A new survey from Zillow suggests that the nation-wide shortage of sellers may be caused, in part, by some holding out for higher prices.

The online home listings site asked a nationally representative sample of about 1,000 household decision makers that own their home, did not move in the past year and did not have a home on the market questions about their plans to sell and recent life events between Sept. 29 and Oct. 5. Nearly all

The conclusion? Nearly 40 percent of potential sellers thought they might get a higher price if they waited. Another 31 percent said they were too worried about their finances to sell: 27 percent reported a recent change in employment with a decrease in hours or pay, and 17 percent said they or their spouse/partner were laid off or otherwise involuntarily unemployed

Notably, only 25 percent were worried about COVID-19 health concerns and only 6 percent said they were taking advantage of mortgage forbearance rules by staying off the market.

With median home sale prices going through the roof and seller optimism returning – a September Fannie Mae survey found 56 percent of people think it’s a good time to sell, compared to 29 percent who felt that way in the spring – many homeowners are probably right that prices haven’t yet peaked, senior Zillow economist Jeff Tucker said in a statement.

“Homeowners who feel life is uncertain right now may think they can still get a strong price if they delay selling until they have more clarity. The catch is that waiting to sell may raise the cost of a trade-up. This fall’s record low mortgage rates, which make a trade-up more affordable on a monthly basis, are not guaranteed to last,” he said.

Some sellers Zillow surveyed are conscious of that trade-off: More than 30 percent of respondents who said they might sell in the next three years said they had paused plans to sell because they feared they couldn’t find a new home in their price range. While senior sellers who are downsizing into assisted living facilities represent housing markets’ chief source of new home supply, nearly two-thirds of home sellers are also buyers, a recent Zillow survey found.

Getting more sellers into the market is imperative in order to meet record demand. New data released by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors last week shows statewide single-family inventory in September was over 56 percent lower than it was last September – itself a month characterized by the same long-running, pre-pandemic market tightness. That same figure for condominiums was down nearly 18 percent year-over-year.