I have been tracking short sales and REOs (foreclosures) in the San Jose area since June 2007.  I can tell you, consistently, short sales have represented about 30% of active listings and foreclosures have represented about 10-15% of the active listings. I show homes that are listed as short sales.  I hear there are agents that won’t show short sales.  Not sure how they do that. I started working on the numbers to find out how many short sales there are, how long they have been on the market, how many are pending, how long they have been pending, how many are vacant, and how those numbers are different between single family homes verses condos and town homes.  Wow.   There is no doubt there are a lot of home owners in trouble.  There is no doubt the banks have inventory that they have not sent back to the public consumer.  There is no doubt you can complete a web search on  shadow inventory and find a ton of articles about the reality of its existence and whether or not these homes will come to market.  More importantly, when will they come to market?  Who knows?  Maybe some high paid executive of the in the asset manager kingdom knows.  They aren’t telling.  But in San Jose, foreclosures are the smaller part of the market.   I am more interested in the 1/3 of the market called short sales.  These are the challenges of real life sellers, buyers, and agents. As of today, February 15, 2011,  there are 777 active short sales in San Jose. Of that 777 homes, 81 have been on and off the market for over 1 year (10%) and 17 have been on and off the market for over 2 years (2%).  Of the total listings pending sale,…