[kmeisthax]

There's a couple of factors that make selling at a profit but below "market value" unattractive to people who should be putting their housing back on the market:

1. $83k is not the total cost of ownership; it's just the loan balance. Just looking at a home mortgage calculator, the out-of-pocket costs of buying an $83k home at the historical interest rate of 1997, which was about 7.6%, is about $363k[0].

2. Homelessness is a crime in most states, so housing becomes a natural short position that everyone has to cover, just like taxes.

Outside of estate sales, it is very rare for a home seller to not also be a home buyer. The monetary value of the home is, for them, a way to accelerate and account for what would otherwise be a barter transaction. So if you're expecting to have to buy a home for a million dollars, and you've already spent $350k on the loan, then $1.2 million means you'd be about $150k in the negative, not counting closing costs and moving costs, compared to doing nothing. The $1.3m asking price is close to break even for people who aren't planning on dying anytime soon.

[0] I used this calculator: https://www.calculator.net/mortgage-calculator.html?chousepr...