/03/homes-buyers-sellers-redfinhttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOUUSWhen it was a sellers’ market, I knew people who sold in da

> they are not likely to sell itThey might like to sell it (and buy another one) if they want a bigger house (e.g. when they have more kids), or a smaller house (e.g. when the kids have left the nest). Selling their house and buying another one in a more open market (not having such limits on buyers) would mean finding the money to pay for a difference between the lower prices on the limited market and higher prices on unlimited markets.

One possible reason is that house prices have gone up so much in the past few years that people can sell quickly and make a huge profit. If you have people renting, you can't just kick them out immediately if you want to sell. Renters would be a liability in this case.

Paywall removed: https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-a-slowing-housing-market-sel...

Who wouldn't sell houses on the open market?

People tend to be really shortsighted when it comes to home prices.People get excited with the thought of selling their home and "extracting profit". But how do you extract profit?You still need another home, right?Unless you plan on downsizing then you are going to buy similar or larger to what you just sold. If your house value went up 30%, then likely the rest of your area did too. So if you want to buy something new, then all your profits go back to something that is the s