The lack of people who can sell their house at a profit and move up to a more expensive one is propagating up the price chain to put pressure on the higher priced market. Even those who can sell at a profit are generally not going to expand their debt with a bigger purchase in the face of rising unemployment. See http://www.calculatedriskblog......-done.html

On top of this is a lack of financing for expensive homes since the FHA is only making loans up to $625k.

And, to add to this, subprime was only the first innings. We are largely through the subprime market collapse, even though the loans haven’t been written off yet. But have about a third of the way to go with shaky prime Alt-A and Jumbo loans made during the bubble years as the loans are recast and payments jump with no option for the borrowers to refinance because the don’t have enough equity.

As some wit has remarked “We are all subprime now.”

A number of the listings are in “pre-foreclosure” and while they are handled differently than the “pre-foreclosures” in other areas, reality is reality and at some point the gavel will fall along with their “market value.” Sold to the highest bidder. On the steps of the courthouse.

It’s a shame the city and county can’t use stimulus funds to buy some of the “high-end” foreclosures and flip them for market value while retaining the appraised value on the books the way the city and county are planning to do with the “low-end” foreclosures.

HCAD is going to get hit with some reality at some point also.