Will Prospect of Increase in Capital Gains Taxes Bring Selling Pressure?

If the Bush tax cuts expire in December, the capital gains tax rate could increase 33% to 20% from the present 15% tax rate.  Will high end sellers lower listing prices and rush to sell in November and December in order to save on their capital gains taxes? 

Plus, anyone who bought in the past ten years isn't going to exceed the $500k/couple cap gains free limit.

Even at Newport Coast, as your most recent post showed.  Looks like a yr2k buyer from the builder is losing $500k.

don't underestimate hyper inflation.

the kind of people who own the kind of houses affected by an increase in capital gains tax don't care about making huge profits on their home sales - they either bought investment properties or showcase properties or homes for their families.    It affects those people for their OTHER kinds of investments (ever heard the story where Warren Buffet offered a million dollars to anyone that could prove they paid a higher % of their income as taxes than their secretary did and no one could do it?) but I doubt it really affects their buying/selling choices for property. 

I mean sure there are SOME people on the high end that really stretched to buy, but I doubt they have enough equity at this point to matter, like freedomcm said.

Wasn't there some speculation during the housing bust that the tax free limit was slightly culpable for hte bubble? Something along the lines of making flipping more profitable because it was untaxed?    Is anyone still talking about that?  For that matter, how much did flipping REALLY factor in? 

some (not all) of these people are highly leverage as in they use the future proceeds from the stock / options allocations to purchase homes now and essentially grant these options to the lender as collateral.  When the value of these options decline, they get essentially what amounts to a margin call from the lender, and are forced to put up more of their future allotments as collateral.  If they become too leveraged or cannot meet the margin call, guess what happens.

In addtion to this, since they do pay tax on these option grants (almost immediately upon the grant) if it appears that the value of their holdings will decline, as like in a bear market (which we are still in) they might be encouraged to lighten the amount of leverage they have.  So the threat of the repealing of the tax relief programs that are in place *COULD* cause people to sell their high-end homes at a loss.  It all depends on the amount of leverage they are using to maintain their lifestyles.