Nancy Kern reports for Columbia-Greene Media that house inventory is at an all-time low, according to local realtors, and sellers are continuing to get large asking prices. The New York State Association of Realtors reports that home sellers in New York got 98.8 percent of their list prices in the first quarter of 2023. Interest rates have been raised ten times, but that has not seemed to cool the local housing market. Gov. Kathy Hochul, and many Hudson Valley officials, say there is an affordable housing crisis. In Columbia County, home sales increased 13.7 percent in the first quarter of 2022. They fell 2.6 percent in Greene County during the same period. Realtor Claudia Zucker of Living Structures Realty in Cairo said, “We are not seeing prices come down in Columbia or Greene because there is a dearth of listings and a lot of buyers.” Deb Smith of Coldwell Banker Prime Properties in Greenville said, “There is absolutely fewer homes available. I’ve been working with someone relocating from Pennsylvania. We are on our 33rd house. We put in offers on three houses but didn’t get them because of multiple offers.” Across the border in Massachusetts things are no different according to DeWayne A. Powell of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty, a leading realtor in the Berkshires. Powell said, “There’s no inventory.... We’ve got plenty of buyers but no houses to sell them.” And there is more bad news. In Columbia County there has been an 850 percent increase in foreclosure filings from the first quarter of 2022 through the first quarter of 2023, according to Arlene Hackel, deputy director of the New York State Unified Court System. Read more about this story at HudsonValley360.com.