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Kyle Kurlick/Special to The Commercial Appeal
Real estate agent Ryan Anderson loads signs into the back of his truck. A number of possible reasons, including uncertainty about the economy, are causing homeowners to stay put and creating a shortage of available houses. The result, for homes that are properly priced, is multiple offers and fast sales.

Real estate agents have an understanding, a protocol of courtesy.

If one arrives with a house-hunting client to walk through a house, but there’s already another agent inside with his or her client, the second pair waits to enter until the first leaves.

And lately, Realtor Marina Brinkley and other agents have been killing a lot of time in their cars, waiting while parked outside the dwindling number of houses for sale in the Memphis area.

Last weekend, she and her client drove around Germantown looking at available houses in the $350,000 to $400,000 range.

“We had scheduled five houses to see,” said Brinkley, of Prudential Collins-Maury’s Collierville office. “At almost every one, I needed to wait behind two or three other agents showing the house…. Sometimes it’s so hard to schedule all the appointments in a perfect time slot.”

Supply falls, demand rises, and supply is supposed to rise again to meet demand. But a mix of conditions are keeping sellers from the market. They may be uncertain about the economy’s rebound. They may have too little equity in the house to buy another. And while prices have started to climb, they may not be high enough yet for most would-be sellers.

But in this market, chances are great that sellers who hang a competitive price on a well-maintained house will receive multiple offers and can sell it very fast, agents said last week.

“Buyers have got to realize that those good ol’ days when they can wait for a better deal to come, sit on the fence waiting for a new discount or foreclosure… all that is almost gone,” Brinkley said.

Steve Brown, executive vice president of Crye-Leike Realtors, highlights Slide No. 8 of the slideshow he uses to describe the current Memphis-area market. It’s a graph titled “MAAR MLS Listing Inventory,’’ and it looks like the steep slope of a jagged mountain.

The summit occurred in January 2008, with an inventory of about 13,300 houses for sale. The “For Sale” signs shrunk to about 10,200 in January 2009, to about 9,000 in January 2010, to about 8,400 in January 2011, to about 6,900 in January 2012, and to fewer than 6,000 this January.

“Every agent I respect — my top producers — are all telling me they don’t have inventory to show,” Brown said.

Current conditions are producing war stories among agents.

Ryan Anderson of Crye-Leike’s East Memphis office said he represents a buyer who isn’t “the type to pull the trigger.” In February, they looked at four houses, and each sold to other buyers within five days of hitting the market.

Jeanne Arthur, also with Crye-Leike’s

East Memphis office, also has represented, off and on for 18 months, a timid client who has been unsure about buying her first house. On the morning of Feb. 22, Arthur and the young woman looked at a “charming” house listed for $119,000 in the Buntyn neighborhood.

Her client liked the house and the listing agent “was begging me to get her to write an offer. I finally got her to write the offer.” But by the time Arthur could deliver the offer that same night, the seller had received two other bids and accepted one of them.

Cheryl Lamghari, an agent out of Crye-Leike’s Cordova office, described what happened in one day last weekend at a house she listed for $119,000, this one with four bedrooms and two bathrooms in the Hacks Cross area of Southeast Memphis.

“Not one, not two, not three, but four offers in one day on the same house,” she said. “It had been on the market a couple of weeks. We had a flurry of activity. The first offer came in at 8 a.m., but by 4 p.m. they had four offers on the property… The seller was shocked.”

Kent Anderson, who teams with his wife, Tammy, out of Crye-Leike’s Forest Hill-Irene office, listed a Germantown house that was put on the market Friday, March 1, and had drawn three offers and sold by Monday.

“It was priced at $299,900 in (the Duntreath) neighborhood,’’ Anderson said. “It was the only house at that price point; next-highest was $325,000.”

Despite the lack of supply, houses must be priced correctly to sell, he said. The $325,000 house of the same neighborhood and size “is still on the market today,” Anderson said. “The numbers don’t support their asking price at all.”

Tyler Tapley of Crye-Leike’s Quail Hollow office said he recently started to schedule a showing at a house listed for $140,000 in Cordova’s Countrywood neighborhood. “Never got to show it… The agent said it already sold in two days” after being listed.

“The buyers out there are serious,” Tapley said. “They are informed and they know what they want.”

Melinda Merkle, is a Crye-Leike agent who works a lot in the Southwind area. “We usually have about 55 houses for sale at least, and as high as 65. Now, we have 27 listed,” she said.

Early last week Merkle co-listed with agent Susan Edwards a new house that was 70 percent finished in Arlington when the builder was foreclosed on. Representing the bank, they listed the 5,800-square-foot house for $220,000, with the understanding that the buyer would likely spend another $100,000 to finish the work.

“We’ve had two offers so far. We think we’re getting another this afternoon. We’ve had 15 showings,” Merkle said.

Under these market conditions, buyers must be prepared to act fast, said Judy Skinta, principal broker at Prudential Collins-Maury in Collierville. She recommends they have a pre-approval letter from a lender showing that their offer has strength.

Buyers should team with agents who are “market aware,” meaning they quickly see what properties are new on the market, she said.

“We don’t know how long this is going to last,” Skinta said of the demand for houses. “But we’re thankful and sellers are thankful.”