How does anyone ever set prices for real estate? Why do sellers have such a hard time cutting price 10% or 30% when the whole concept of "value of real estate" seems very nebulous and made-up, and each property is a completely unique combination of age, footage, state of repairs, location etc.?
Land and labor are pretty easy to see, a brand new house simply has a cost and that cost helps dictate many things. Obviously nobody is paying $500K for something if you could build from scratch for $50K
Supply/demand. if nobody wants to move to an area obviously no matter how nice your property is it doesn't hold value. Or if the area is desirable then your property is worth more. Even with medium demand if there's no supply price goes up and it will go as high as the market will bear.
Then you have "I can't afford to sell for less". if you bought a $400k house and still owe $300k on it you're not going to want sell for less otherwise it would literally cost you money. If the market slumps you might just stay put until things get better. With a lot of stuck people this could get better because it will drive supply down until the market comes back to a level where people can afford to sell.
And all of these factors can change at an interval of a few dozen miles so each little market can have very different factors and prices.
Is it correlated for the fact that there is more people on the internet than it was during 2008?
Weird. Taking it with a requisite grain of salt, Redfin's median home value for my home is $660,000. Even my county's valuation for property tax is in the mid 500s.
I suspect this is geographically bound. I bet in some areas corporations assess some properties are not worth the effort, no matter their condition, unless they can get the property at a severely depreciated price well below market value. In my area it appears I could make some money without any effort if I were willing to move.
If you can sell it on the normal market, it takes awhile but you’ll almost certainly get a higher price. Working as expected.
Inventory is low, so if someone is forced to move to your area, then sure, your house might sell. Otherwise, everyone is waiting.
There is a price any property will sell at. Price discovery continues. To sell, lower your price until you have a firm offer.