Obviously shortsales are pretty much the name of the game, right? Are there equity sellers out there? When I'm calling Expireds, I usually come across shortsales... not all the time, but most of them are. If 5 expireds come out for the day, 3 of them are short sales.

I know there are equity sellers out there, what are doing to find them?

Many that have equity aren't selling especially in your area.They would rather wait out the market then sell for small equity.

Example:Someone used to have 400k equity at the height of the market and now have 70k. They would just rather stay put. Now if they have extra funds they would love to capitalize on the market and buy another property.

The only ones selling are the HAVE TO's.

You can look at the tax record for age of the mortgage to find sellers with equity but even then sometimes they are unrecorded equity lines and Heloc's,second loans etc. where they tapped out the money.

I see quite a few equity sellers out there--only 72 of the closest 180 listings to my house are designated as short sales--though I'm in a pretty established area without much newer construction, and the situation will be much different in the newer "boom towns."

I think Super's on the right track. A large percentage of the equity sellers I see are job transfers (esp. out-of-state), estate/probate, and of course flips. These guys NEED to sell; going after these guys by calling expireds is going to be largely unsuccessful because most of them aren't going to let their listings expire. The trick is to find these guys *before* they list their properties!

So you're saying to gear my focus on just listed/sold properties?

I have quite a few listings that have equity and they sell for the appraised price. The propblem is I have noticed short sales selling quite a bit lower than the appraised value. This makes a normal sale very tough.

Go after the FSBOs. A lot of them have the equity and they are trying to preserve it by not paying commissions. I love FSBOs and when I go on a listing campaign that's all I hit. These people have already raised their hands that they want to sell a home.