Dive Brief:

• Potential home sellers, uncertain of when housing prices will soften, are hesitant to list their properties for sale, according to a survey this month of 1,700 would-be home sellers by real estate listing website Redfin.

• Just 5% of respondents said they expect home prices will fall in 2017, while 68% said they expect an increase.

• The primary reasons for selling were to trade up to a "better" home (36%) and to draw from their equity (23%). Hesitancies included concern that they wouldn’t be able to find a suitable replacement property (32%) and that they wouldn’t be able to sell before prices fell (32%).

Dive Insight:

New and existing home sales are up year-over-year, while pent-up demand is keeping inventory tight, driving prices skyward and keeping potential buyers from entering the market. Home prices were up 5.1% in August from a year earlier, nearing (0.1%) their July 2006 peak, according to the latest S&P Core Logic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index.

Meanwhile, new-home inventory dropped to 4.8 months in September from 5.8 months a year ago, the Commerce Department reported last week. According to Zillow, the average home search takes 4.2 months, with fewer than half of buyers getting the first home they put an offer down on.

In positive news for the market, first-time buyers are starting to come back. Existing home sales rose 3.2% from August to September, driven by demand from new buyers, who took their largest share of sales (34%) in more than four years. There's room to grow, however, as economists told Construction Dive earlier this month that the group is still behind its prerecession share of 40% of home sales.

Individuals under the age of 35 accounted for nearly two-thirds of homeowners during the third quarter, consistent with a year ago and up from the first (34.2%) and second (34.1%) quarters of 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall, the homeownership rate rose modestly from a 51-year low in September to 63.5% in the third quarter but is still down by 20 basis points from a year ago.