The New York Times Real Estate section has been upgrading and tweaking the stats they provide on their listing database. The chart above shows the trend line for the number of listings seeing price reductions and increases. Increases remain nominal and constant while the number of listings with price decreases nearly doubles since the beginning of the year.
One thought I had is that more sellers thought prices were going to rise throughout the spring with the volume surge and set prices too high (a phenomenon I discussed in my 1Q 2010 report). When that strategy met resistance from buyers, a rising number of sellers capitulated and dropped their prices resulting in a leveling off of sales activity in April.
Here’s the NYTimes.com/realestate search window I used for the analysis that can be embedded.
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Hey Jonathan – Don’t forget about the home buyer tax credit expiration. I bet a lot of folks were counting on a mass flood of buyers, and as you said, tried to get a few more bucks by overpricing their listings. I’m sure we’ll see those percentages fall even more as things normalize without the hand of big brother shaping the market.