It might depend on where you're located. My wife was recently looking for a < $1000 bike in Denver and it involved going all over town and checking every store that sold bikes. $2000-$3000 was generally what stores had on the shelf. We asked a few places what was going on and they were saying that the <$1000 bikes were hard for them to order and anything they got in would sell the same day.

She eventually got lucky and found a 2yr old used bike for $400 which is exactly what she wanted. She just got lucky and got to the store just as they were putting it out on the floor.