According to the latest Housing Opportunities and Market Experience Survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), homeowners agree that it’s a great time to sell a house. More specifically, 71 percent of respondents agree that it’s a good time to sell, which is a significant increase from last quarter’s 69 percent and last year’s 61 percent.

Even with remarkably high home seller confidence, however, the nation’s housing inventory has steadily declined. Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist of NAR, reports that this could be due to a current incongruity between high confidence and low desire to actually sell. He says, “there are just not enough homeowners deciding to sell because they’re either content where they are, holding off until they build more equity, or hesitant, seeing as it will be difficult to find an affordable home to buy.”

In addition to fewer homes on the market, housing availability has declined due to a drastic increase in single-family home rentals. According to Zillow’s Chief Economist, Svenja Gudell, the number of home rentals has increased by 6.2 million since 2005. This means millions of homes previously bought and sold by home sellers and buyers now sit in the hands of rental property investors, so the houses sell much less frequently.

Overall, this low inventory of houses for sale has driven many renters away from the housing market, leading homebuyer confidence to wane. In fact, NAR’s survey revealed that only 52 percent of renters agree that now is a good time to buy a home, which is 4 percent lower than last quarter and ten percent lower than this time last year.

Although renters currently lack optimism for the future of the housing market, NAR’s Lawrence Yun has a different outlook for the industry. “Perhaps this notable uptick in seller confidence will translate to more added inventory later this year,” he reported. “Low housing turnover is one of the roots of the ongoing supply and affordability problems plaguing many markets.”

Similar to Yun’s predictions, recent analysis by ValueInsured shows that the nation’s widespread seller’s markets have started to slow, which may draw more renters into the market soon. According to the company’s latest post, “San Francisco—the poster child for a scorching housing market—is one of the first top markets showing signs of buyer’s fatigue, with home prices dropping last quarter for the first time since 2011. New York City and Miami are also reporting signs of cooling.”

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