عدم تجانس فروشندگان در بازار مسکن: تفاوت در استراتژی های قیمت گذاری  Heterogeneity of sellers in housing market: Difference in pricing strategies

1. Introduction The housing market is a market with heterogeneous sellers trading durable goods. Like in any other market, the state of the housing market is determined mostly by its agents’ behavior. The literature related to housing demand is extensive, while much less attention has been paid to the research of the supply side. In this paper, we expand on the existing literature by focusing on sellers’ motivation. The residential housing market is driven by two main types of sellers: private individuals (property owners) and real estate agents. The degree of sellers’ motivation may depend on various factors. Some people want to sell a property faster for different reasons: due to a job change, or because they have already found a new place of residence, etc. Such impatient owners usually hire real estate agents to make a deal as fast as possible. Other sellers are ready to wait longer, for instance, when they want to change residence to have better living conditions and did not find an ap propriate alternative yet. Also, owners may not hurry with the sale when they get an apartment in the inheritance and want to sell it to receive money. In this cases, owners are likely to sell the property themselves. Consequently, sellers are heterogeneous in motivation and have different selling strategies. This hypothesis is partially supported by preceding papers. Levitt and Syverson (2008) give evidence on the different motivation of real estate agents depending on whether they sell their own houses or provide services for sale to others. Authors also discuss the possible difference in selling strategies of private individuals and real estate agents, however, they do not have an opportunity to test these suggestions empirically as they lack the data on FSBO sales.