Well, they've destroyed the bottom end of the housing market. What is left will necessarily have a higher median. There's nothing 'ironic' about it; it's simple math.
Hubs and I went house hunting last fall. The inventory was stupidly low. Houses for sale by owner were stupidly high-priced. The banks wouldn’t move at all on their run-down foreclosures - even when there were tens of thousands of dollars in repairs necessary. Anything with the right price point was ‘cash only’. I don’t know what these people are thinking. Even ‘hot’ properties that had a lot of interest and managed to get a buyer were back on the market two months later - so deals broke down big time.
Every house that we considered is still on the market months later. Every single one. Nothing has moved and there’s not much new. With that lack of movement, there should be a drop in prices, but there’s not. It’s bizarre.
Hopefully we’ll be able to buy some land here in a few months and just build what we want.