It's not just me.  Talking with agents from other firms and to agents within my company, there seems to be a real spike in buyer activity.

I am getting regular calls on my listings and frequent email inquiries from my various web sites and blogs.  Most of the activity is coming from two groups - first time buyers who are generally in the $175,000 and below range, and move-up buyers looking higher. There are a lot of great values in the $225,000 to $300,000 range.  Larger, newer homes with a lot of space and upgraded amenities seem to be the ticket. 

This is great for the move-up buyers that have been able to save some money, retire debt, or both. They are in a wonderful position to get bargains right now. 

A recent short sale in which I worked as a buyer agent gained the buyers $40,000 in equity.  This is no joke.  The sale price was $240,0000 and the appraisal came in at $280,000.   A recent foreclosed home that I had listed sold for $210,000 and appraised at $240,000.  Believe me, appraisers and banks are looking critically at comparable properties and have tightened up on the appraised values significantly, but these types of gains are still fairly common in my market areas.

Sellers, I still recommend that you don't put your home on the market unless you absolutely, positively have to sell.  If you do market your home, accept that its value will be less than it was just two years ago. Unless it's priced properly you won't even get people to look at it to see how great it is. 

Buyers, get pre-approved, Not just a pre-approval letter, but have your lender run the credit, put you through desktop underwriting and really see what (or if) you can afford to buy.  If you're looking at foreclosures as a possibility, you may even have to get pre-approved by a representative of that particular bank, although they won't require you to use them for the actual transaction.  They're simply trying to reduce the number of transactions that fail to close.

I regularly work with buyers and sellers, have a good listing inventory mix of traditional (homeowner or retail) and bank-owned properties. I'm experienced at short sales and have undergone loss mitigation training, too.  If you're feeling the pinch and think you might be on the road to losing your home, call me for a short consultation.  There may be other avenues you can take with your lender to keep you in your home.