Ah. I thought we were talking about new homes, which are sold by builders (or the bank if the builder goes bust.) On the secondary market, opportunities for w

Ah. I thought we were talking about new homes, which are sold by builders (or the bank if the builder goes bust.) On the secondary market, opportunities for weirdness certainly exists. Investors buy older homes as well as new. And my sense is fewer people are looking to buy homes in this market with mortgage rates having gone up recently. I think people who don't HAVE to sell their homes are waiting it out until rates go down and they think they can get more for their home. I have no data to back that up, it's just anecdata from talking to a few realtors and noticing there are fewer homes listed on zillow in areas I've been looking at for the last several years. Which is to say... I think there's less inventory than we would have seen had rates remained lower. But that's sort of unrelated to the issue of builders manipulating their rates of inventory creation (which I can't imagine they don't do, at least in response to macro-economic conditions.) The reason I think they should be treated differently is it takes a noticeable amount of time for a builder to build a house. First they have to negotiate financing and insurance, negotiate plans with the county, recruit a construction crew, etc. Home owners in the secondary market can respond to market conditions much faster.