You are absolutely correct. But, in a different situation where sellers were willing to sell at a price that was likely to still look like a good idea in a few

You are absolutely correct. But, in a different situation where sellers were willing to sell at a price that was likely to still look like a good idea in a few months, they would not have realized that this wasn't a good idea (yet). It was, I think, inevitable that they would get out of this, because (as you point out) the housing market is not suitable for a market-maker business. But I don't think it was inevitable that they got out at the top; they could have held on and given in to the inevitable six months or a year after the slide had begun. I think it's to the CEO's credit that they got out sooner than that.