Are the banks holding out putting homes on the market? if so why

i dont know what banks are waiting for. some hypothesis are

1) govt interference
2) inadequate staffing to accommodate the massive stacks of paperwork
3) fear of eroding profits, creating runs on stock price, etc
4) staggering homes to keep the prices from just utterly collapsing...(think 90% losses)
5)hoping that jobless numbers decline and some of the loans begin to perform
6) hoping for another govt entity to push the debt onto
7) hoping for a rally in home prices that will change non-performing loans into gold(err well maybe they are smarter than that)
8) some combination of the above

the one thing to note though is that in order for any of the conspiracy theories to be true, banks would have to go against their own self-interest and in the interest of the market as a whole by not trying to beat all of the other banks through the door. self interest says you get your out there while the prices are still dropping and leave the other less efficient banks holding the biggest losses while you start over with profits... of course two many homes on the market create demand pressure and cause crashes. one might argue that it is in all their best interests to hold back these title waves of foreclosures hoping beyond hope that the dam never breaks, but it is equally in their interest not to equally give an advantage to their competitors by letting them receive better money for similar crapp portfolios

I have been tracking Phoenix foreclosure numbers. While it is hard to say if banks are holding lots of homes after they becom REO, what is fairly clear, is that they are delaying actually foreclosing.

For example, In August, 9000 homes received notice of trustee sales, but only 4000 were foreclosed, and 2500 cancelled. Simple arithmetic tells you that 2500 more homes are in the process now than were a month ago.

In fact, over this year, we started with 23,000 homes in foreclosure, and now have over 50,000.

Can we claim the market is really getting better? I think that is a dangerous idea to overlook this number, and get excited by a couple thousand sales increase a month.

I highly doubt it. They are not in the business of investing in a real estate portfolio in hopes of prices going up. They really don't want to own any at all. That's not the business they are in. In fact, quite to the contrary I think that many banks are now loosening up a bit and willing to except more short payoffs than ever before.