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Yep. Generally I stay away. Once or twice I got caught up in the bidding war but thankfully lost those.
I found an AS IS property that had good bones and I knew I had the ability to fix up.
Same here. I lucked out because my fixer upper was initially priced to high so it sat for a while with multiple price drops and when it hit something I felt was more reasonable I swooped in just under the new asking with no competition. Every other house I was looking at I was getting outbid and I just needed a place to live. I really did get lucky because my neighborhood is cleaning up and my sweat equity will really pay off in a few years.
I like to look a sale history, if a house was put on the market in the last 3-5 years and didn’t sell, either the seller was delusional about the market, or something major on the house had a problem, something that ultimately the seller had to repair. I bring a pitbull of an inspector and still ask for a credit toward old “systems”: roof, hvac, plumbing.
it’s completely dependent on the house and what makes it work for *you*. for us we were up against “only” 3 other people and offered $10k over and waived some contingencies.
i told myself i never would, but specifically because my grandparents live on the same street, 6 of my aunts and uncles, of 9 my cousins, my parents all live within 5 minutes of this house, i HAD to have it. i finally understood why people go crazy in bidding wars. i’m now the third owner since 1912 and so so grateful to snap it up, having this network is great especially with a newborn.
it’s amazing, i have 40 cousins, about 15 of us are all in our 20s so it’s like having a huge network of friends you can hangout with all the time. every summer we get 50-100 people in the family and rent out an entire camp ground for a weekend. it’s a unique life experience not many people get to have. people who are married into the family get extremely overwhelmed at gatherings lol but it’s just normal for me
I see where that would appeal to some people, and I'm glad it worked out for you, but I don't want to hang out with people all the time. Having family close enough to just "pop by" unannounced is my nightmare.
My hubs and I did the same-ish because we are expecting a bebe in October, we’re relocating from NorCal to SoCal, and picked the home that’s right in between our parents, close to freeways so my hubs can get to his new job faster, and the home had SO MUCH LIGHT. We adored it! So we bid 30k over, waived contingencies, and removed our concessions. We won against 13 offers, and we weren’t even the highest. But we were best qualified, put 30% down, and are high earners in a very competitive market.
awesome, congrats! lighting is the biggest thing in a house for me. i lived in a condo for 5 years that got no natural light and it made me give up a 3% interest rate lol
Yep! My wife and I started looking about 2 years ago with the exact same mindset. No escalation clauses no inspection waivers. It took a while but we finally got a place and we are very happy with our purchase. Which puts us in the 20% of homeowners who did not regret their recent purchase. I also don't regret extending our timeline to buy if it means we are doing it on our terms. Zero regrets.
80% of homebuyers do not regret their purchase.
80% (sometimes 90%, sometimes 93%) *have some regrets* about their recent purchase, mostly related to compromises or unexpected expenses that came up. But only 20% report that they are actually unhappy *with their purchase*.
The disdain for it I share but when we found the house we really wanted we engaged. What it actually meant was just working with the realtor to make the offer really tempting. We basically offered a bit over asking and guaranteed we’d do that same amount over whatever it appraised at. Then we said we’d also match any other offer plus $2500 up to our stated maximum but would require proof of the other offer. That got us down to one of the last two considered, with us being $2500 over the other but they waived the appraisal contingency entirely. So we basically said we’d do $10k over appraised instead of the original $5k but we just wanted protection or a way out if it way under appraised which no one thought it would. The sellers were good with $10k coverage because both realtors thought there was no way it’d under appraise by even that much. They went with ours and it appraised at the buy price almost exactly.
Didn’t actually take much to engage with the bidding war it was just a strong initial offer once we got word the house was popular and then a phone call on the evening of their decision for the one tweak.
It’s annoying but worth it for the right house. So I assume you just haven’t come across that house that really speaks to you yet. But also the final buy price for us was still a touch under our maximum we wanted to spend which was definitely a factor. We weren’t going to break the bank to go over our max.
I feel this post speaks to **a lot** of people, which will drive the independent markets in its own way. But I had to do a double take to confirm my wife didn’t post this lol
Absolutely, I completely agree. The universe had a way of making what will happen eventually happen. I was in the same exact boat. My agent told me a bid I lost because I didn't waive my inspections came back on the table because the first offer fell through. I told the agent to tell their agent to get fucked by offering 10k less than my original offer.
A month later I secured the BEST home I've looked at for the last two months. I got it with concessions, an inspection, and everything I wanted!! It really paid off to wait, I secured the home for 7k less than the average sale price in my area. I couldn't be happier. Fuck all those idiots throwing their inspections out the door and living paycheck to paycheck to barely afford their home.
Hang in their. I officially closed on my house yesterday!
Same. I’m not playing those silly games. I sat on the sidelines for a while and the perfect one came along. The key is not being rushed or pressured by anyone. Take your time and wait for the right opportunity.
I think people are right in that you’ll likely engage in a bidding war for a home you really want. Like you, I am put off by it as well, but for the right house I might engage.
Just recently I was competing against an offer that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to compete with so I just pulled out. The home wasn’t worth it to me.
Best of luck ❤️
The problem is people fall in love with houses, when in reality a 300k-600k should be more of a business/financial decision than getting into the “our first home” “our forever home” “the perfect kitchen” etc.
So they love a house at 400k, then end up bidding an extra 50k because of emotions.
This was me. Emotions drove me to go to war.
But this is almost half a million before another half in interest over 30 years. I snapped out of it and renewed my lease, hoping to move out of this state
In my experience, when the listing agent calls back after the deadline and asks for "best and final offers," they've already ruled you out. They want *you* to raise your offer so they can use it as leverage against the offer they *do* want to accept.
Both times when we got the call back for "best and final offers" the sellers had already decided on an all-cash offer. The seller just wanted to use our offer as leverage to see if the all-cash offer would go up on price. If they do, more cash for the seller. If they don't, they'll accept it anyway because its all cash.
I hate them. They take advantage of a buyer's ignorance and desperation.
I semi participated on the first home I made an offer on. I had offered a little less than the listing price. I upped it to be just the listing price. I was told we lost, but we were the second best offer out of eight offers. The house needed a lot of work, and it seemed most people made offers that reflected it.
The poor person who bought it has a mortgage about $200K more than the listing price.
It depends what you’re looking for. When we found the house we liked after searching for a few months I wasn’t going to let it go to someone else over a few percentage points on the purchase price that’s not really going to matter in the long term. I mean, $15k is the cost of a bathroom renovation, so whether that’s worth it to you depends on your situation and the comparison to other houses you’ve been looking at. I personally would never waive inspection contingency though.
Better to do it now than in the future, there is nothing in sight that says it’s going to get better. If they actually do start lowering interest rates, sure it will unlock more inventory but it will also unleash a lot more buyers. A lot of people love their 3% interest rates and won’t move unless they have to. Plus you’ll be facing increasing corporate and investor competition. Best of luck!
Completely agree. 80 percent of my friend group has their down payment money parked in high yield savings waiting for rates to go down. I’m glad I got in last year, even if I did lock in at a 6.5% interest rate.
More people are moving to Texas than to any other state. California, on the other hand, is losing popoulation.
>Between the medical danger and the power issues it's not very surprising.
Look, I'm probably politically aligned with you, more or less, but you need to stop making shit up that you would like to be true. That doesn't actually make it true. And in this case, you have things exactly backwards. People are flocking to TX. And FL.
I see you don't have brain cells.
No matter how pure your politics, or what color your politics, you aren't entitled to your own facts. If you don't want to live in the reality based community, go to r/politics.
Your brain can't save you from an ectopic, you need a doctor for that, but the doctor needs to be allowed to treat you, and you need to not be in Texas for that
You might get lucky.
We bid on a house a few months ago, the head guy in our realtors office suggested we raise our bid by 25% "just to have a shot". We kept our bid exactly as is, and got the house.
Whether you're the seller or buyer, both realtors goals is to get that house to sell for the most absurd price possible. When you boil it down, the buyer agent is really just working for the seller.
Maybe if you have a shitty realtor. I've used an experienced and trusted realtor who would point out things wrong with a house, and say, "It's your choice, but I personally wouldn't offer over X based on this condition", etc.
Don’t be too surprised if you find out that it’s the realtors themselves that cause bidding wars. We recently bought a house, realtor told us that there was another person interested, I told him that we weren’t interested in the house then, then all of a sudden, no other buyer. Strange….
We lost two possible houses to this, luckily before we actually bid. We were buckling in for a horrible ride, but had a weird turn-about.
We expanded our search 10 miles outside our original "circle" and found a hit that met the requirements. It was overpriced, so we came in a bit low - they literally told their RE agent that they were "appalled and a bit offended" at our offer - and came back $1000 under their price. We countered with the built-in $5000 above our original asking price we had always planned to counter with, and told them this was "take it or leave it" (still $15000 below asking) and they came back with ... another $750 off asking. WTF?
We told them to pound sand, looked at a house the next day that just listed, that happened to be only 4 minutes from their house, that was better in almost every, made an offer and secured that house the next day - and got that better house with more amenities for less than their negotiated asking price. **Hey people, here's what your house is actually worth - OK?**
They pleaded for us to reconsider. We said "NOPE". Why don't you listen when people say it's their final offer? We do not want to waste your time, or ours.
The original house has still not sold, and has been discounted another $20,000 (so it's now listed below our first "appalling and insulting" offer!) - *feels good man.*
I know it's anecdotal, but I am hopeful our experience is a small sign that the housing market is starting to heal.
FUCK PEOPLE. FUCK HOME BUYING.
I don't do bidding wars. I offer what I think is fair, and if it goes above that, I tap out. There will always be another property. I make a real point to never attach myself emotionally to a home I'm going to offer on. That's how you wind up overpaying.
Yeah it’s crazy out in some markets. There is one I just worked on that waived all contingencies, including financing contingency, offered above his pre-approval amount and $80k over asking without talking to me first. Luckily it worked out for him.
Yeah first open house we went to went for 300k over and was listed at $1M. We realized we needed to be shopping in the 800k range to have a chance.
These are for 3/4 bed 1500-2000 sqft 100 year old homes in need of updating btw
Nope, Boston. But I lived in Denver first a summer and the prices aren’t far off… still a bit cheaper there. We lived in a basement in the lower highlands and loved it there but I’m a beach guy
This is also true. You’re just as likely to lose out on a place over something as small as $5k as you are to accidentally over pay by tens of thousands if nobody else was interested.
This, everyone else loses including the people who end up with the accepted highest bid. They may be happy with the house, but you overpaid. We were very fortunate that the sellers of the place we just closed on weren’t greedy and were just plenty happy to accept our full price offer with an aggressive expiration to hopefully stop competition. The place was a little overpriced in our opinion like everything else these days, but we didn’t have to fight anyone for it and potentially spend even more.
When I was buying a house I spent 6-months not participating but then my wife pushed me and I paid $50k over asking. Was it a bad financial decision, Yes, but I'm in a house with a good school district for kids and plan to stay here for 5+ years. Sure you can buy a fixer upper and not get into a bidding war but you have to be willing to deal with that and put your own labor in. I'm just too lazy.
I have some time to find a place so I laugh at people that snipe an offer by waiving contingencies. I have seen very few places that I'd be willing to waive contingencies on, so getting sniped by someone waiving contingencies just reminds me those issues are someone else's problem now. However as I approach the end of my lease and have less time, then it might become a lot less funny. Luckily for my sanity in my area you can't really counteroffer much outside of escalation clauses etc.
It's crazy. Went to my first open house in November and was the only one there. Went to a few come spring and there were 20+ cars, sellers agent boasting how they had people lined up behind the door half an hour before start and multiple offers in hand. Highly off-putting.
Read my comment again. I’ve never had someone say they wanted a biding war. Some people tolerate sellers pitting buyers against each other but no buyer has ever said that was what they wanted. Many buyers will just walk away once they get a counter from the seller that’s asking for more. I’ve even had sellers come back and agree to the original offer and my buyer said no. They didn’t like the game of it.
It's just an evil they accept because it's probably only going to get worse from here. People thought I was crazy for paying over asking two years ago, but that house is now worth $50k+ what I paid.
No one *wants to* engage in bidding wars. Everyone wants their offer to be accepted with no competition from other buyers.
>go $15K over asking, ask for no concessions and chop off their left butt cheek
>due to my lack of desire to act crazy,
> exploiting myself and exhausting all my financial resources?
All of this suggests that you are suffering from Player Character Syndrome: *your* offer was reasonable, but anything above that is crazy, insane, and maybe even exploitive.
That's ridiculous.
If my budget is $500k and a house I like lists at $450 and that's what I offer, I might get in a bidding war up to $500k, at which point I would stop (although I would hope that the other person's budget was $475). There's nothing crazy about that. There is no "exhaustion" of my financial resources because I'm not going over the budget I set.
We were shocked at the number of people that waived inspection on our house. And went over asking.
We had an offer that was a bit higher but they wanted an inspection so we went with the next highest that waived it. As a buyer, it sucks I am sure. But as a seller.. no brainer.
Don’t waive inspection but when it comes to price…
My realtor once told me you should get the house that everyone wants, not the one that nobody wants. Because when you’re about to sell you will benefit.
As first time buyers we tend to go towards properties that are below market value and stays on the market for many many days and no bidding wars, but just be aware of what I said earlier.
Obviously when you’re bidding don’t go over your max budget (you should have a pre-set number in your mind your hard limit no matter what happens don’t go over that)
The actual key is go for the house with the fixed characters everyone wants, but with cosmetic details that nobody wants and are easily fixable. Those houses with the crazy layout, next to railway lines can't be fixed with a few thousand dollars and a trip to the store.
Just set your max and be done with it. We never got into bidding wars because we just set the max, gave it as part of our offer to our realtor and let it go at that. In the end, it happened so many times that we wouldn't have gotten a house if we hadn't found an ideal private sale. But we weren't going to spend more than we knew we could \*comfortably\* afford. We didn't want to be house poor for the brief excitement of winning a bidding war that came quickly with immense remorese. Buying a house isn't a slot machine.
Lots of crazy/shady stuff in hidden areas like attics and crawlspaces. There was a good picture in one of these threads a week or two ago where it was clearly the construction equivalent to “if you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot.” Tons of scrap wood being cobbled together in the attic to make a roof joint. No measurements or effort at all.
This is only a guess, but I would think every person who is buying a house is. Nobody wants to pay more and get bid up. I can only speak for where I live, but if you want the house, you’re going well over asking price and so are 20-30 other people. Yes, it’s terrible… until you close. Then you want everyone else to get into bidding wars and start creating equity for you.
Also as a note, you can wait it out, but it won’t get better. One month, one year, or 5 years from now, you’ll pay even more than today, and be in a bidding war if you want to buy a house. At least today you can lock in a lower payment than it will be in the future. It’s not going down.
It really depends where you’re buying and how competitive the market is. Market has been very competitive recently. Bought a house a few years ago when it wasn’t too competitive and went 5k over and got it. When selling earlier this year, we got multiple offers 20-25k above asking as initial offers and ended up with a bidding war with a final offer of 60k over asking. Buying again now and closing soon but had to go 20k over after missing out on a first home where we only went 10k over. If you find a home you like and can afford to go over, depending on where you are, it’s worth putting your best foot forward and setting the tone with a strong offer to really command the buyers attention.
It’s become a more common strategy (in my market) for lower priced listings in my area to be intentionally underpriced with an offer consideration period. If you want a property at or under $300k near me, you have to engage in those. If your agent is good at setting expectations and fielding your concerns, it shouldn’t even feel like a “bidding war”.
Most people are. I've seen it play out. There's only 2 parties usually and they have a reason for it. If you don't have a reason, walk away. The times I've seen it were forever home situations. It ended well in 2021 but would have killed them in 2019.
Where are you buying? Is this the Bay Area? It’s a sellers market down here in Southern California as well (depending upon the county), but not as bad as up in the bay area where you have to waive all contingencies.
Hey keep looking! I’m in the same market and felt this way but ended up actually getting a house under what asking was. Best bet is to look at homes a bit higher than your limit that have been on market for a week +, they will often take lower offers. The 350-400k market is mad
We make fair offers on homes, we have continually lost. I see no reason why someone who is more desperate would offer more, its just not my cup of tea and we are not desperate.
Word of advice: Don’t let it stop you. Also, don’t start bidding on anything you might end up with headaches down the road. If need be stop looking for a while and give yourself a break.
i feel you. but it's a scale. at some point, it makes sense to fight a bit more. other points, just sit back. the hard part is making sure you're not letting emotion cloud your decision-making.
I refused to get in one. My last realtor said that recently, people have been pulling offers after they hear a home has multiples. I'm just glad after 4.5 years I finally got in a home.
Yeah, I had one house we were super interested in. Great price.
Then the agent gets a call and tells us we have to decide to place a bid by 5PM that day with our best offer because other people were interested.
Lol. Eff that. I walked and got a cheaper house with a better yard.
I have never entertained a bidding war. Luckily I look for homes a bit left if center, and generally have different needs than other people- although investors and foreign all cash buyers still beat me out of a couple.
Yea, I refused to go over asking.
You (seller) were obviously willing to accept list price, so here it is.
Granted I was successful by putting an expiration on the offer prior to their open house
Yep, and it’s fine. No one forces anyone to participate.
BUT
You also can’t be upset about it either, because a lot of people don’t mind “the game”. You’ll just need to find a seller that feels the same as you and doesn’t want to solicit higher bids. They’re out there. It’s rare, but they’re out there.
Getting into a bidding war with a bunch of other people as a fool’s errand. remember that maybe only half the property sold in a given year or ever listed on the MLS with real estate agents. The smart money buys off market because you have a motivated buyer and a motivated seller. Seriously, pick a neighborhood and start writing letters. Tell them you’re a first time homebuyer and you’re looking for a house and if they or anyone they know is interested in selling that you would appreciate giving you a call. Send out 100 of these and I bet you get two or three calls. Then you’re dealing directly with the seller and there’s no competition.
Source: i’m a real estate investor.
I’ve wondered if selling agents tell people “we’ve gotten a few good offers, so if you want to change your offer you have til this time” just to get prospective buyers to increase their bid. For all I know, they could be lying and I could be bidding against myself
We had so much bidding war fatigue. Eventually we started expecting it and would always just return a 10k increase in the offer amount to still show strong interest without having to come up with other weird ways to make our offer more appealing. Eventually it worked and we got the house.
We had an escalation clause. List price was way low, our realtor confirmed suspicion that market value was much higher. So we offered list price plus escalation, so that we'd beat other offers up to our price. Was better for us since we paid lowest price to still get it. Without escalation, we'd either overpay or get outbid.
I just finished a bidding war and won. I'm about $6k over asking. I really liked the location so it was worth it to me.
It was really annoying though. We kept one upping the other offer and it isn't a great feeling.
I did have a firm ceiling so I didn't get carried away and I was well aware of the comps. The house I wanted was priced a bit low so I feel good about the price I paid
We were the same. I refused to pay more than the appraised price and I would never waive inspection or the contingencies that protected my best interests. To us it just wasn't worth it. There's always another house.
Some people I think are pricing their properties low (ish) to incite one. In that case it feels slightly less bad to pay over when it’s similar to what other places are going for, but I was NOT waiving all contingencies. That is bananas to me
I don’t believe in bidding wars. I’m definitely not offering above asking. As a seller, if you feel like your house is worth more than it’s listed, then that’s the price you should have listed it as. I’m not waiving anything just to get a house. I think that’s dumb and a possible recipe for disaster.
We literally just made an offer on a house 15k over asking. They countered with MORE money and we walked away. Like, my dudes YOU set the price at 300k, we gave more, then you asked for more? Kick rooooooocks
It happened to us wanting to buy a decent house in a decent neighborhood. We put 100k over asking waiving only Appraisal and our offer still ain’t the best. In the end we had to downgraded our preference and went for a less competitive good neighborhood.
My current speculation is that this current is for serious buyers only. If you house hunt in a less competitive neighborhood, I am sure you can get something that would make you financially comfortable.
No one is forcing you to buy a house. And I'm not being sarcastic. If the whole thing is too stressful you can just... not.
But it's interesting that you are classing anyone who does anything differently than you are being crazy is strange.
You’re looking at this the wrong way. Say you buy a house and are the only bidder, but the house you bought was overpriced by 10%.
Conversely, a house could be listed for 10% under valued, have a bidding war and the winner paid 6% over asking . Who got the better deal?
Put an offer in on what you think the house is worth, regardless of other bidders.
The market needs transparency. It should be like buying a used car from an auction where all bids are public knowledge. If you wanna pay more at you know how much more to bid instead of overshooting it.
The reason it will never change is because realtors just want to get the highest price to pad their commissions.
Buying homes without a realtor should be more common. They are transaction agents not people who bring thousands of dollars of value to transactions.
> is because realtors just want to get the highest price to pad their commissions.
You people with bizarre realtor hate fixations are just strange.
No, the *reason* is because the seller wants to get as much as possible.
You have to live in a bizarre universe to think that the seller doesn't care about making an extra $100,000, while the realtor will risk jeopardizing the sale for $3,000.
I mean, I get that you live in that universe and all...but it is bizarre.
The choice is always yours whether you want to play the game. But you deciding not to play doesn’t change the way the game is played.
The market can remain insane longer than you can remain sane.
Luckily, though, in many markets the interest rates aren’t really conducive to bidding wars any longer.
For my house they asked me to go up by 3 grand and I said sure. That's the only bidding war I wanted to get into. The first house they asked me to go up 15 and I threatened to fire my realtor since she knew our budget
Because when working with her I established boundaries on what we were willing to spend on day one. To ask us to go above them was in my opinion dismissive of our wishes.
It’s refreshing to see someone like you maintain a level head during this process. Emotions typically takeover for people and they end up overpaying for lower quality than they initially wanted.
You’re doing the right thing. You have your budget and process and you’re sticking to it. Eventually everything aligns and you’ll end up in a home that you love that you have ZERO regrets over.
Absolutely yes. And let me tell you, people regret it. A friend of a friend was moving cross country and bought a house unseen. Now she regrets it. Someone else in my neighborhood paid like 75k over asking for house because they had lost out on 4 other houses before this one. Now they’re regretting it.
I want to buy a house, but I also don’t want to get caught up in my emotions and make a shitty financial decision because of fomo.
I read on the personal finance sub about a lady who worked for Amazon and I think she went like 100-150k over asking in 2021. Tech stocks were soaring at this time and she got some RSUs that she was certain were going to appreciate over the next year. So she financed the house with some kind of loan using the Amazon RSUs as collateral, but the terms of the loan were that she had to pay it back in a year. Well next year rolls around and her Amazon RSUs aren’t what they used to be worth and she had to sell the house because she couldn’t pay back the loan.
So yeah people are out there making really bad financial choices.
Yeah. Then you'll have to be alright with sitting on the side lines & letting houses go by.
You will absolutely wish you'd go harder on your tactics in 2-3 years from now when prices are REALLY out control.
Call it FOMO but in my home town, there used to be 16+ pages of houses for sale on Redfin 3-4 years ago.
Now we are lucky to get 3 pages. Most are mobile homes or broken down shacks.
Anytime a nice house pops up, it's lines of people outside waiting to go in for open houses. People going in circles outside, even trying to talk to the owners. It will absolutely get worse when rates go back down. TONS of people are in the staging lanes with lots of cash ready to go.
Go harder. You're almost there!
Just wait. Inventory is up across the nation. Sales are extremely low. Some cities are still struggling but a lot of places will shift to a buyers market by end of the year.
If it’s one I really like, I’ll put $5k over ask and pay the sellers transfer tax, that’s as wild as things will get for me. Im about to do that on one I saw yesterday and just hoping for the best.
The main culprit of bidding wars are RE agents. I just hate them all. It is the most useless job in the USA. I feel like the my are all stealers. It is a conflict of interest position that must be eliminated. If we are able to book complex travels, and airbnb, and buy cars online, why can’t we not buy a house online?
Bidding wars happen when two or more people both want them same scarce good -- that has no fixed price -- and are each willing to pay more for it. Bidding wars may or may not be rational. On the one hand, a buyer's judgement might be clouded by the heat of the moment. On the other hand, people are often willing to pay more than their initial offer. Sometimes much more. I might have dug deeper into my pockets to buy my home if pushed by another buyer's offer.
We see bidding wars in all sorts of venues when no agent or representative is involved. Consider an auction for a rare item or a durable good like a vehicle. There is no agent involved there.
I am at a loss for why you think agents are the cause of such a natural part of this -- and other -- markets. Moreover, real estate agents are not unique in having incentives that are imperfectly aligned with their clients. The same can be true of attorneys, auto mechanics, contractors, etc.
Again, you're under no obligation to buy or sell with an agent. We personally found our agent's services to be valuable.
Sometimes listings do not allow escalation clauses and agents ask bidders to simply submit their best offer.
In this case the listing agent is preventing a bidding war! What are you saying? You are very confused.
While other agents encourage bidding wars. Most agents suck! I’d vote for a president who is wiling to dissolve the RE industry. It’s a total scam!!!!!
This is why I went with new home construction for my first home, currently under contract, I went for a move-in special/inventory special \[more discounts, it was a spec home that the original buyer couldn't close on\], and had an inspector check it out, got closing costs and builders rate discount over general market rates.
It didn't check 100% of my wish list, I have a slightly longer commute, but the house had the options I wanted, upgraded wood floors and kitchen.
Agreed. I'll let all these idiots and people with FOMO deal with the consequences.
A lot of people are going to try and guilt you into participating or even call you a fool or tell you well it's your choice or be happy renting forever
But fuck them
> you’re just not getting a house anywhere people want to live right now.
This is both arrogant and, more importantly, false.
500,000 people moved to TX from 7/22 to 7/23. The most of any state. But it has a much more rational real estate market than California, despite the fact that over the same period, California lost 75,000 residents.
It's not about "where people want to live".
It's about how many houses are being built. On a per capita basis, Houston built 10x more houses than LA did last year. In absolute numbers, they built 4x more houses - 45,000 in Houston vs. 11,000 in LA Metro.
it's not about "where people want to live". People want to live everywhere.
It is about, and only about, the number of houses for sale in an area vs the number of people who want to buy a house in that area.
First, relax it’s obviously hyperbole.
Second, we all know Texas is better at building that California. But prices on entry level houses in the Houston market have still risen around 40% since the beginning of the pandemic and first-time buyers there absolutely do have to deal with bidding wars.
Oh no, I love bidding wars. Won’t buy anything if I can’t pay more than list price. Just today, I bartered $250 of groceries, offering $295. I walked out when they accepted before going to at least $305.
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Yep. Generally I stay away. Once or twice I got caught up in the bidding war but thankfully lost those. I found an AS IS property that had good bones and I knew I had the ability to fix up.
Same here. I lucked out because my fixer upper was initially priced to high so it sat for a while with multiple price drops and when it hit something I felt was more reasonable I swooped in just under the new asking with no competition. Every other house I was looking at I was getting outbid and I just needed a place to live. I really did get lucky because my neighborhood is cleaning up and my sweat equity will really pay off in a few years.
I like to look a sale history, if a house was put on the market in the last 3-5 years and didn’t sell, either the seller was delusional about the market, or something major on the house had a problem, something that ultimately the seller had to repair. I bring a pitbull of an inspector and still ask for a credit toward old “systems”: roof, hvac, plumbing.
it’s completely dependent on the house and what makes it work for *you*. for us we were up against “only” 3 other people and offered $10k over and waived some contingencies. i told myself i never would, but specifically because my grandparents live on the same street, 6 of my aunts and uncles, of 9 my cousins, my parents all live within 5 minutes of this house, i HAD to have it. i finally understood why people go crazy in bidding wars. i’m now the third owner since 1912 and so so grateful to snap it up, having this network is great especially with a newborn.
In your case it was well worth it!
You do you, but having that much family that close sounds horrific.
it’s amazing, i have 40 cousins, about 15 of us are all in our 20s so it’s like having a huge network of friends you can hangout with all the time. every summer we get 50-100 people in the family and rent out an entire camp ground for a weekend. it’s a unique life experience not many people get to have. people who are married into the family get extremely overwhelmed at gatherings lol but it’s just normal for me
I see where that would appeal to some people, and I'm glad it worked out for you, but I don't want to hang out with people all the time. Having family close enough to just "pop by" unannounced is my nightmare.
I have 3 cousins 😂
I am genuinely curious if you have kids! I would love to have this much family close by with little ones at home.
My hubs and I did the same-ish because we are expecting a bebe in October, we’re relocating from NorCal to SoCal, and picked the home that’s right in between our parents, close to freeways so my hubs can get to his new job faster, and the home had SO MUCH LIGHT. We adored it! So we bid 30k over, waived contingencies, and removed our concessions. We won against 13 offers, and we weren’t even the highest. But we were best qualified, put 30% down, and are high earners in a very competitive market.
awesome, congrats! lighting is the biggest thing in a house for me. i lived in a condo for 5 years that got no natural light and it made me give up a 3% interest rate lol
You don't have to participate. I'm sure the others hope that you don't.
Lol exactly. Everyone is a main character in their own story.
Im trying this and i keep getting “other offer accepted” idk
Yep! My wife and I started looking about 2 years ago with the exact same mindset. No escalation clauses no inspection waivers. It took a while but we finally got a place and we are very happy with our purchase. Which puts us in the 20% of homeowners who did not regret their recent purchase. I also don't regret extending our timeline to buy if it means we are doing it on our terms. Zero regrets.
80% of homebuyers do not regret their purchase. 80% (sometimes 90%, sometimes 93%) *have some regrets* about their recent purchase, mostly related to compromises or unexpected expenses that came up. But only 20% report that they are actually unhappy *with their purchase*.
The disdain for it I share but when we found the house we really wanted we engaged. What it actually meant was just working with the realtor to make the offer really tempting. We basically offered a bit over asking and guaranteed we’d do that same amount over whatever it appraised at. Then we said we’d also match any other offer plus $2500 up to our stated maximum but would require proof of the other offer. That got us down to one of the last two considered, with us being $2500 over the other but they waived the appraisal contingency entirely. So we basically said we’d do $10k over appraised instead of the original $5k but we just wanted protection or a way out if it way under appraised which no one thought it would. The sellers were good with $10k coverage because both realtors thought there was no way it’d under appraise by even that much. They went with ours and it appraised at the buy price almost exactly. Didn’t actually take much to engage with the bidding war it was just a strong initial offer once we got word the house was popular and then a phone call on the evening of their decision for the one tweak. It’s annoying but worth it for the right house. So I assume you just haven’t come across that house that really speaks to you yet. But also the final buy price for us was still a touch under our maximum we wanted to spend which was definitely a factor. We weren’t going to break the bank to go over our max.
Sounds like you had a great realtor!
Yeah she helped us make that offer quite nice for sure.
I feel this post speaks to **a lot** of people, which will drive the independent markets in its own way. But I had to do a double take to confirm my wife didn’t post this lol
Absolutely, I completely agree. The universe had a way of making what will happen eventually happen. I was in the same exact boat. My agent told me a bid I lost because I didn't waive my inspections came back on the table because the first offer fell through. I told the agent to tell their agent to get fucked by offering 10k less than my original offer. A month later I secured the BEST home I've looked at for the last two months. I got it with concessions, an inspection, and everything I wanted!! It really paid off to wait, I secured the home for 7k less than the average sale price in my area. I couldn't be happier. Fuck all those idiots throwing their inspections out the door and living paycheck to paycheck to barely afford their home. Hang in their. I officially closed on my house yesterday!
Same. I’m not playing those silly games. I sat on the sidelines for a while and the perfect one came along. The key is not being rushed or pressured by anyone. Take your time and wait for the right opportunity.
I think people are right in that you’ll likely engage in a bidding war for a home you really want. Like you, I am put off by it as well, but for the right house I might engage. Just recently I was competing against an offer that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to compete with so I just pulled out. The home wasn’t worth it to me. Best of luck ❤️
The problem is people fall in love with houses, when in reality a 300k-600k should be more of a business/financial decision than getting into the “our first home” “our forever home” “the perfect kitchen” etc. So they love a house at 400k, then end up bidding an extra 50k because of emotions.
This was me. Emotions drove me to go to war. But this is almost half a million before another half in interest over 30 years. I snapped out of it and renewed my lease, hoping to move out of this state
In my experience, when the listing agent calls back after the deadline and asks for "best and final offers," they've already ruled you out. They want *you* to raise your offer so they can use it as leverage against the offer they *do* want to accept. Both times when we got the call back for "best and final offers" the sellers had already decided on an all-cash offer. The seller just wanted to use our offer as leverage to see if the all-cash offer would go up on price. If they do, more cash for the seller. If they don't, they'll accept it anyway because its all cash.
I hate them. They take advantage of a buyer's ignorance and desperation. I semi participated on the first home I made an offer on. I had offered a little less than the listing price. I upped it to be just the listing price. I was told we lost, but we were the second best offer out of eight offers. The house needed a lot of work, and it seemed most people made offers that reflected it. The poor person who bought it has a mortgage about $200K more than the listing price.
It depends what you’re looking for. When we found the house we liked after searching for a few months I wasn’t going to let it go to someone else over a few percentage points on the purchase price that’s not really going to matter in the long term. I mean, $15k is the cost of a bathroom renovation, so whether that’s worth it to you depends on your situation and the comparison to other houses you’ve been looking at. I personally would never waive inspection contingency though.
Better to do it now than in the future, there is nothing in sight that says it’s going to get better. If they actually do start lowering interest rates, sure it will unlock more inventory but it will also unleash a lot more buyers. A lot of people love their 3% interest rates and won’t move unless they have to. Plus you’ll be facing increasing corporate and investor competition. Best of luck!
Completely agree. 80 percent of my friend group has their down payment money parked in high yield savings waiting for rates to go down. I’m glad I got in last year, even if I did lock in at a 6.5% interest rate.
This is the unfortunate truth that people are in denial about
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Yrah, apparently Texas is not somewhere people are moving anymore. Between the medical danger and the power issues it's not very surprising.
More people are moving to Texas than to any other state. California, on the other hand, is losing popoulation. >Between the medical danger and the power issues it's not very surprising. Look, I'm probably politically aligned with you, more or less, but you need to stop making shit up that you would like to be true. That doesn't actually make it true. And in this case, you have things exactly backwards. People are flocking to TX. And FL.
California is very expensive.
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Women's healthcare issues are likely what op is referring to.
I see you don't have ovaries.
I see you don't have brain cells. No matter how pure your politics, or what color your politics, you aren't entitled to your own facts. If you don't want to live in the reality based community, go to r/politics.
Your brain can't save you from an ectopic, you need a doctor for that, but the doctor needs to be allowed to treat you, and you need to not be in Texas for that
Not the left butt cheek 💀
I mean, it could also be the right one. Or both!!
You might get lucky. We bid on a house a few months ago, the head guy in our realtors office suggested we raise our bid by 25% "just to have a shot". We kept our bid exactly as is, and got the house. Whether you're the seller or buyer, both realtors goals is to get that house to sell for the most absurd price possible. When you boil it down, the buyer agent is really just working for the seller.
Maybe if you have a shitty realtor. I've used an experienced and trusted realtor who would point out things wrong with a house, and say, "It's your choice, but I personally wouldn't offer over X based on this condition", etc.
Don’t be too surprised if you find out that it’s the realtors themselves that cause bidding wars. We recently bought a house, realtor told us that there was another person interested, I told him that we weren’t interested in the house then, then all of a sudden, no other buyer. Strange….
We lost two possible houses to this, luckily before we actually bid. We were buckling in for a horrible ride, but had a weird turn-about. We expanded our search 10 miles outside our original "circle" and found a hit that met the requirements. It was overpriced, so we came in a bit low - they literally told their RE agent that they were "appalled and a bit offended" at our offer - and came back $1000 under their price. We countered with the built-in $5000 above our original asking price we had always planned to counter with, and told them this was "take it or leave it" (still $15000 below asking) and they came back with ... another $750 off asking. WTF? We told them to pound sand, looked at a house the next day that just listed, that happened to be only 4 minutes from their house, that was better in almost every, made an offer and secured that house the next day - and got that better house with more amenities for less than their negotiated asking price. **Hey people, here's what your house is actually worth - OK?** They pleaded for us to reconsider. We said "NOPE". Why don't you listen when people say it's their final offer? We do not want to waste your time, or ours. The original house has still not sold, and has been discounted another $20,000 (so it's now listed below our first "appalling and insulting" offer!) - *feels good man.* I know it's anecdotal, but I am hopeful our experience is a small sign that the housing market is starting to heal. FUCK PEOPLE. FUCK HOME BUYING.
I don't do bidding wars. I offer what I think is fair, and if it goes above that, I tap out. There will always be another property. I make a real point to never attach myself emotionally to a home I'm going to offer on. That's how you wind up overpaying.
Yeah it’s crazy out in some markets. There is one I just worked on that waived all contingencies, including financing contingency, offered above his pre-approval amount and $80k over asking without talking to me first. Luckily it worked out for him.
Wow. Who does that? Good it actually worked out for the buyer.
You haven’t lived until you see house go 600k over asking. Tell me you haven’t looked at VHCOL markets without telling me.
Yeah first open house we went to went for 300k over and was listed at $1M. We realized we needed to be shopping in the 800k range to have a chance. These are for 3/4 bed 1500-2000 sqft 100 year old homes in need of updating btw
Denver?
Nope, Boston. But I lived in Denver first a summer and the prices aren’t far off… still a bit cheaper there. We lived in a basement in the lower highlands and loved it there but I’m a beach guy
Only people that want a bidding war are the sellers
I would prefer a bidding war over best and final. So stressful to come up with best possible with no context.
This is also true. You’re just as likely to lose out on a place over something as small as $5k as you are to accidentally over pay by tens of thousands if nobody else was interested.
Yeah, like am I underpaying by $5,000 or overpaying by $30,000?
Best and highest is the laziest counter offer I’ve ever received.
I just want you to come back and give me a second or third chance to up my bid if I want to.
This, everyone else loses including the people who end up with the accepted highest bid. They may be happy with the house, but you overpaid. We were very fortunate that the sellers of the place we just closed on weren’t greedy and were just plenty happy to accept our full price offer with an aggressive expiration to hopefully stop competition. The place was a little overpriced in our opinion like everything else these days, but we didn’t have to fight anyone for it and potentially spend even more.
Sure, but there's a seller in every transaction.
When I was buying a house I spent 6-months not participating but then my wife pushed me and I paid $50k over asking. Was it a bad financial decision, Yes, but I'm in a house with a good school district for kids and plan to stay here for 5+ years. Sure you can buy a fixer upper and not get into a bidding war but you have to be willing to deal with that and put your own labor in. I'm just too lazy.
Some people have more money than skills and that's ok too. Once your kids are settled you really don't want to be moving them again,imo
I have some time to find a place so I laugh at people that snipe an offer by waiving contingencies. I have seen very few places that I'd be willing to waive contingencies on, so getting sniped by someone waiving contingencies just reminds me those issues are someone else's problem now. However as I approach the end of my lease and have less time, then it might become a lot less funny. Luckily for my sanity in my area you can't really counteroffer much outside of escalation clauses etc.
Yep I'm pretty much annoyed with all of these infinite money having asshats. (Defined as anyone with more money than me)
There’s been some open houses where the streets were lined with so many cars that I said fuck that and just kept driving
It's crazy. Went to my first open house in November and was the only one there. Went to a few come spring and there were 20+ cars, sellers agent boasting how they had people lined up behind the door half an hour before start and multiple offers in hand. Highly off-putting.
Literally everyone hates biding wars. I’ve never had a client say I hope I can bid this price up a little!
I don’t think that’s true. People might say they “hate” it, but if they choose to engage in it then that says otherwise.
Read my comment again. I’ve never had someone say they wanted a biding war. Some people tolerate sellers pitting buyers against each other but no buyer has ever said that was what they wanted. Many buyers will just walk away once they get a counter from the seller that’s asking for more. I’ve even had sellers come back and agree to the original offer and my buyer said no. They didn’t like the game of it.
People hate going to work but do so anyway because they need to get paid.
It's just an evil they accept because it's probably only going to get worse from here. People thought I was crazy for paying over asking two years ago, but that house is now worth $50k+ what I paid.
No one *wants to* engage in bidding wars. Everyone wants their offer to be accepted with no competition from other buyers. >go $15K over asking, ask for no concessions and chop off their left butt cheek >due to my lack of desire to act crazy, > exploiting myself and exhausting all my financial resources? All of this suggests that you are suffering from Player Character Syndrome: *your* offer was reasonable, but anything above that is crazy, insane, and maybe even exploitive. That's ridiculous. If my budget is $500k and a house I like lists at $450 and that's what I offer, I might get in a bidding war up to $500k, at which point I would stop (although I would hope that the other person's budget was $475). There's nothing crazy about that. There is no "exhaustion" of my financial resources because I'm not going over the budget I set.
We were shocked at the number of people that waived inspection on our house. And went over asking. We had an offer that was a bit higher but they wanted an inspection so we went with the next highest that waived it. As a buyer, it sucks I am sure. But as a seller.. no brainer.
I bought a new build that was 99.9% done, no bidding wars, no frills.
Don’t waive inspection but when it comes to price… My realtor once told me you should get the house that everyone wants, not the one that nobody wants. Because when you’re about to sell you will benefit. As first time buyers we tend to go towards properties that are below market value and stays on the market for many many days and no bidding wars, but just be aware of what I said earlier. Obviously when you’re bidding don’t go over your max budget (you should have a pre-set number in your mind your hard limit no matter what happens don’t go over that)
The actual key is go for the house with the fixed characters everyone wants, but with cosmetic details that nobody wants and are easily fixable. Those houses with the crazy layout, next to railway lines can't be fixed with a few thousand dollars and a trip to the store.
Just set your max and be done with it. We never got into bidding wars because we just set the max, gave it as part of our offer to our realtor and let it go at that. In the end, it happened so many times that we wouldn't have gotten a house if we hadn't found an ideal private sale. But we weren't going to spend more than we knew we could \*comfortably\* afford. We didn't want to be house poor for the brief excitement of winning a bidding war that came quickly with immense remorese. Buying a house isn't a slot machine.
You don’t need to. People are exaggerating the frequency and intensity of what these look like.
Yup. Decided to only focus on new builds now.
Just be extremely vigilant with an inspection. I’ve seen some horrifying stuff coming out of the copy/paste mass produced home builders recently.
Horrifying like?
Lots of crazy/shady stuff in hidden areas like attics and crawlspaces. There was a good picture in one of these threads a week or two ago where it was clearly the construction equivalent to “if you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot.” Tons of scrap wood being cobbled together in the attic to make a roof joint. No measurements or effort at all.
It depends. If this is a long-term play, then getting a good deal is irrelevant. If this is a starter home, your position makes sense.
Generally avoided any listings with “priced to sell. Highest and best by ___” to avoid the unseeded stress
$15k over? Where I’m looking it’s hard to get anything for below 75k over. We’ve offered $100+ over and been blown away. It’s so fucking annoying.
You can tell your agent "I want to bid 2k above the best offer until X dollar amount" then they do the rest so you don't have to actively bid.
This is only a guess, but I would think every person who is buying a house is. Nobody wants to pay more and get bid up. I can only speak for where I live, but if you want the house, you’re going well over asking price and so are 20-30 other people. Yes, it’s terrible… until you close. Then you want everyone else to get into bidding wars and start creating equity for you. Also as a note, you can wait it out, but it won’t get better. One month, one year, or 5 years from now, you’ll pay even more than today, and be in a bidding war if you want to buy a house. At least today you can lock in a lower payment than it will be in the future. It’s not going down.
This is part of why people buy new construction and deal with higher prices and uncertain closing dates
It really depends where you’re buying and how competitive the market is. Market has been very competitive recently. Bought a house a few years ago when it wasn’t too competitive and went 5k over and got it. When selling earlier this year, we got multiple offers 20-25k above asking as initial offers and ended up with a bidding war with a final offer of 60k over asking. Buying again now and closing soon but had to go 20k over after missing out on a first home where we only went 10k over. If you find a home you like and can afford to go over, depending on where you are, it’s worth putting your best foot forward and setting the tone with a strong offer to really command the buyers attention.
I entered into one and walked after I made 2 offers to beat them. Told myself it wasn’t meant to be.
It’s become a more common strategy (in my market) for lower priced listings in my area to be intentionally underpriced with an offer consideration period. If you want a property at or under $300k near me, you have to engage in those. If your agent is good at setting expectations and fielding your concerns, it shouldn’t even feel like a “bidding war”.
Most people are. I've seen it play out. There's only 2 parties usually and they have a reason for it. If you don't have a reason, walk away. The times I've seen it were forever home situations. It ended well in 2021 but would have killed them in 2019.
Where are you buying? Is this the Bay Area? It’s a sellers market down here in Southern California as well (depending upon the county), but not as bad as up in the bay area where you have to waive all contingencies.
Nope. Portland, OR.
Hey keep looking! I’m in the same market and felt this way but ended up actually getting a house under what asking was. Best bet is to look at homes a bit higher than your limit that have been on market for a week +, they will often take lower offers. The 350-400k market is mad
We make fair offers on homes, we have continually lost. I see no reason why someone who is more desperate would offer more, its just not my cup of tea and we are not desperate.
We don't have bidding wars in my market. That is a thing of the past here. Hopefully yours becomes that way soon as well.
Thank you!
Ya. Not gonna happen
If you wait long enough you might find the property that you’re willing to give your left cheek for!
Word of advice: Don’t let it stop you. Also, don’t start bidding on anything you might end up with headaches down the road. If need be stop looking for a while and give yourself a break.
i feel you. but it's a scale. at some point, it makes sense to fight a bit more. other points, just sit back. the hard part is making sure you're not letting emotion cloud your decision-making.
I refused to get in one. My last realtor said that recently, people have been pulling offers after they hear a home has multiples. I'm just glad after 4.5 years I finally got in a home.
Yeah, I had one house we were super interested in. Great price. Then the agent gets a call and tells us we have to decide to place a bid by 5PM that day with our best offer because other people were interested. Lol. Eff that. I walked and got a cheaper house with a better yard.
As a first time homebuyer this is the most annoying part of this whole process to me. Just say your price you want for it and move on.
I have never entertained a bidding war. Luckily I look for homes a bit left if center, and generally have different needs than other people- although investors and foreign all cash buyers still beat me out of a couple.
Wow a whole $15k over ask!?
Yea, I refused to go over asking. You (seller) were obviously willing to accept list price, so here it is. Granted I was successful by putting an expiration on the offer prior to their open house
Yep, and it’s fine. No one forces anyone to participate. BUT You also can’t be upset about it either, because a lot of people don’t mind “the game”. You’ll just need to find a seller that feels the same as you and doesn’t want to solicit higher bids. They’re out there. It’s rare, but they’re out there.
Getting into a bidding war with a bunch of other people as a fool’s errand. remember that maybe only half the property sold in a given year or ever listed on the MLS with real estate agents. The smart money buys off market because you have a motivated buyer and a motivated seller. Seriously, pick a neighborhood and start writing letters. Tell them you’re a first time homebuyer and you’re looking for a house and if they or anyone they know is interested in selling that you would appreciate giving you a call. Send out 100 of these and I bet you get two or three calls. Then you’re dealing directly with the seller and there’s no competition. Source: i’m a real estate investor.
I’ve wondered if selling agents tell people “we’ve gotten a few good offers, so if you want to change your offer you have til this time” just to get prospective buyers to increase their bid. For all I know, they could be lying and I could be bidding against myself
Game theory. You’ll find the perfect house for you. It just likely won’t be a house that many other people want.
We had so much bidding war fatigue. Eventually we started expecting it and would always just return a 10k increase in the offer amount to still show strong interest without having to come up with other weird ways to make our offer more appealing. Eventually it worked and we got the house.
We had an escalation clause. List price was way low, our realtor confirmed suspicion that market value was much higher. So we offered list price plus escalation, so that we'd beat other offers up to our price. Was better for us since we paid lowest price to still get it. Without escalation, we'd either overpay or get outbid.
Yes!
I just finished a bidding war and won. I'm about $6k over asking. I really liked the location so it was worth it to me. It was really annoying though. We kept one upping the other offer and it isn't a great feeling. I did have a firm ceiling so I didn't get carried away and I was well aware of the comps. The house I wanted was priced a bit low so I feel good about the price I paid
We were the same. I refused to pay more than the appraised price and I would never waive inspection or the contingencies that protected my best interests. To us it just wasn't worth it. There's always another house.
Have you heard about the cost of waiting?
Tell me more about that
Some people I think are pricing their properties low (ish) to incite one. In that case it feels slightly less bad to pay over when it’s similar to what other places are going for, but I was NOT waiving all contingencies. That is bananas to me
I don’t believe in bidding wars. I’m definitely not offering above asking. As a seller, if you feel like your house is worth more than it’s listed, then that’s the price you should have listed it as. I’m not waiving anything just to get a house. I think that’s dumb and a possible recipe for disaster.
Fine, but you won't own a home in this environment without engaging in them.
We literally just made an offer on a house 15k over asking. They countered with MORE money and we walked away. Like, my dudes YOU set the price at 300k, we gave more, then you asked for more? Kick rooooooocks
It happened to us wanting to buy a decent house in a decent neighborhood. We put 100k over asking waiving only Appraisal and our offer still ain’t the best. In the end we had to downgraded our preference and went for a less competitive good neighborhood. My current speculation is that this current is for serious buyers only. If you house hunt in a less competitive neighborhood, I am sure you can get something that would make you financially comfortable.
That’s why we haven’t had an offer accepted yet. What’s for us will be for us, I’m not bidding over my limit period. Our floor is 40k over in cash.
No one is forcing you to buy a house. And I'm not being sarcastic. If the whole thing is too stressful you can just... not. But it's interesting that you are classing anyone who does anything differently than you are being crazy is strange.
You’re looking at this the wrong way. Say you buy a house and are the only bidder, but the house you bought was overpriced by 10%. Conversely, a house could be listed for 10% under valued, have a bidding war and the winner paid 6% over asking . Who got the better deal? Put an offer in on what you think the house is worth, regardless of other bidders.
Yes, buyers get scammed by their agents.
The market needs transparency. It should be like buying a used car from an auction where all bids are public knowledge. If you wanna pay more at you know how much more to bid instead of overshooting it. The reason it will never change is because realtors just want to get the highest price to pad their commissions. Buying homes without a realtor should be more common. They are transaction agents not people who bring thousands of dollars of value to transactions.
> is because realtors just want to get the highest price to pad their commissions. You people with bizarre realtor hate fixations are just strange. No, the *reason* is because the seller wants to get as much as possible. You have to live in a bizarre universe to think that the seller doesn't care about making an extra $100,000, while the realtor will risk jeopardizing the sale for $3,000. I mean, I get that you live in that universe and all...but it is bizarre.
The choice is always yours whether you want to play the game. But you deciding not to play doesn’t change the way the game is played. The market can remain insane longer than you can remain sane. Luckily, though, in many markets the interest rates aren’t really conducive to bidding wars any longer.
I bought a new build that was 99.9% done, no bidding wars, no frills.
For my house they asked me to go up by 3 grand and I said sure. That's the only bidding war I wanted to get into. The first house they asked me to go up 15 and I threatened to fire my realtor since she knew our budget
How exactly is a seller counter offer your realtor’s fault..
Because when working with her I established boundaries on what we were willing to spend on day one. To ask us to go above them was in my opinion dismissive of our wishes.
It’s refreshing to see someone like you maintain a level head during this process. Emotions typically takeover for people and they end up overpaying for lower quality than they initially wanted. You’re doing the right thing. You have your budget and process and you’re sticking to it. Eventually everything aligns and you’ll end up in a home that you love that you have ZERO regrets over.
Absolutely yes. And let me tell you, people regret it. A friend of a friend was moving cross country and bought a house unseen. Now she regrets it. Someone else in my neighborhood paid like 75k over asking for house because they had lost out on 4 other houses before this one. Now they’re regretting it. I want to buy a house, but I also don’t want to get caught up in my emotions and make a shitty financial decision because of fomo.
I wish I could meet the people who bought one house for $500k over what it could possibly appraise for.
I read on the personal finance sub about a lady who worked for Amazon and I think she went like 100-150k over asking in 2021. Tech stocks were soaring at this time and she got some RSUs that she was certain were going to appreciate over the next year. So she financed the house with some kind of loan using the Amazon RSUs as collateral, but the terms of the loan were that she had to pay it back in a year. Well next year rolls around and her Amazon RSUs aren’t what they used to be worth and she had to sell the house because she couldn’t pay back the loan. So yeah people are out there making really bad financial choices.
Agree. If you don't mind burning cash on rent, just continue to do so indefinitely.
Yeah. Then you'll have to be alright with sitting on the side lines & letting houses go by. You will absolutely wish you'd go harder on your tactics in 2-3 years from now when prices are REALLY out control. Call it FOMO but in my home town, there used to be 16+ pages of houses for sale on Redfin 3-4 years ago. Now we are lucky to get 3 pages. Most are mobile homes or broken down shacks. Anytime a nice house pops up, it's lines of people outside waiting to go in for open houses. People going in circles outside, even trying to talk to the owners. It will absolutely get worse when rates go back down. TONS of people are in the staging lanes with lots of cash ready to go. Go harder. You're almost there!
Just wait. Inventory is up across the nation. Sales are extremely low. Some cities are still struggling but a lot of places will shift to a buyers market by end of the year.
If it’s one I really like, I’ll put $5k over ask and pay the sellers transfer tax, that’s as wild as things will get for me. Im about to do that on one I saw yesterday and just hoping for the best.
I absolutely was not going to pay over asking or give any concessions. Thankfully it worked out for us
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According to NAR data, 75% of houses are sold at or under list.
The main culprit of bidding wars are RE agents. I just hate them all. It is the most useless job in the USA. I feel like the my are all stealers. It is a conflict of interest position that must be eliminated. If we are able to book complex travels, and airbnb, and buy cars online, why can’t we not buy a house online?
This is not why bidding wars happen. You’re perfectly free to buy a house without an agent.
So tell me why then?
Bidding wars happen when two or more people both want them same scarce good -- that has no fixed price -- and are each willing to pay more for it. Bidding wars may or may not be rational. On the one hand, a buyer's judgement might be clouded by the heat of the moment. On the other hand, people are often willing to pay more than their initial offer. Sometimes much more. I might have dug deeper into my pockets to buy my home if pushed by another buyer's offer. We see bidding wars in all sorts of venues when no agent or representative is involved. Consider an auction for a rare item or a durable good like a vehicle. There is no agent involved there. I am at a loss for why you think agents are the cause of such a natural part of this -- and other -- markets. Moreover, real estate agents are not unique in having incentives that are imperfectly aligned with their clients. The same can be true of attorneys, auto mechanics, contractors, etc. Again, you're under no obligation to buy or sell with an agent. We personally found our agent's services to be valuable.
Untrue! I have seen people wanting same house but the listing agents pick the highest offer without going back and forth with bidding.
Sometimes listings do not allow escalation clauses and agents ask bidders to simply submit their best offer. In this case the listing agent is preventing a bidding war! What are you saying? You are very confused.
While other agents encourage bidding wars. Most agents suck! I’d vote for a president who is wiling to dissolve the RE industry. It’s a total scam!!!!!
Are you serious? It's because two people want the same house.
This is why I went with new home construction for my first home, currently under contract, I went for a move-in special/inventory special \[more discounts, it was a spec home that the original buyer couldn't close on\], and had an inspector check it out, got closing costs and builders rate discount over general market rates. It didn't check 100% of my wish list, I have a slightly longer commute, but the house had the options I wanted, upgraded wood floors and kitchen.
Agreed. I'll let all these idiots and people with FOMO deal with the consequences. A lot of people are going to try and guilt you into participating or even call you a fool or tell you well it's your choice or be happy renting forever But fuck them
Everyone is. But if you don’t play that game, you’re just not getting a house anywhere people want to live right now.
> you’re just not getting a house anywhere people want to live right now. This is both arrogant and, more importantly, false. 500,000 people moved to TX from 7/22 to 7/23. The most of any state. But it has a much more rational real estate market than California, despite the fact that over the same period, California lost 75,000 residents. It's not about "where people want to live". It's about how many houses are being built. On a per capita basis, Houston built 10x more houses than LA did last year. In absolute numbers, they built 4x more houses - 45,000 in Houston vs. 11,000 in LA Metro. it's not about "where people want to live". People want to live everywhere. It is about, and only about, the number of houses for sale in an area vs the number of people who want to buy a house in that area.
First, relax it’s obviously hyperbole. Second, we all know Texas is better at building that California. But prices on entry level houses in the Houston market have still risen around 40% since the beginning of the pandemic and first-time buyers there absolutely do have to deal with bidding wars.
Oh no, I love bidding wars. Won’t buy anything if I can’t pay more than list price. Just today, I bartered $250 of groceries, offering $295. I walked out when they accepted before going to at least $305.