It is true in our area (outside Seattle). I've had 3 solicitations from REA in 2013 in my area (by mail) asking if we are wanting to sell since they have willing buyers... I've lived here a long time, and never seen that.

Homes in my area, right outside of Boston, are under agreement in 4-6 days if they are priced right. In fact I have noticed that they are selling above list price.

There are no houses for sale in my zip code for about the past two weeks.

We received one of those "I have a buyer, interested in selling?" letters a week ago.

Our realtor says inventory is at a record low, but not much is moving in our price range (>$450K).

What I see is people waiting to see if the market is going up (again), lack of jobs or cut back in promotions and beginning to worry about retirement funds, houses all over way too high, people being picky, people not keeping their homes in good condition, lack of senior housing, and the lenghth of time to get a loan from a reliable lending agency that is not going to be sold 10 times over within a short period of time.
Just my thoughts

In our area (Twin Cities), inventory is at record lows and buyers are out trying to buy before interest rates rise. House prices are rising again (good for sellers, bad for buyers).

I have to disagree with Marie-NDCal about the lack of senior housing, at least in this market it seems like there may be too much. Senior housing rentals are available and affordable, while other rentals are in short supply and expensive. We are moving into a senior independent living complex while our new home is being built - we found lots available with month-to-month leases and were told that the average age of senior complex renters is declining as the good supply is leading to lower cost to rent compared to non-senior rental apartments.
There are still lots to worry about in the economy, but trends do seem to be improving, at least for our part of the country.

True here too (SF Bay Area). Prices are kind of insane right now, both for buying and for renting--flirting with peak prices in some neighborhoods of our city, and 25-30% over asking isn't unusual. Makes me wish we were ready to move (but then again, where would we move to?!?) Pretty much everything decent is going way over asking, and a recent news article reported that the average time on the market is 14 days, which is pretty astounding given that our city was also one of the hardest hit by the housing crash. Makes me grouchy that we refinanced last fall and the appraiser knocked 15% off the value calculated based on the comps because our city was a "declining market," pushing us into PMI territory for the first time ever (even though ironically the comps were the highest of any appraisal we've had--go figure). Grrr.

I suspect that here it will level off in the spring, though--rents are way up here and in our neighborhood and many others in our city, it's been far cheaper to buy than to rent for the past year or two, so the market had to correct at some point. The renters are getting frustrated, and a lot of sellers are just waiting for the market to turn (or have been renting their homes because jobs or families took them elsewhere, and would love to get out of the landlord business). I'm betting they'll come out of the woodwork this spring and summer, which will hopefully push the market back closer to normal on all fronts. That would be a welcome thing.

My agent said this also. However, there are four houses in our developement for sale right now and three have been on the market for over 45 days. That tells me there are less buyers out there also.

Considering a "healthy inventory" is a 6 month inventory, I believe, I'd think 45 days is still plenty short.

How time flies, Dreamgarden. Actually, spring arrived this week on Wednesday, the day before you posted this thread.

Our son is looking as a first time buyer in Los Angeles. Houses are selling fast if they are well designed and priced reasonably, and then sometimes they sell above asking price.

I'm in the Twin Cities, too. (wave at deb_hj)

I can't speak to days on the market here, since I haven't been keeping a close eye on that since buying my house last summer. I will point out, though, that I have had no fewer than three solicitations in the last month or so from realtors looking for houses for their clients to buy. The cheapest 4 BR, 2.5 Bath house (what mine is) in my zip code is listed for $115,000 more than I paid for my house 9 months ago.

I just did a cursory look at DOM, and there is nothing between 60 days and well over 100. So it seems like they are either gone within 2 months, or they sit and sit. "Problem" houses aren't selling, but the rest seem to be.

St. Paul Girl,
Are you saying that your home has appreciated $115,000 in only 9 months? And you did not have to rehab or update or upgrade? WOW.

"Listed" is not sold.

I am in Seattle, very hot urban high demand area for Amazon, Google, Adobe, Microsoft, Groupon etc. Our employment is very healthy for educated high tech kids. For others, not so.

Our housing market is CRAZY!

Many houses are selling above the asking price. We looked at a triplex that had 3 pre-inspections going on at the same time. My realtor thought that it would sell for about 75K above the asking.

It's an issue in Chicago, too, and has been for a while. The housing market took a huge hit and is (hopefully) slowly coming back from it; however, anyone who doesn't have to sell isn't listing, because they don't want to actually take their losses and are hoping for the market to "come back." Conventional wisdom (and I've seen it too, anecdotally) is that there is a big shadow inventory.

Btw, I've been looking in the Seattle area (for fun) and omg it's crazy! Houses go pending so quickly, and sellers are *raising* their listing prices. It's like the total opposite from what I've become accustomed to over the past 4 or so years.

This post was edited by StellaMarie on Tue, Mar 26, 13 at 14:18

Yeah, Seattle area is crazy. Fast pending sales and sales prices over asking once all said and done... I've been watching our market for about 4 years (about 4 yrs ago, we thought about selling, and decided to remodel instead). Although the prices did take a dip, and we aren't where we were, we do seem to have a healthy seller's market.