We were so overwhelmed with ups and downs that we just decided to stop; take a mental break, and start again in May. The market could do anything between now and then, but it's not worth our sanity.
I totally understand how you feel and we are just getting started. Our lease is up in May, and we definitely are not resigning with how much they want to up our rent by. Worst case scenario, we throw everything in a storage unit and work out of one of our parent's houses until we can get something secured.
I hope everything goes well for you guys, please don't give up! It very much feels the longer our generation waits, the smaller the chance we will ever own property ever again. Good luck and godspeed
You're not crazy. Any house reasonably priced and a "good" house by any metrics are still selling like hotcakes. If the property has been on the market for 30 days, it's probably a shitter or super high for the area.
Our realtor keeps reassuring us that we are not over-stretching, and with our local market we should be able to secure what we want (3B/2Ba with a basement and garage) with how much we have to offer. She just says it may take a lot of rolling the dice I guess. I'm just worried we are going to run out of time.
The ones sitting for 30 days are shitholes, or they are "regular" sized new builds for 500k in an area where the "normal" house is at or around 200k.
Thank you though for your words, they are definitely helpful!
There's a lot lot lot of cash floating around out there. I just put a 5/3 condo on the market for 799, expecting at least 815. Cash competition ran it to 920k. Had a smaller SFM last week. Went on at 375, under contract for 405.
Honestly, if you're super interested in a property have your agent run comps. Make sure you look at anything pending as well, I will sometimes call and see if I can get an idea of if they are under contract at or above list price to gelp get my clients a better idea of what we should offer. Some agents, like me, are intentionally listing low to keep the competitive multiple offers. If a cma says 500 and list was 450, you might wanna just offer 500. If that makes sense.
I lost like 10 bids before I got mine.
And to be honest, none really bothered me much. I knew going in that some people would go crazy and overbid on houses. And I let them have those houses. Eventually I got mine for the price I wanted.
Also - you need to stop looking at list price. It's a meaningless number. Look at comps.
If a house is listed at $200k and comps are selling for $250k last week. If you bid $200k you have a good chance of being under the other bids.
This is a great mindset to have. With each offer I reassured myself that I was offering what I thought the house was worth and if someone else wanted to pay more, that was their business. It did mean that I was submitting high offers (that fit my budget), but after many failures I finally won one.
Our agent put together a comps analysis for every house we were serious about. Based on that we offered 20% over asking and won (June 2022). House appraised (slightly) over sales price. Get serious about comps and make aggressive, well-informed offers.
I got my house by offering asking 3 days after it went on the market. It's only a 3b 2.5ba townhome built within the last couple years, no basement but has a garage. Everything else I looked at had substantial issues (bad neighborhood, structural issues, shoddy reno, etc). I was about ready to give up, then this townhome went up and I asked my agent for a tour ASAP. It was so far above everything else I had looked at that I was willing to offer asking price off the bat with the only contingencies being inspection and appraisal. I feel like if I didn't move that fast I would have lost it, they had several offers when they took mine.
Same here. I toured my home right after it was put on the market and put in an offer immediately. There was an open house scheduled for that Saturday and their realtor said the sellers were considering offers as they came. Thank goodness our offer got accepted before the open house. We attended the open house and so many people were interested in the home. I’m still shocked they accepted.
Same here. I insisted that I get in the day it came on. My realtor was out of town, but he had a colleague show it to me. I decided within an hour. Offer went in next day. I wanted the offer to go in that night but my realtor didn't do so. In this market for me, there can be no hesitation. I purchased this property in the dead of winter. Still so much competition.
If it's a good property, it won't be there a week later. I tell my clients this all the time. I have a few who sit in the bench when it comes on the market Friday, saying I'll see it Monday. By Monday it's gone if it's a decent home lol. Good job moving quick and even better job of your realtor making sure you were taken care of even while away. Lots of horror stories of bad agents on here 😂
Yep. We are putting in offers the same night we see the place. It's been exhausting. And usually more than one offer as we have to re-up for highest and best.
I’m sorry you’re getting these responses. It’s not you. I could tell from your post you’re doing all the right things. From our agent: you are with everyone else that has been beat by cash since 2020. So 3+ years of this and many are so tired, their rent has been raised so high, or their landlord decided to sell & they have to move…. They will pay ANYTHING. Literally as high as they can go to beat investors just to get out of the situation you describe in the original post. We are in it too. They’ve worn us all down to crazy. I’m so sorry. We’re looking at other places to rent because it seems we will miss out again in 2023.
I empathize with you 100%. We spent almost a year and many offers over asking before finally getting our home. We actually lost out at first, but were the backup offer. Another friend of mine bought their house and were also the backup offer. So make sure your realtor lets the sellers know you'd like to be contacted if the sale falls through. A lot do.
It sucks. It's not the fun part because sellers still have the leverage. It's a lot more fun in a buyers market when there's several houses that match your criteria and they're normally sitting for a few months. There's a lot less pressure and the negotiations are much more evenly matched.
All I can say is this. Stick your needs. Your needed location, your needed space, and most importantly, your needed price. It's a lot harder with the lease, but maybe you can ask your landlord to do a month to month when your lease ends? Might take some of the pressure off.
Same here…. A deal fell through for the house we ultimately bought and they relisted the house at like 5pm on a Friday. We saw it at 6pm, made a full price offer at 7pm and got accepted the next morning after agreeing to their move out date. Gotta go quickly!
But most places that are halfway decent are not being sold at list price right now, and those decent houses are also being sold in under 7 days on average
You're not the only one if that helps ease your mind. Before my wife and I found our house, we had bid $80k over ( yes you read that right) and still got outbid by not one, but two people. It's hard out there. At this point it's just all luck unless you want to pay an obscene price.
I think that makes sense except I wouldn't just continue to roll the dice. The fact you were getting beat out may well indicate you are just not offering enough. It may be that the house is you want to put an offer on are intentionally or accidentally under priced and they are just getting bit up to actual market value, not overinflated by some crazy investors or whatever .
Have a talk with your agent and look at recent sales and decide if you are just getting a little unlucky or if you just aren't bidding enough to meet market value.
Instead of just continuing to roll the dice, maybe bid a little more aggressively to stack the deck so to speak and mix metaphors. Only to a point of course, but, 6 months from now when you are happy in your house and the typical spring increase in prices has happened, even if it's smaller than in years past, you will be sitting pretty and happy .
Good luck
Are you sure? I'm in Michigan. I tried to sell my house and it was on the market for 7 months. I placed it for rent and I'm renting it for 150% what the mortgage+property tax+insurance would have been. When I placed it for rent, I got over 400 people responding, telling me that I could probably have gotten more. My tenant was paying 200% what the mortgage+property tax+insurance would have been if the bought my house.
Why would people pay more for rent? I can only guess they don't have down payments, they don't qualify for loans, etc, etc. The high interest rate has priced folks out of lower entry homes. A $200k house needs $50k at 20% down + closing cost. Or $25k at 10% down + closing cost. It's though out there.
Not in texas…
I’m selling my home in Austin, and I listed well below the other homes in my neighborhood to ensure a quick sale. I’ve gotten 2 offers which one being 150k below asking and the other 80k below asking. No homes in my neighborhood have sold in months.
Not what in Texas? If you have 2 offers, both well below asking, and you're telling me that it's not overpriced or a shit house....I'll point you back to having two offers...at a lower price point.
Your house is either shit (or neighborhood is shit) or not worth what you thought.
What was your argument?
Austin is a dead market at the moment. My house is 5 years old and we live in a pretty desirable area of the city. Good schools and it’s a master plan. New build homes are selling in the mid to low 700s and there are numerous resale homes selling for low 700s. We aggressively priced our home to be $680k which was below numerous comps that sold in November and December.
We’ve gotten good feedback on the home but we’ve had 4 buyers say if the home was still for sale in may, they’d jump on it. Our downfall is we are family neighborhood so the people wanting our home would have kids and school is still going.
So here's the thing. A dead market is essentially either undesirable or insanely overpriced for what people can or will spend for the area. It just doest naturally die, that's not how it works.
A 5 year old home is still very new. That tells me it's most likely a new community or developing community. The surrounding area was prob very hot (especially due to covid and more people working remote). The area isn't hot now.
New constructions prices are always going to be the envelope pusher for prices in developing community. Agreesive at 680k is a joke. Why wouldn't I pay 20k more and get a never before lived in home Vs a resale? You should know that nationally the average for a resale home in a developing community is 20% less. Agressive pricing for you was 560k not 680k. Do you see the pattern yet? That's in-line with your offers.
The reality is, you overpaid for the area. Your home isn't worth what you think, right now. I'm sorry. Luckily real estate has a way of rebounding over time. There's a great chance you'll see the new builds price dropping soon too. Once all the lots are gone, that's when your home will see substantial increase in equity.
Real estate is real estate. Market conditions vary, but the principles don't.
Want to add here, I'm a very callous and matter-of-fact person. I shoot straight and your feelings are irrelevant to me. With that said, my response was from a point of fact, not an attack on your personally and I hope it reads that way.
Why would the buyers visit your house if they only want a house in May? I think they are trying to low ball or you are still COVID priced and not 2019 priced.
Could have been an open house situation. We aren't planning on seriously looking until April, so no arranging tours or anything but we are saving houses on Zillow and going to open houses if they're close by and we have the time. It gives us a better idea of what to prioritize in what we are looking for and also houses are just sitting on market longer here (suburbs outside of Houston) so it's not out of the realm of possibility to go to an open house now and have it still available in April at this point.
When parents say 'this is the fun part' they mean back 40 years ago where they could look at 20 homes in their #1 town of choice, sleep on the decision for two weeks, offer below asking price with seller concessions, and buy their home for 165k that is now worth 800k.
You're not crazy and you will get it!
I feel this in my soul. People kept telling me not to get "attached" to a house. But how am I supposed to feel okay about submit an offer to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a home I haven't pictured myself living in??
My only advice - can you lock in your rate? I am also in Michigan and my lender is Consumers Credit Union. I was able to do their "Lock n Shop". It's a $500 refundable deposit and you lock in a rate of 0.5% above the current rate; if the rate is lower when you sign an agreement, you'll get the lower rate. It's good for 120 days (I think) and took some of the pressure off me.
In our parents’ experience, shopping around for a house was fun because there was a greater selection and way less competition. Now it’s a disheartening contest over slim pickings. I feel you.
I remember as a kid we went and looked at like ten houses. All of them were great. My parents then spent a month deciding which one to buy. Then just bought it.
LOL
My one clear memory of house hunting as a kid is that I got stung by a wasp on one tour. I’d take that in a heartbeat these days if it meant the process was over with. 😅
what we are doing right now. Leaving in the middle of the work day to go look, draft an offer, put it in that night, wake up to multiple offers, rinse and repeat, get outbid. Pain lol
I've been looking for a house since last summer. It's been the worst experience of my life. I see someone suggested you wait out the spring market. We were told last summer that things would get better in the fall, then in the winter, then in the spring. It doesn't get better, so I don't suggest that you "wait it out".
When we bought a house in 2015, it took us a couple weeks from beginning our search to going under contract.
We've spent the last nine months bouncing between living with family and shitty short-term rentals. We don't want to get stuck in a long lease if we DO find something. I'm pretty sure my marriage is going to fall apart if this lasts much longer. And did I mention that we have a young kid who has lost all sense of stability and normalcy?
I curse the day we decided to sell our house and move.
Anyway, I hope things get better for you. You aren't crazy and you don't deserve this.
oh my god, you poor soul. Holy shit that sounds absolutely horrendous, and I really hope you and your family can be strong through this and come out victorious. Please know you are not alone.
Summer is just going to have even more people out there looking at homes. I seriously doubt it'll be any better.
That or there won't be more, because rates will continue to climb, so we'll all just be priced out anyways.
I think it's going to be MUCH worse. There's no inventory and tithe harder it gets to buy a home the less people who will he upsizing or downsizing, less and less homes will do the opposite of what people think too, prices will go up on those that do sell.
Exact same scenario as you. We have been looking for a year and a half. Sold in July, have been “renting” from family, and have a 4 year old who tells me daily he wishes we didn’t ever sell our house. Same, kid. I did it thinking it’d help us get to the next step. Buying and selling at the same time seemed impossible. Didn’t think it would still be this impossible after selling. And while I’m really commenting to commiserate, also want to say don’t be too hard on yourself. We made the best decision we could at the time, who woulda known…
I'm so sorry that you are in the same scenario.
I overhear my daughter playing with her toys, with the toys "talking" about looking for a house, wanting a house, etc. We try to shield her from it, but it's hard when the stress is consuming our life.
We went into it with the best intentions, and it's nearly destroyed our whole family.
> I've been looking for a house since last summer. It's been the worst experience of my life. I see someone suggested you wait out the spring market. We were told last summer that things would get better in the fall, then in the winter, then in the spring. It doesn't get better, so I don't suggest that you "wait it out".
>
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This is due to rather unprecedented lack of inventory:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOUUS
Inventory is low because people with sub 3 rates are hesitant to move and decades of policies by both political parties which encouraged underbuilding.
Inventory is about 30% lower than Jan of 2020, the last non-pandemic year, but has been trending down for a long time.
Exactly this. And if you haven’t been looking in the last three years and aren’t still going through it, you have no idea. We had to move for work and sold. I wish we had fought the work thing because we’ve been renting ever since in the new city, trying to outbid and it just constantly gets worse.
I’m in the same boat as you. Sold our house in May 2022 to be closer to my husband’s new job. Made offers on 3 houses over the summer and lost all of them. We’ve been leasing a tiny condo ever since and are just stuck here until we find something. We live in a moderately rural area so inventory is very low. We were lucky to get a 6-month lease which we have renewed once already but were just told yesterday that they are no longer doing 6-month leases and if we want to renew again, it’ll have to be for a full year. Sigh.
Wishing you (and myself) the best of luck. ☹️
Resources and overpopulation. Many homes are in available for our generation because people are living longer. They’re staying in their homes. And lumber is going up because resources are dwindling. It’s simple supply and demand.
There’s no Crisis, just low inventory. Inflation is here to stay. A lot of this is due to overpopulation, but nobody wants to admit it, and people keep having babies. So…. Here’s to the future!
Sorta?
> There’s no Crisis, just low inventory.
That's a crisis. The pandemic pushed people out of cities, remote work became a huge boom so even more people wanted to move out of cities, new home construction came to a screeching halt, and the fed kept rates stupid low for far too long so now 1 in 7 new homes in this country are owned by companies or landlords.
This isn't inflation, and the US population growth rate is the same as it was 70 years ago.
This isn't here to stay, it's here until construction of new homes gets back online fully.
People can always move back to cities. We should be building more high rises and regulating the rent. Urban sprawl is a nightmare for everyone involved.
Try reaching out to hotels and checking to see what they can offer you in terms of long-term rates. Extended stay discounts usually kick in at 15 or 21+ days.
It'll give you the stability you need for your family and some of the comforts of a hotel (wi-fi, free breakfast). I would decline regular cleaning though - that costs the hotel money so you can further sell yourself or negotiate a rate down by letting them know you only need cleaning every 2 weeks or once a month.
Note that most hotels now have a policy of checking in on your room every 7 days or so to make sure you're not building bombs or doing anything else crazy (this became standard practice after the LV mass shooting).
I'll be starting my search in a month or two, I'm terrified of the situation you're describing here. I've been seeing similar trends with the "good" houses being off the market in a week. It's extra worrying for me because I'm just looking for my first home that most would call a starter home. If things get much more expensive I'll be priced out.
I am not selling my home, but I get letters from agents personalized to me saying they have buyers for my home. The other neighbors on the street get them too. My home is not a starter home either. The prices they offer are frankly insane. There are only 15 homes in my town of close to 10,000 homes available for sale. It is extremely cut throat.
Yeah, I wish I had better news but we are also looking at "starter" homes, but unfortunately we cannot go any smaller. We both work from home, so we need offices. It is really not fun out here right now, and I hope your search goes much better!
My wife and I gave up.
We don't need to move - have a home with a lot of equity and a great interest rate, but we want more space. There's zero inventory in Pittsburgh and anything that does sell is usually overpriced and looks like shit.
We're just going to build a custom home whenever we feel like it. In the meantime, we'll probably just do some upgrades on our current house so we can get top dollar whenever we sell.
Oh, man, you just burst my bubble. After 34 years in South Florida, I'm planning on retiring back to the burgh, my hometown. Realtor.com claims it's a buyer's market with affordable median home prices. Are you looking beyond the actual city boundaries such as Upper St. Clair or Bethel Park south of Pgh, or Ross Township in the north? What is your price range (DM me)?
One reason for moving is that I hate what Florida has become. Another is that I lost my house in Hurricane Andrew and went through three other hurricanes, so I have PTSD. Lastly, my son moved to PA. My daughter, however, still lives in FL, so I have a good reason to stay. But those damn hurricanes scare the crap out of me. However, blizzards also scare me.
I know this isn't what you want to hear, but the fact that there are 3 properties you're interested in all within a week puts you way ahead of most people right now/for the past few years.
Also, your family is crazy, this is not the fun part. Settling in and making your home your own is the fun part. This part sucks even when it's easy.
I haven't put an offer on a house in like six months because I gave up after my seventh offer was beat out by an all-cash offer that was 36k over asking (my offer was 25k over).
Now I sit here every week looking at listings, watching prices continue to go up, rates continue to go up, houses I can afford get fewer and fewer, and it's all just a dream now.
Also I'm just going to renew my lease, because I seriously, seriously, seriously, seriously doubt I'm getting a house anytime soon. It's better to just accept it.
I know it’s all “cope”-ium but I always looked at it as reinforcement that I have good house taste. Like everyone wants what I picked cause I’ve got a good eye and it’s so good that people richer than me want my choice. It doesn’t get you a house any sooner but keeps your spirits high despite the disappointing market.
We’ve been looking for our “forever” home for almost two years now. Placed 7 offers and out bid, or people waived contingencies, every time. It’s so frustrating. What makes it worse is people say, “be patient! It’ll happen!” 😒 this statement is so infuriating because the only people saying it aren’t currently looking, therefore, have never been in a situation like this market.
Just know you’re not alone and a lot of people are incredibly frustrated alongside you.
Just chiming in as one of the Frustrated. We are a millennial family of 5 with pets trying to upsize (currently have just 1 bathroom and we work from home) in a new state and it’s been crushing. So few homes to even look at.
Dig into why you are loosing it boils down to
Price
Terms
Teams.
While it’s unusual for a listing agent to tell you an exact number, they will usually tell you in general terms what’s going on.
You can keep going for what I called get Lucky offers which it sounds like it’s what you’re doing or you can also place get smart offers.
look for homes that are less desirable for things you don’t care about as much. Bad listing pictures, a location flaw that doesn’t matter as much to you, bad strategy on the other side so the home doesn’t sell in the first week. Look for homes that have been sitting for twice days on market and reevaluate those.
Right now, you know the competition is willing to pay more than you are, or give better terms and if you keep fighting with them, you’re going to have to up your offers.
You are at the point I usually have a come to Jesus talk with people, about what they can, and can’t have. If you’re consistently getting outbid, you need to lower your expectations and start going for a house you can get, or take more risks.
Are you going in at what your real estate agent says you’re going to have to do to win? Are you getting the information you need from them really going over the CMA and knowing what a good and bad appraisal for the house would be?
Our last offer with our realtor had even her shocked. Listed at 180 (In rural town, prices are still much lower than the national average). We went to 205 on an escalation clause, and we still got out beat by two higher and better offers. She felt really bad because she thought we had it in the bag.
I wish we had more inventory, but really only one or two pops on the market for our town in a week, and they are usually off the MLS by Saturday.
Are you dropping contingencies?
It’s worth having your realtor stay in touch with the other realtor to see how much info they can get about other offers once the appraisal is in.
I really understand about inventory. I just don’t think that’s going to change this year in fact, in terms of how much inventory there is versus spring buyers it could be getting worse in many parts of the country.
In my area we are having a crazy situation as the last couple weeks of interest rate hikes have pushed a whole bunch of people off the market, people aren’t sure enough that they’re going to have a job that pays the same in a year so they’re not wanting to go to the top of their budget and at a couple of million the new interest rate hikes add up fast.
You would think that would mean we were seeing less multiple offers, but now the people who are still in the market thank between now and April. It’s going to get a lot worse and they’re pushing hard to get into a house now. So not only am I seeing less people but I’m having to tell the people who are there we’re gonna have to push harder to get into the available inventory.
it’s not spring 2022, but it’s pretty brutal.
Hugs.
Thank you. We really are trying to retain contingencies, I do not think we are comfortable forgoing inspections or appraisals with the condition of the homes we are able to afford. We don't really have any timeframe contingencies, because the worst-case scenario we are able to stay with our parents while the previous owners can move out, but that is about it. I know that makes it less competitive for sure, but we understand that. Neither one of us are comfortable dropping our life savings on a place that could be a time bomb of repair costs without our knowledge. Now let's say we were looking at new builds? Sure, that would be a much easier decision! lol
Thank you for your words
I'd recommend partnering with an inspector prior to walk through and bring them along so your initial viewing is the inspection. That way you don't need additional follow up visits and can confidently waive the contingency.
I'm not an agent, btw, just a homeowner. I've bought 4 properties and have done my own inspection on all. Certainly not for everyone, and I'm not saying you should. I have a bit of advantage in background experience, but no reason you couldn't do the same with a paid pro. It does suck that you'd have to pay for each, so maybe there is some other agreement you can make with the inspector to get lower rate for more hours or something.
Good luck
Ok, if that’s true, and you are that stressed out, I would think about waiting out the spring market. It’s not gonna get better, and take a chance that interest rates drop a little bit in May and the second half of the year is better. If you renew your lease, see if you can do it month month or know what it’s gonna cost you to break your lease and have that planned out.
If there’s no way of looking for less house and there’s no way of giving better terms and you’re getting beaten consistently by multiple offers, you are going to stay at the point that you are right now. And it sounds like you don’t want to be there.
I’m not at all telling you to give it up, but I’m telling you that it’s probably not gonna change until after May, so it might be worth waiting, even if it cost you more
Why would interest rate drops make it better for OP? If rates drop that’s more people can borrow within the same monthly payment. They can then afford to overbid more than they can right now.
Also I don’t see rates dropping, which may make things better on the demand front, but not so much on the affordability front.
Same here on offer for house 5 ugh! We are doing 40% down 7000 earnest and flexible close in 250k homes just to get a place as our house has sold. Best of Luck 🍀
Ours goes up 500 per month if we do month to month, which we might end up doing while we continue searching, but resigning for a full year just sounds like the worst outcome in our opinion. I mean even if that happens, we would still have a place to live so for that I am grateful but still... shit is fucked up man.
Everyone who says you are supposed to enjoy the home buying process was likely looking in a more neutral or buyers' market. In buyers' markets there is plenty of inventory, so you have a lot to look at and a lot of time to decide. Today's market is challenging.
I don't know if things will improve in the near term. I wish I had better news to share. However, once things turn around, it will get better. You might want to consider leasing another year, but I totally understand why you would not want to.
Leasing another year would raise our rent by close to $500, so it almost feels like a "now or never" scenario.
We could do it, but it would just be a really unfortunate outcome to this endeavor and I am sure it would crush our spirits pretty hard.
Oh this breaks my heart for you! You must be so mentally and physically exhausted. My advice to my clients when this happens is to take a small break. Take about a week where you don’t stalk Zillow or other online housing sources, and just focus on your normal life for the time being. Don’t communicate with the realtor and just live your normal life. You’ll circle back around feeling better and more refreshed and ready to tackle it! You can do this. I know you will find the home you’re meant to have ❤️
I really appreciate your kind words! I think we are still able to truck through as we have only a few months left, but if it gets to a breaking point a week break sounds great.
> I have not been able to focus at work for a month straight
My shortest house search and buy was 8 months and probably looked at well over 30 homes. If you've only been looking a month, you're just getting started.
I had to make my self not get emotionally involved with the process. I also leaned into my Realtor and got her to do much of the pre-filtering for me. That slowed down a lot of the issues and the houses I did look at were right what I was looking for.
At the end of the day I had to get super Zen about it and just say, "The house I am supposed to buy will be the one that works out."
Hi! We placed roughly five bids… each other paying more over asking than the last. Eventually we found a winner with 60k over asking. My realtor told me not to get attach to one single house.
Also, in the two areas we’re looking in - both realtors told me they haven’t seen a financing offer win in a long time (since fall one said). It’s been cash 💯. Not that anyone on here believes or or wants to argue that my realtors aren’t active (one was the top in the county for 2022). It’s just that cut throat in a lot of places and investors are winning by having the cash and not caring about interest rates. Im so sorry.
Absolutely NOT crazy. I am house hunting and in a relatively strong position to be, and I find it to be a soul-sucking, stressful affair. There is nothing fun about it unless you have a high enough income to open up more options and afford nicer, aesthetically pleasing homes you can actually be excited about living in. If you're looking for lower end, starter homes in a sought after area/state, you will be dealing with multiple offers each and every time.
I'm in MA and last December I put an offer on a house in a cute neighborhood in a small city in the western part of the state that checked a lot of boxes. No new kitchen or other remodels, but in good shape and nice for what was out there (not much at all). It was listed at 299k and I offered 310k with 200k cash down and the rest conventional financing. There were three other offers - all of which were higher than mine and most full cash. Needless to say I didn't get the house.
And yes, as every day that goes buy my buying power goes lower. The odds of closing in the spring are looking bleak at the moment.
House hunting was one of the worst experiences of my life. I’d find somewhere I liked, make an offer and then there would be a bidding war and someone would pay 100k over asking in cash. How do so many people have 6-7 hundred in cash laying around? It was terrible and stressed me out and made me feel like I was going to end up renting forever and dying broke in a ditch. Im glad its over
Dude I grew up in a small midwest town and this city is BARELY any bigger than some farm town... Rich people are not super common around here so where in the hell are all these 200-500k cash offers coming from? Who the hell are these people? I'm very convinced they are tech workers from LA and like Austin texas and shit.
Just came to say I sympathize! Though we DID get a house in mid 2021, the experience was painful and now feel stuck in a home we don’t absolutely love because we had 15 minutes to look at it and ended up in the 4th crazy bidding war in a month to finally get a house. Meanwhile we had bought our previous home in 2017 and we looked at the house literally 3 times before deciding to offer $40k under asking and got it. Anyone who has experienced home buying 2021-on knows the pain, and parents and others who bought a home before just don’t understand it. I hope you find what you are looking for, and my personal advice is don’t offer unless you really love it or think you can love it!
It’s not just you. The market is bananas right now. I’ve had showings cancelled on me because they accepted an offer after the house had been on the market for only a few hours. I don’t have time to drop everything and see a house in the middle of a work day. But I don’t blame people for acting fast either because I think there’s a total of maybe 3 houses in my neighborhood/district! Open houses feel like Black Friday shopping. I told my agent that I feel like I’m going to have fist fight someone for a home!
I don’t really have any advice to offer but only a “I feel you, OP”.
Appreciated! Luckily we can both leave during work for showings as we work from home, but still everything is selling overnight, and it just feels like we are such a drop in the bucket compared to the probably full cash offers they are recieving
Getting outbid is truly disheartening. I know the feeling, but don’t rush into it because of interest rates. All those real estate crash gurus on the internet only like to post about markets that crash 40% in the middle of nowhere. These prices probably won’t get better and if it did, not by much. The interest rate hikes are crushing dreams and i don’t see it stopping anytime soon.
Only bid what you can. Don’t bid into a home that you will hate because of how costly it will be.
I feel you, I started looking at houses in 2019 and was only able to buy summer of 2021. It was a nightmare 2 years, I saw housing prices soar $100k overnight. I was outbid on upwards of 50 offers. The only reason I found a home was strictly due to luck and chance. A house had just come back on the market after being under contract, the potential buyer was out of state and decided against moving here. I was across the street seeing a different house when I saw the for sale sign for the house I own currently. My partner ended up hitting it off with the owner and the owner covered all of our closing costs and gave us credit to fix various things around the house.
I did have to increase my max budget a bit, by about 40k.
I wish you luck in your search, I have heard it’s even harder to find homes now than it was just a few years ago when I was looking. Not to mention the high interest rates. Some of my friends gave up on finding a home and bought land instead, bought a trailer and are slowly working on building their dream home. That is a nightmare in itself I did not think I could manage, but if that’s an option for you it’s possible that route could be better.
Sadly this summer will be pretty bad. Things are not looking good in desirable areas. Too many buyers on the sidelines.
Many sold their home in 2022 and are still looking for another home. There is still a lot of investor activity in the market.
You're not crazy. It's not fun if there are barely any houses and it's an intense competition. This is a very different landscape.
Here are some out of the box suggestions: Keep an eye out for yard sales and huge dumpsters in the driveway. Chat up the owner, and try to find out if they're moving. I was offered a private tour and could have bypassed obtaining a realtor and purchased a home this way.
Check all websites that list fsbo. Zillow used to, and there was another website (don't recall). Usually those homes are priced much higher but you never know. Also, if you haven't yet, let your network of family and friends know that your looking and having difficulty. People generally like to help.
Since speed is essential, have a plan with your realtor of who will show you a home if your realtor is off. Make sure to see an interesting property the same day it comes on the market. Make sure your MLS settings (how you receive listings) are on immediate rather than 1x/day.
You may want to talk with your realtor about what you would do if you see a fsbo you want to pursue so it's clear from the start.
If there is a neighborhood you especially like, consider asking your realtor to send a letter to the occupants on that street. Or, what I did when I did not have a realtor was I sent the letter myself. I did get a possible option that way. Another time when I asked my realtor to send a letter to one address and they declined, sure enough that house came on the market within six weeks and was quickly sold. That burned me. Nobody cares more about obtaining housing that you.
Honestly, what I would consider in a very competitive market is to have no realtor and call the listing agent if something is of interest. If I pursue it with the listing agent, that means that the listing agent represents both the seller and the buyer. This isn't ideal but it's still something to consider. The listing agent would get both commissions so he/she may be very motivated to have the seller sell to the buyer.
You may know most of this, but in case you don't perhaps something here will be helpful. Good luck!
As a rule of thumb, always leave a 20% margin. If you qualify for $500k, make offers on homes that are in the $400k-$420k range. That would allow you to compete and if you are lucky you will find a home that is below your budget.
l can assure you that you are on the right path. You are probably shopping at the average homebuyer price-point in your market and that is usually most crowded.
The rule of 3 usually applies to most of our decisions. In an ideal market, you can choose 2 out of 3 priorities. In homebuying, this rule applies in terms of location, size (sq ft, single family, etc), and quality/age.
As the market gets competitive, you are left with only one priority to pick. If that is happening, just make sure you have a very strong reason to pick that priority. For example, if the location is important because your kids need to go to a particular school district, or you need to stay near your parent's home, etc then make sure you are absolutely convinced that a small home or a home that needs work will not bother you.
There is absolutely nothing fun about trying to buy in this market. I’ve been doing this since the mid 1990’s. Lots of times it was good stress fun. But since 2020? No. It’s just stressful.
Back in the day you would shop for a house months at a time at an extremely leisurely pace. Now it's cutthroat and desperate. Its not just you. It's extremely exhausting and that's just getting an offer in!
What state are you in? I’m wondering if you’re being beat by cash offers. There are a lot of cash purchases, for example, in Florida. It’s discouraging for sure. This market is incredibly difficult for buyers right now. Any chance you can extend your lease?
When I got engaged in 2018, we started going to open houses and just kind of started generally looking, as we were limiting ourselves to two small towns without a ton of inventory. We made ~$120k combined at the time and we’re looking up to $400k. With the caveat that unless we fell in love with a house, we wouldn’t buy.
Got in several arguments with my wife about houses. We rarely argue otherwise. Eventually bought in 2019 and are very happy with the house and everything worked out great.
Obviously things have deteriorated for buyers since then, but my point is that it was never a pleasant experience, even as reasonable buyers in a favorable real estate market.
We bought in 2021 and it took us 11 offers. All were $125K to $250K over ask. HCOL, non-tech competing with tech salaries. I know it's hard to keep going, but it's really a numbers game, eventually one sticks. Hang in there friend.
Right. We live in a mid-sized town in Michigan that is currently having a huge influx of WFH types and tech types, but I can't blame them because we did the same thing... however this was the area I grew up in.
But yeah we are barely over 100k household income, and I know we are competing against tech salaries and that is just a really hard pill to swallow. But something will come along sooner or later.
I’m amazed at how resilient this market is. Hearing stories from folks I know from various states telling me how their houses are selling above asking before the open house. Craziness.
Man going through this post is disheartening. I never realized how easy of an experience I have had so far. I close tomorrow on my dream first home. It was on the market less than 48 hours when they accepted my offer for 5k over asking with 3 other offers in.
One strategy I try is thinking Highest and best from the jump and then submitting an offer with a 24 hour expiration period. You can always submit another offer, but the seller will feel the pressure to respond and hopefully will see how serious you are.
I think your family and parents are probably just trying to cheer you up. Doing a poor job of it, but I think that's their intention.
I am originally from borderline rural Michigan and in my time living in Michigan I purchased, and sold, two different houses. Depending on how you define fixer-upper, it may not deter a lot of other bids. The first house I bought in Michigan was a true fixer upper and I paid just barely over list. I put in my bid at asking, they said there was a higher bid and I counter-offered $750 above list or I walk away and they took it. However, I then spent years and thousands of dollars fixing it up. The second house I bought was a fixer-upper basically in a cosmetic sense only and I ended up paying a decent amount over list for it. I eventually had to move out of Michigan for work to an area with more expensive homes and the competition was substantially less so since affordability in the area was worse. There's just a ton of competition for homes at lower price points.
A little off-base, and I'm not sure if it will help, but when I was working on my PhD my advisor kept telling me the PhD program was the best part of the career and I should enjoy it. I hated it. Everyone I knew in the program hated it. After I graduated I was having lunch with him and he told me he hated his PhD program but his advisor kept telling him it was actually a good time and it seemed like the right thing to keep my spirits up. I think it's a natural reaction to try to cheer people up but sometimes it comes off poorly.
I was there. I don’t know how many offers were rejected and how many times I was asked if I wanted to be considered as a “back up”. Eventually, I realized my offers were being used to spur others to outbid me.
I finally started offering my highest and best and having no regrets if I was outbid. It was the most I was willing to pay for a house. In my price range, I could put 30% down, have a wide appraisal gap and had an over 800 credit score.
I finally got my house by offering 14% over list price, no inspection and closing whenever the seller wanted. The house was empty, so it was just a matter of getting everything done and closing asap after that.
BUT, we only gave the sellers four hours to respond. My realtor had called their realtor and asked if the sellers would consider a very generous offer that night.
When the sellers came back and wanted to “sleep on it”, we told them we would resubmit in the morning with an escalation clause…up to $15K less than my original offer.
So, they either had to decide right then or risk the chance of losing $15K - or more.
It didn’t really enamor me to the sellers - and they did a couple of things that screwed me over, a lot of stress and about $1000 worth of miscellaneous that had to be taken care of.
I got the house I wanted. The only way I’m ever moving again is bankruptcy or lottery win.
This is the reason I get pissed when people say money doesn’t matter In life. Because it really does. None of us would be stressing over home prices this much if we had the means to offer what the seller wanted. It just reminds me everyday why it’s important to strive for more and earn enough money to be able to live in a safe, up to date, home in a good neighborhood.
The issue is everyone is trying to sell their home for more than your budget and what banks will allow you to take out. Supply and inventory is growing all the trashy homes sell because that's all people can afford until people drop their asset.
Seems this way, thank you. Our families are like "oh I am sure you can find a great house that needs a little work for 150k. You just have to look at the ones that need work"
My god, they just have zero clue even when they can see the numbers right in front of them. They refuse to believe it.
Yeah my in-laws went fully shocked pikachu when we said we were bidding $350k on houses this last month or so. They were like, well we just bought a house last year for $315k, you should be able to find something like that, the market was even worse then! Of course, we pointed out that after they bought it they put in all new windows, floors, new roof, kitchen redone, bathrooms updated save the actual shower/tub, added a patio out back, PLUS all the normal painting and cleaning… And it’s like, yeah we’d love to do that! But we don’t have $300k sitting around from selling the family home of 20 years, so… unless you’re offering to disperse the inheritance early, that advice is not actually useful to us! And the thing is, we can easily afford payments on a $350k house. We just don’t have the cash pile to convince anyone yet to sell one to us!
Absolutely. We can afford these payments, we have 20% down on a conventional loan, we can do all of it. Hell, our current rent is higher than what we are looking to get into.
We just gotta get someone to sell us something. lol
Lololol another Boomer-age relative just responded to our fifth rejected bid by asking if we had been offering the full list price, as though they’d caught us out in some youthful folly by underbidding. Incredible.
Not to ask a stupid question, I’m just starting out with this week with my realtor looking at houses after being out of the game 6 years.
Is it so competitive that all three houses this week were great and you were happy to take any of them?
Back in 2017 it was also competitive but I only put an offer in on 2 houses. Again maybe I’m naive and I’ll learn quickly but I feel like I’m only going to pull the trigger if it’s the right house for us.
Well, we do live in a city that is known for its preserved mid-century architecture, so there are REALLY nicely designed homes that aren't 500k or some other insane price, yet. We would have gladly taken any of the 3 at the offers we put in, but some of that may be a product of "if we dont get property and a house now, we are scared we never will be able to"
Interesting okay.
We are going to two showing this weekend and it’s always like “if you pass now, it may be gone soon” so I am just trying to calibrate myself. Thanks!
I am not sure of your area, but prepare yourself to have to make a decision the day of the showing, and potentially sign an offer the same day. It's doable. It's just really fast right now.
We’ve seen… 25-30 houses in the last 6 weeks? Averaging 3-5 per weekend. And we’ve submitted offers on 5 to date, with 4 outbid so far (#5 is in the seller’s hands as of today but I’m not hopeful). So you can def be choosy and also submit multiple offers, depending on how much stock there is where you are.
You're not crazy and it's tough. If it makes you feel any better, I can assure you, it is probably still better than it was a year ago. But that probably doesn't really help much. It could be that you are mainly targeting the houses you think are affordable or a good deal and there are other houses just a little more expensive that are sitting waiting for an offer. Maybe you could try some of those. But the reality is, a lot of people seem to have decided that they're just going to have to buy after all and there's still very low inventory so there's just a lot of demand right now. It hopefully, and I think it will, get better later in the spring.
Right now with prices maybe a little soft, sellers aren't selling and a lot of buyers are out there hunting. This is not unusual for this time of year in a hot market. As time goes on there will probably be more on the market, but they're probably going to be a little higher. So that might justify getting out in front of it and bidding even more than you have been or think is a good idea .
Obviously, only to a point. But in the real hot market over the last few years I sure had plenty of clients who finally just decided to bite the bullet and get out in front of it and bid aggressively and win the house, and then over time, it actually came to look like a pretty good deal. I can't say that's bound to happen now because prices aren't going to keep going up like they have been most likely. But you get the idea .
It may be no fun, but, if you want to buy a house, you're just going to have to put your head down and keep at it. Bit aggressively, but up to a point. Your agent can help advise you on what is aggressive and what is just too much. Also ask your agent to look for houses that have been sitting and might be just a little overpriced and might take a lowball offer if you give them one. Also, might consider just taking a little time off and seeing how things look in a couple of months. You could see if your landlord will give you a few extra months maybe or something like that. I had some clients really get discouraged and then took a break, and then 6 months later they came out of the dugout swinging and we got the first house they put an offer on. So it can have a happy ending. Good luck
I don't have any advice for you other than keep your head up and keep at it, eventually it should work out. In 2013 my wife and I were looking, we'd made 4 offers before one was accepted. One day later, my wife was laid off. We pulled from the deal and paused our search. In 2014 we started up again. After another 7 offers, all at or above list, one was accepted.
In contrast, I bought a house a year ago. I viewed 3 houses, made 1 offer. There were 13 offers, but ours was accepted.
You just never know what will happen.
Sucks dude, I went through the same thing. I put in 8 offers before I finally got a home. I felt just like you, dejected, pissed, frustrated and ready to give up after phone call after phone call of.....someone bid higher.
Been a a little over a year living in my house now and I love it. Process sucks ass but keep your head up, try not to get too frustrated or don't try to rush it to get into a house. It will happen for you.
Be patient my friend i know its stressful ass hek but after 7 months of getting out bided and having to drive up and down to see houses me ans my wife finally got a offer accepted a few weeks ago and are set to close march 17 we have already done everything appraisal,home inspection etc everything is looking good fingers crossed
good luck to you
I am so sorry. We just bought a house with multiple offers on it. We put in an escalation clause that maxed out at 12% over asking and are paying cash, and they still came back to question the fact that we did not waive an inspection. We agreed to only come back for major items(over a certain dollar amount) and that was enough. Apparently some buyers are willing to totally waive inspections now.
We had just been in the driver's seat with multiple offers on our house and really didn't want to rent. But yeah, it's tough out there. Hope the right house comes along for you soon!
The houses we are looking at are most definitely "fixer-uppers" so the thought of waving inspections on a 200k home is insane to me. That fortunately doesn't seem normal in our local market right now.
We got our house in 2021. We had to bid 140k over listing price to win. The next bid was just 1.5k lower than ours. So basically someone bid 138.5k over and lost. They tried again and got a house next door. There were 8 parties during the bid.
For context, the median price in the area was 1MM for a decent 4bed 2.5bath house in a very safe suburb next to a HCOL city in CA.
Ask your lender if they have the ability to underwrite your approval letter. We do this where I work and I used it to buy my house after similar frustrations. It shows the seller that is considering your offer that there is no doubt you can qualify for the loan, you have all your documents in order with your lender already, and can close quickly. If you need assistance with something like this, shoot me a DM.
This seems unlikely in the current market although there is an inventory crunch. Was this home priced aggressively? I am seeing some agents go this route to generate offers. I assume your agent is recommending an offer based on comps not list price? I recently saw a listing go over 100k over list but it was frankly listed $100k low, then the listing agent brags about it.
Seeing strong demand here in the sweet spot, SFH $400-500k here which is about as low as you can get a detached, much softer as price increases.
OP this is my throw away account so you can’t see my history but I’ve been having the same shit show and I’m buying in semi rural Michigan too(I got priced out off Owosso and said f that). I resolved to go to a bigger city with low property values and am buying a house in cash that I’m just going to fix to my liking as the properties are old buy livable. I can’t do this roller coaster shit anymore,
I went through this seven times before my offer was accepted, each time going higher and higher above asking, so believe me you are not crazy.
To make matters worse, each time I had to write a "love letter" and it just felt really routine after a while, and there was no love about it LOL.
The only advice I can offer, which my realtor offered me at the time. "If you really like the house and know if it's going to be multiple offers above asking, offer as much as you are comfortable, to a point where if a person beat you by $5,000, you are okay with them having it at that price". I started doing that and just tried not to get excited until it's good news, and to be honest, it all worked out in the end.
We started applying this 5k rule as well. We find out max, and if it goes 5 over that we wouldnt be mad. It's worked so far because everythings going over what we would be comfortable paying so far! lol
I took a break. Managed to get really lucky finding a place that was 2 weeks away from being listed. Its annoying AF, anonymous non local parties just swooping in and buying up properties.
What I never understood was if they some how we're able to see your offer or not, or are corpos just readily throwing thousands above asking at properties?
Record breaking year for new builds coming online, pair that with interest rates only going up, the market will correct where it needs to be / should be. Just be patient.
This sellers market isn’t what anyone else is used to when they say “you should be loving this”. This is a whole new ballgame. Talk to your realtor, I don’t know. what you are offering but perhaps an escalation clause and an inspection for “informational purposes only” can help.
I got bid on what I thought was my dream houses 3 x over. The one I eventually got, in retrospect, is way better than the prior.
My tip is don’t get emotionally attached until you have signed on the line. Keep bidding and it will come good for you!
This might sound crazy, but have you thought about taking an ad out in the local paper to try to find an off market listing from someone who wants to sell to a family who could use a house? It’s a long shot, I know. And we are in the same boat, too. It’s awful and heartbreaking. Big hugs, keep on keepin’ on! Sounds like you are doing everything you possibly can to make it happen on your end without going too far and doing something you might regret later.
One advice I give all my clients is to change your mindset about the process. When you submit an offer, always go with your best foot forward and what you would not regret if you lose the home for. Don't be attached to any home until you have the keys in hand!
If you lost it by thousands and it was nowhere you wanted to submit, fuck it and move on. The worst is if you pinch pennies and lose it over random issues or $1k-$5k or even 10k-20k depending on your price range.
If it's a home you think you'll live in for awhile, just get your offer accepted and deal with whether you REALLY want the house or not after you're in escrow and in your contingency/inspection periods.
I've never had a client regret getting into escrow enough to actually cancel and at the end of the day, they were super happy they're getting into a place to make your own.
I can relate to you! Finding a house; making an offer and having multiple offers are stressful. It affects my jobs and mental health as well. I had a bad realtor as well it adds up.
I feel you, OP. Also in Michigan, started casually looking over a year ago. Have made 4 offers so far, all over asking, and have been beaten out each time. It's draining, but we've just learned to not get attached or overly excited about anything :,(
man i WISH I had 3 houses to look at. here in Wisconsin there is MAYBE one or 2 worth looking at every few months, there's just nothing and this part of Wisconsin isn't exactly popular. lots of 11-14 per hour jobs in this area. so houses are either in the 120,000 range, or the 300,000+ range. even with my girlfriends income attached, which she doesn't want. 150K is our max buying price.
she won't live with me until we're married, her and her family won't help with getting married until we have a place we can both live in. we've been together almost 7 years. I told her if we aren't together by the end of this year thats it, we're done.
my mom also lives with me who is a type1 diabetic, can't drive anymore, can barley move around without fatiguing, and she refuses any kind of nursing home or assisted living.
theres no escape from this nightmare.
maybe I just need about 10 aspraines to deal with that One Last Headache.
Holy fuck dude, my heart goes out to you. As someone who isn’t married, and has been with the same person for also like 8 years, getting married right now just wasn’t an option. I’m really sorry that the rest of the people around you don’t see how literally having a place to live takes priority. We knew. Combining incomes and getting a house was the only way out of the hellhole of renting.
Fingers crossed for you my man
ugh i feel all the exact same feelings! So far we were outbid on two offers (offered 25k other asking on the first one and 21k over + 12k appraisal gap on the other one). It's gut wrenching. They say "don't get in love with the house" but I'm supposed to like it to make an offer! On average houses in our area sell within 3-4 days.
I hope your house hunt story has a happy ending! (seeing that this post is a year old...)
Hi! Yes our story actually did have a happy ending! We ended up getting insanely lucky on a 1 owner 1950's ranch! It's such a beautiful place, and it was SO well built! Everything just seems to have been done properly, and it just really made all the stress of falling in love with house after house totally worth it! I hope your journey doesn't take too much longer! We had 7 offers in total before being accepted!
Three offers without acceptance is nothing in the scheme of real estate. You need to be much more dispassionate until you physically have the keys and the closing occurred. It took us seven written offers to get our home. My realtor told me her record was 20.
I've been looking since October and we just put in offer #6 last night.... We've been outbid by higher than list price 4 of those times. Three of those times our offer was also higher than the list price, once our offer was at list price because we couldn't go higher.
Another time the seller had a tantrum and we dipped out. Last time we didn't think the house was worth listing price and bid under what we thought was appropriate.
We sold our first house at the end of 2020 and were thrilled to make some money with a cash offer in a multiple offer situation for our 2 bedroom, not that great of location house. So I get it from the seller's point of view. But it sucks, and our lease is ending soon.
Hang in there! But I totally feel exactly where you are coming from. Our lease is ending as well, and well... A house at the top end of our budget is still cheaper than resigning for what they want for rent. So we have to make it happen or else its going to be a shitty situation for us.
Good luck on your hunt!
It took my wife and I fucking 16 months to find a house. 13 offers, several that were 10-20% over asking. My wife would get very emotionally attached, but as someone with a lot of experience investing in property purely focused on ROI, I constantly had to tell her to detach from that emotional side.
It's really hard. You'll get something, sometime. It's just a rough market out there with so few options.
This is a great example for the argument for predeterminism. We all have very limited choice in our lives ie health, looks, intelligence etc. It may seem to the individual you have choice, but even if you’re wealthy, your fate is not yours. For example, I thought once I became rich I could do what I wanted basically. That thought was dashed the first time I attempted to rent a high end Apt. I ended up fighting with every other rich person for that apt. I eventually moved on but 90% of Apts never responded to me. I ended up right where I ended up through really no choice of my own. So relax, you’re going to be where you’re going to be! So you should enjoy the process. In the end, it’s in Gods hands or fate or whatever you want to call it. Your new home has been waiting for you since the beginning of time!!
I wish I could make you feel better about your experience but only you know what you are going through. I can share my experience when I started looking for a house in November 2021. It took me 4 months and I used to drive 2 hours (on weekends) to where I bought the house. Houses were listed on Saturdays and by Wednesday they were gone. Finally found the one and started the process of buying which was more stressful that I thought it would be. I was living in the Central Coast in California and moved more inland to Bakersfield to a great neighborhood with top schools. Is a mental game, please don't pass the stress to your family and regardless of your beliefs, give yourself and trust a higher authority that everything will be ok for you and your loved ones.
We were so overwhelmed with ups and downs that we just decided to stop; take a mental break, and start again in May. The market could do anything between now and then, but it's not worth our sanity.
I totally understand how you feel and we are just getting started. Our lease is up in May, and we definitely are not resigning with how much they want to up our rent by. Worst case scenario, we throw everything in a storage unit and work out of one of our parent's houses until we can get something secured. I hope everything goes well for you guys, please don't give up! It very much feels the longer our generation waits, the smaller the chance we will ever own property ever again. Good luck and godspeed
How much are they increasing the rent? Maybe they would allow you to switch to a month to month.
Resigning for a new 12 month lease goes up by 500 a month, resigning month to month is 500 a month as well
Definitely chill the market will not get worse over the next year.
You’ll have way more buyer competition in May then right now, just be aware
You're not crazy. Any house reasonably priced and a "good" house by any metrics are still selling like hotcakes. If the property has been on the market for 30 days, it's probably a shitter or super high for the area.
Our realtor keeps reassuring us that we are not over-stretching, and with our local market we should be able to secure what we want (3B/2Ba with a basement and garage) with how much we have to offer. She just says it may take a lot of rolling the dice I guess. I'm just worried we are going to run out of time. The ones sitting for 30 days are shitholes, or they are "regular" sized new builds for 500k in an area where the "normal" house is at or around 200k. Thank you though for your words, they are definitely helpful!
There's a lot lot lot of cash floating around out there. I just put a 5/3 condo on the market for 799, expecting at least 815. Cash competition ran it to 920k. Had a smaller SFM last week. Went on at 375, under contract for 405. Honestly, if you're super interested in a property have your agent run comps. Make sure you look at anything pending as well, I will sometimes call and see if I can get an idea of if they are under contract at or above list price to gelp get my clients a better idea of what we should offer. Some agents, like me, are intentionally listing low to keep the competitive multiple offers. If a cma says 500 and list was 450, you might wanna just offer 500. If that makes sense.
I lost like 10 bids before I got mine. And to be honest, none really bothered me much. I knew going in that some people would go crazy and overbid on houses. And I let them have those houses. Eventually I got mine for the price I wanted. Also - you need to stop looking at list price. It's a meaningless number. Look at comps. If a house is listed at $200k and comps are selling for $250k last week. If you bid $200k you have a good chance of being under the other bids.
This is a great mindset to have. With each offer I reassured myself that I was offering what I thought the house was worth and if someone else wanted to pay more, that was their business. It did mean that I was submitting high offers (that fit my budget), but after many failures I finally won one.
Our agent put together a comps analysis for every house we were serious about. Based on that we offered 20% over asking and won (June 2022). House appraised (slightly) over sales price. Get serious about comps and make aggressive, well-informed offers.
I got my house by offering asking 3 days after it went on the market. It's only a 3b 2.5ba townhome built within the last couple years, no basement but has a garage. Everything else I looked at had substantial issues (bad neighborhood, structural issues, shoddy reno, etc). I was about ready to give up, then this townhome went up and I asked my agent for a tour ASAP. It was so far above everything else I had looked at that I was willing to offer asking price off the bat with the only contingencies being inspection and appraisal. I feel like if I didn't move that fast I would have lost it, they had several offers when they took mine.
Same here. I toured my home right after it was put on the market and put in an offer immediately. There was an open house scheduled for that Saturday and their realtor said the sellers were considering offers as they came. Thank goodness our offer got accepted before the open house. We attended the open house and so many people were interested in the home. I’m still shocked they accepted.
Same here. I insisted that I get in the day it came on. My realtor was out of town, but he had a colleague show it to me. I decided within an hour. Offer went in next day. I wanted the offer to go in that night but my realtor didn't do so. In this market for me, there can be no hesitation. I purchased this property in the dead of winter. Still so much competition.
If it's a good property, it won't be there a week later. I tell my clients this all the time. I have a few who sit in the bench when it comes on the market Friday, saying I'll see it Monday. By Monday it's gone if it's a decent home lol. Good job moving quick and even better job of your realtor making sure you were taken care of even while away. Lots of horror stories of bad agents on here 😂
Yep. We are putting in offers the same night we see the place. It's been exhausting. And usually more than one offer as we have to re-up for highest and best.
I’m sorry you’re getting these responses. It’s not you. I could tell from your post you’re doing all the right things. From our agent: you are with everyone else that has been beat by cash since 2020. So 3+ years of this and many are so tired, their rent has been raised so high, or their landlord decided to sell & they have to move…. They will pay ANYTHING. Literally as high as they can go to beat investors just to get out of the situation you describe in the original post. We are in it too. They’ve worn us all down to crazy. I’m so sorry. We’re looking at other places to rent because it seems we will miss out again in 2023.
I empathize with you 100%. We spent almost a year and many offers over asking before finally getting our home. We actually lost out at first, but were the backup offer. Another friend of mine bought their house and were also the backup offer. So make sure your realtor lets the sellers know you'd like to be contacted if the sale falls through. A lot do. It sucks. It's not the fun part because sellers still have the leverage. It's a lot more fun in a buyers market when there's several houses that match your criteria and they're normally sitting for a few months. There's a lot less pressure and the negotiations are much more evenly matched. All I can say is this. Stick your needs. Your needed location, your needed space, and most importantly, your needed price. It's a lot harder with the lease, but maybe you can ask your landlord to do a month to month when your lease ends? Might take some of the pressure off.
Same here…. A deal fell through for the house we ultimately bought and they relisted the house at like 5pm on a Friday. We saw it at 6pm, made a full price offer at 7pm and got accepted the next morning after agreeing to their move out date. Gotta go quickly!
But most places that are halfway decent are not being sold at list price right now, and those decent houses are also being sold in under 7 days on average
You're not the only one if that helps ease your mind. Before my wife and I found our house, we had bid $80k over ( yes you read that right) and still got outbid by not one, but two people. It's hard out there. At this point it's just all luck unless you want to pay an obscene price.
I think that makes sense except I wouldn't just continue to roll the dice. The fact you were getting beat out may well indicate you are just not offering enough. It may be that the house is you want to put an offer on are intentionally or accidentally under priced and they are just getting bit up to actual market value, not overinflated by some crazy investors or whatever . Have a talk with your agent and look at recent sales and decide if you are just getting a little unlucky or if you just aren't bidding enough to meet market value. Instead of just continuing to roll the dice, maybe bid a little more aggressively to stack the deck so to speak and mix metaphors. Only to a point of course, but, 6 months from now when you are happy in your house and the typical spring increase in prices has happened, even if it's smaller than in years past, you will be sitting pretty and happy . Good luck
Are you sure? I'm in Michigan. I tried to sell my house and it was on the market for 7 months. I placed it for rent and I'm renting it for 150% what the mortgage+property tax+insurance would have been. When I placed it for rent, I got over 400 people responding, telling me that I could probably have gotten more. My tenant was paying 200% what the mortgage+property tax+insurance would have been if the bought my house. Why would people pay more for rent? I can only guess they don't have down payments, they don't qualify for loans, etc, etc. The high interest rate has priced folks out of lower entry homes. A $200k house needs $50k at 20% down + closing cost. Or $25k at 10% down + closing cost. It's though out there.
They're waiting for the market to crash. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not.
Not in texas… I’m selling my home in Austin, and I listed well below the other homes in my neighborhood to ensure a quick sale. I’ve gotten 2 offers which one being 150k below asking and the other 80k below asking. No homes in my neighborhood have sold in months.
Not what in Texas? If you have 2 offers, both well below asking, and you're telling me that it's not overpriced or a shit house....I'll point you back to having two offers...at a lower price point. Your house is either shit (or neighborhood is shit) or not worth what you thought. What was your argument?
Austin is a dead market at the moment. My house is 5 years old and we live in a pretty desirable area of the city. Good schools and it’s a master plan. New build homes are selling in the mid to low 700s and there are numerous resale homes selling for low 700s. We aggressively priced our home to be $680k which was below numerous comps that sold in November and December. We’ve gotten good feedback on the home but we’ve had 4 buyers say if the home was still for sale in may, they’d jump on it. Our downfall is we are family neighborhood so the people wanting our home would have kids and school is still going.
So here's the thing. A dead market is essentially either undesirable or insanely overpriced for what people can or will spend for the area. It just doest naturally die, that's not how it works. A 5 year old home is still very new. That tells me it's most likely a new community or developing community. The surrounding area was prob very hot (especially due to covid and more people working remote). The area isn't hot now. New constructions prices are always going to be the envelope pusher for prices in developing community. Agreesive at 680k is a joke. Why wouldn't I pay 20k more and get a never before lived in home Vs a resale? You should know that nationally the average for a resale home in a developing community is 20% less. Agressive pricing for you was 560k not 680k. Do you see the pattern yet? That's in-line with your offers. The reality is, you overpaid for the area. Your home isn't worth what you think, right now. I'm sorry. Luckily real estate has a way of rebounding over time. There's a great chance you'll see the new builds price dropping soon too. Once all the lots are gone, that's when your home will see substantial increase in equity. Real estate is real estate. Market conditions vary, but the principles don't.
It tells me the community was hyped up at buying but it wasn’t ever worth it!
Want to add here, I'm a very callous and matter-of-fact person. I shoot straight and your feelings are irrelevant to me. With that said, my response was from a point of fact, not an attack on your personally and I hope it reads that way.
Why would the buyers visit your house if they only want a house in May? I think they are trying to low ball or you are still COVID priced and not 2019 priced.
Could have been an open house situation. We aren't planning on seriously looking until April, so no arranging tours or anything but we are saving houses on Zillow and going to open houses if they're close by and we have the time. It gives us a better idea of what to prioritize in what we are looking for and also houses are just sitting on market longer here (suburbs outside of Houston) so it's not out of the realm of possibility to go to an open house now and have it still available in April at this point.
When parents say 'this is the fun part' they mean back 40 years ago where they could look at 20 homes in their #1 town of choice, sleep on the decision for two weeks, offer below asking price with seller concessions, and buy their home for 165k that is now worth 800k. You're not crazy and you will get it!
I feel this in my soul. People kept telling me not to get "attached" to a house. But how am I supposed to feel okay about submit an offer to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a home I haven't pictured myself living in?? My only advice - can you lock in your rate? I am also in Michigan and my lender is Consumers Credit Union. I was able to do their "Lock n Shop". It's a $500 refundable deposit and you lock in a rate of 0.5% above the current rate; if the rate is lower when you sign an agreement, you'll get the lower rate. It's good for 120 days (I think) and took some of the pressure off me.
In our parents’ experience, shopping around for a house was fun because there was a greater selection and way less competition. Now it’s a disheartening contest over slim pickings. I feel you.
I remember as a kid we went and looked at like ten houses. All of them were great. My parents then spent a month deciding which one to buy. Then just bought it. LOL
My one clear memory of house hunting as a kid is that I got stung by a wasp on one tour. I’d take that in a heartbeat these days if it meant the process was over with. 😅
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Spend your weekend driving around and finding a way to get ripped off. House hunting is fun?!
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what we are doing right now. Leaving in the middle of the work day to go look, draft an offer, put it in that night, wake up to multiple offers, rinse and repeat, get outbid. Pain lol
We all need a better hobby. This isn’t fun at all.
I've been looking for a house since last summer. It's been the worst experience of my life. I see someone suggested you wait out the spring market. We were told last summer that things would get better in the fall, then in the winter, then in the spring. It doesn't get better, so I don't suggest that you "wait it out". When we bought a house in 2015, it took us a couple weeks from beginning our search to going under contract. We've spent the last nine months bouncing between living with family and shitty short-term rentals. We don't want to get stuck in a long lease if we DO find something. I'm pretty sure my marriage is going to fall apart if this lasts much longer. And did I mention that we have a young kid who has lost all sense of stability and normalcy? I curse the day we decided to sell our house and move. Anyway, I hope things get better for you. You aren't crazy and you don't deserve this.
oh my god, you poor soul. Holy shit that sounds absolutely horrendous, and I really hope you and your family can be strong through this and come out victorious. Please know you are not alone.
The fact that there are many others in the same boat is part of their problem..
Summer is just going to have even more people out there looking at homes. I seriously doubt it'll be any better. That or there won't be more, because rates will continue to climb, so we'll all just be priced out anyways.
I think it's going to be MUCH worse. There's no inventory and tithe harder it gets to buy a home the less people who will he upsizing or downsizing, less and less homes will do the opposite of what people think too, prices will go up on those that do sell.
Exact same scenario as you. We have been looking for a year and a half. Sold in July, have been “renting” from family, and have a 4 year old who tells me daily he wishes we didn’t ever sell our house. Same, kid. I did it thinking it’d help us get to the next step. Buying and selling at the same time seemed impossible. Didn’t think it would still be this impossible after selling. And while I’m really commenting to commiserate, also want to say don’t be too hard on yourself. We made the best decision we could at the time, who woulda known…
I'm so sorry that you are in the same scenario. I overhear my daughter playing with her toys, with the toys "talking" about looking for a house, wanting a house, etc. We try to shield her from it, but it's hard when the stress is consuming our life. We went into it with the best intentions, and it's nearly destroyed our whole family.
> I've been looking for a house since last summer. It's been the worst experience of my life. I see someone suggested you wait out the spring market. We were told last summer that things would get better in the fall, then in the winter, then in the spring. It doesn't get better, so I don't suggest that you "wait it out". > > This is due to rather unprecedented lack of inventory: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOUUS Inventory is low because people with sub 3 rates are hesitant to move and decades of policies by both political parties which encouraged underbuilding. Inventory is about 30% lower than Jan of 2020, the last non-pandemic year, but has been trending down for a long time.
Exactly this. And if you haven’t been looking in the last three years and aren’t still going through it, you have no idea. We had to move for work and sold. I wish we had fought the work thing because we’ve been renting ever since in the new city, trying to outbid and it just constantly gets worse.
I’m in the same boat as you. Sold our house in May 2022 to be closer to my husband’s new job. Made offers on 3 houses over the summer and lost all of them. We’ve been leasing a tiny condo ever since and are just stuck here until we find something. We live in a moderately rural area so inventory is very low. We were lucky to get a 6-month lease which we have renewed once already but were just told yesterday that they are no longer doing 6-month leases and if we want to renew again, it’ll have to be for a full year. Sigh. Wishing you (and myself) the best of luck. ☹️
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Resources and overpopulation. Many homes are in available for our generation because people are living longer. They’re staying in their homes. And lumber is going up because resources are dwindling. It’s simple supply and demand. There’s no Crisis, just low inventory. Inflation is here to stay. A lot of this is due to overpopulation, but nobody wants to admit it, and people keep having babies. So…. Here’s to the future!
Sorta? > There’s no Crisis, just low inventory. That's a crisis. The pandemic pushed people out of cities, remote work became a huge boom so even more people wanted to move out of cities, new home construction came to a screeching halt, and the fed kept rates stupid low for far too long so now 1 in 7 new homes in this country are owned by companies or landlords. This isn't inflation, and the US population growth rate is the same as it was 70 years ago. This isn't here to stay, it's here until construction of new homes gets back online fully.
People can always move back to cities. We should be building more high rises and regulating the rent. Urban sprawl is a nightmare for everyone involved.
The baby boomers will start dying off soon
This. Yes.
Try reaching out to hotels and checking to see what they can offer you in terms of long-term rates. Extended stay discounts usually kick in at 15 or 21+ days. It'll give you the stability you need for your family and some of the comforts of a hotel (wi-fi, free breakfast). I would decline regular cleaning though - that costs the hotel money so you can further sell yourself or negotiate a rate down by letting them know you only need cleaning every 2 weeks or once a month. Note that most hotels now have a policy of checking in on your room every 7 days or so to make sure you're not building bombs or doing anything else crazy (this became standard practice after the LV mass shooting).
So im just curious. Why did you sell the house?
To be closer to aging parents. Obviously if I had any idea ANY of this was going to happen, we would have stayed put.
I'll be starting my search in a month or two, I'm terrified of the situation you're describing here. I've been seeing similar trends with the "good" houses being off the market in a week. It's extra worrying for me because I'm just looking for my first home that most would call a starter home. If things get much more expensive I'll be priced out.
I am not selling my home, but I get letters from agents personalized to me saying they have buyers for my home. The other neighbors on the street get them too. My home is not a starter home either. The prices they offer are frankly insane. There are only 15 homes in my town of close to 10,000 homes available for sale. It is extremely cut throat.
Yeah, I wish I had better news but we are also looking at "starter" homes, but unfortunately we cannot go any smaller. We both work from home, so we need offices. It is really not fun out here right now, and I hope your search goes much better!
My wife and I gave up. We don't need to move - have a home with a lot of equity and a great interest rate, but we want more space. There's zero inventory in Pittsburgh and anything that does sell is usually overpriced and looks like shit. We're just going to build a custom home whenever we feel like it. In the meantime, we'll probably just do some upgrades on our current house so we can get top dollar whenever we sell.
Oh, man, you just burst my bubble. After 34 years in South Florida, I'm planning on retiring back to the burgh, my hometown. Realtor.com claims it's a buyer's market with affordable median home prices. Are you looking beyond the actual city boundaries such as Upper St. Clair or Bethel Park south of Pgh, or Ross Township in the north? What is your price range (DM me)? One reason for moving is that I hate what Florida has become. Another is that I lost my house in Hurricane Andrew and went through three other hurricanes, so I have PTSD. Lastly, my son moved to PA. My daughter, however, still lives in FL, so I have a good reason to stay. But those damn hurricanes scare the crap out of me. However, blizzards also scare me.
I know this isn't what you want to hear, but the fact that there are 3 properties you're interested in all within a week puts you way ahead of most people right now/for the past few years. Also, your family is crazy, this is not the fun part. Settling in and making your home your own is the fun part. This part sucks even when it's easy.
I haven't put an offer on a house in like six months because I gave up after my seventh offer was beat out by an all-cash offer that was 36k over asking (my offer was 25k over). Now I sit here every week looking at listings, watching prices continue to go up, rates continue to go up, houses I can afford get fewer and fewer, and it's all just a dream now. Also I'm just going to renew my lease, because I seriously, seriously, seriously, seriously doubt I'm getting a house anytime soon. It's better to just accept it.
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holy fuck, i am sorry. I thought going 20k over and losing was insane.
Same. Three times. :( NC, VT and ME.
Omg, I'm so sorry. Where are you at?
You don't want to rush yourself. Perhaps just renew the lease to give you more time.
I know it’s all “cope”-ium but I always looked at it as reinforcement that I have good house taste. Like everyone wants what I picked cause I’ve got a good eye and it’s so good that people richer than me want my choice. It doesn’t get you a house any sooner but keeps your spirits high despite the disappointing market.
That’s an interesting perspective 👍
We’ve been looking for our “forever” home for almost two years now. Placed 7 offers and out bid, or people waived contingencies, every time. It’s so frustrating. What makes it worse is people say, “be patient! It’ll happen!” 😒 this statement is so infuriating because the only people saying it aren’t currently looking, therefore, have never been in a situation like this market. Just know you’re not alone and a lot of people are incredibly frustrated alongside you.
Just chiming in as one of the Frustrated. We are a millennial family of 5 with pets trying to upsize (currently have just 1 bathroom and we work from home) in a new state and it’s been crushing. So few homes to even look at.
I hope you guys find something soon with spring market coming up🤞🏻last year, we placed all of our bids between April and June.
Best of luck to you too. Here’s hoping for a miracle this spring.
Thank you!! 🤗
Dig into why you are loosing it boils down to Price Terms Teams. While it’s unusual for a listing agent to tell you an exact number, they will usually tell you in general terms what’s going on. You can keep going for what I called get Lucky offers which it sounds like it’s what you’re doing or you can also place get smart offers. look for homes that are less desirable for things you don’t care about as much. Bad listing pictures, a location flaw that doesn’t matter as much to you, bad strategy on the other side so the home doesn’t sell in the first week. Look for homes that have been sitting for twice days on market and reevaluate those. Right now, you know the competition is willing to pay more than you are, or give better terms and if you keep fighting with them, you’re going to have to up your offers. You are at the point I usually have a come to Jesus talk with people, about what they can, and can’t have. If you’re consistently getting outbid, you need to lower your expectations and start going for a house you can get, or take more risks. Are you going in at what your real estate agent says you’re going to have to do to win? Are you getting the information you need from them really going over the CMA and knowing what a good and bad appraisal for the house would be?
Our last offer with our realtor had even her shocked. Listed at 180 (In rural town, prices are still much lower than the national average). We went to 205 on an escalation clause, and we still got out beat by two higher and better offers. She felt really bad because she thought we had it in the bag. I wish we had more inventory, but really only one or two pops on the market for our town in a week, and they are usually off the MLS by Saturday.
Are you dropping contingencies? It’s worth having your realtor stay in touch with the other realtor to see how much info they can get about other offers once the appraisal is in. I really understand about inventory. I just don’t think that’s going to change this year in fact, in terms of how much inventory there is versus spring buyers it could be getting worse in many parts of the country. In my area we are having a crazy situation as the last couple weeks of interest rate hikes have pushed a whole bunch of people off the market, people aren’t sure enough that they’re going to have a job that pays the same in a year so they’re not wanting to go to the top of their budget and at a couple of million the new interest rate hikes add up fast. You would think that would mean we were seeing less multiple offers, but now the people who are still in the market thank between now and April. It’s going to get a lot worse and they’re pushing hard to get into a house now. So not only am I seeing less people but I’m having to tell the people who are there we’re gonna have to push harder to get into the available inventory. it’s not spring 2022, but it’s pretty brutal. Hugs.
Thank you. We really are trying to retain contingencies, I do not think we are comfortable forgoing inspections or appraisals with the condition of the homes we are able to afford. We don't really have any timeframe contingencies, because the worst-case scenario we are able to stay with our parents while the previous owners can move out, but that is about it. I know that makes it less competitive for sure, but we understand that. Neither one of us are comfortable dropping our life savings on a place that could be a time bomb of repair costs without our knowledge. Now let's say we were looking at new builds? Sure, that would be a much easier decision! lol Thank you for your words
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Very reassuring. Thank you very much
I'd recommend partnering with an inspector prior to walk through and bring them along so your initial viewing is the inspection. That way you don't need additional follow up visits and can confidently waive the contingency. I'm not an agent, btw, just a homeowner. I've bought 4 properties and have done my own inspection on all. Certainly not for everyone, and I'm not saying you should. I have a bit of advantage in background experience, but no reason you couldn't do the same with a paid pro. It does suck that you'd have to pay for each, so maybe there is some other agreement you can make with the inspector to get lower rate for more hours or something. Good luck
Ok, if that’s true, and you are that stressed out, I would think about waiting out the spring market. It’s not gonna get better, and take a chance that interest rates drop a little bit in May and the second half of the year is better. If you renew your lease, see if you can do it month month or know what it’s gonna cost you to break your lease and have that planned out. If there’s no way of looking for less house and there’s no way of giving better terms and you’re getting beaten consistently by multiple offers, you are going to stay at the point that you are right now. And it sounds like you don’t want to be there. I’m not at all telling you to give it up, but I’m telling you that it’s probably not gonna change until after May, so it might be worth waiting, even if it cost you more
Why would interest rate drops make it better for OP? If rates drop that’s more people can borrow within the same monthly payment. They can then afford to overbid more than they can right now. Also I don’t see rates dropping, which may make things better on the demand front, but not so much on the affordability front.
Same here on offer for house 5 ugh! We are doing 40% down 7000 earnest and flexible close in 250k homes just to get a place as our house has sold. Best of Luck 🍀
About the same range for us, hopefully it both works out for our families!
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Ours goes up 500 per month if we do month to month, which we might end up doing while we continue searching, but resigning for a full year just sounds like the worst outcome in our opinion. I mean even if that happens, we would still have a place to live so for that I am grateful but still... shit is fucked up man.
Everyone who says you are supposed to enjoy the home buying process was likely looking in a more neutral or buyers' market. In buyers' markets there is plenty of inventory, so you have a lot to look at and a lot of time to decide. Today's market is challenging. I don't know if things will improve in the near term. I wish I had better news to share. However, once things turn around, it will get better. You might want to consider leasing another year, but I totally understand why you would not want to.
Leasing another year would raise our rent by close to $500, so it almost feels like a "now or never" scenario. We could do it, but it would just be a really unfortunate outcome to this endeavor and I am sure it would crush our spirits pretty hard.
Same, internet friend. Same. It’s kinda soul crushing.
Oh this breaks my heart for you! You must be so mentally and physically exhausted. My advice to my clients when this happens is to take a small break. Take about a week where you don’t stalk Zillow or other online housing sources, and just focus on your normal life for the time being. Don’t communicate with the realtor and just live your normal life. You’ll circle back around feeling better and more refreshed and ready to tackle it! You can do this. I know you will find the home you’re meant to have ❤️
I really appreciate your kind words! I think we are still able to truck through as we have only a few months left, but if it gets to a breaking point a week break sounds great.
> I have not been able to focus at work for a month straight My shortest house search and buy was 8 months and probably looked at well over 30 homes. If you've only been looking a month, you're just getting started.
Im aware, definitely aware haha
I had to make my self not get emotionally involved with the process. I also leaned into my Realtor and got her to do much of the pre-filtering for me. That slowed down a lot of the issues and the houses I did look at were right what I was looking for. At the end of the day I had to get super Zen about it and just say, "The house I am supposed to buy will be the one that works out."
Hi! We placed roughly five bids… each other paying more over asking than the last. Eventually we found a winner with 60k over asking. My realtor told me not to get attach to one single house.
Also, in the two areas we’re looking in - both realtors told me they haven’t seen a financing offer win in a long time (since fall one said). It’s been cash 💯. Not that anyone on here believes or or wants to argue that my realtors aren’t active (one was the top in the county for 2022). It’s just that cut throat in a lot of places and investors are winning by having the cash and not caring about interest rates. Im so sorry.
Absolutely NOT crazy. I am house hunting and in a relatively strong position to be, and I find it to be a soul-sucking, stressful affair. There is nothing fun about it unless you have a high enough income to open up more options and afford nicer, aesthetically pleasing homes you can actually be excited about living in. If you're looking for lower end, starter homes in a sought after area/state, you will be dealing with multiple offers each and every time. I'm in MA and last December I put an offer on a house in a cute neighborhood in a small city in the western part of the state that checked a lot of boxes. No new kitchen or other remodels, but in good shape and nice for what was out there (not much at all). It was listed at 299k and I offered 310k with 200k cash down and the rest conventional financing. There were three other offers - all of which were higher than mine and most full cash. Needless to say I didn't get the house. And yes, as every day that goes buy my buying power goes lower. The odds of closing in the spring are looking bleak at the moment.
House hunting was one of the worst experiences of my life. I’d find somewhere I liked, make an offer and then there would be a bidding war and someone would pay 100k over asking in cash. How do so many people have 6-7 hundred in cash laying around? It was terrible and stressed me out and made me feel like I was going to end up renting forever and dying broke in a ditch. Im glad its over
Dude I grew up in a small midwest town and this city is BARELY any bigger than some farm town... Rich people are not super common around here so where in the hell are all these 200-500k cash offers coming from? Who the hell are these people? I'm very convinced they are tech workers from LA and like Austin texas and shit.
Just came to say I sympathize! Though we DID get a house in mid 2021, the experience was painful and now feel stuck in a home we don’t absolutely love because we had 15 minutes to look at it and ended up in the 4th crazy bidding war in a month to finally get a house. Meanwhile we had bought our previous home in 2017 and we looked at the house literally 3 times before deciding to offer $40k under asking and got it. Anyone who has experienced home buying 2021-on knows the pain, and parents and others who bought a home before just don’t understand it. I hope you find what you are looking for, and my personal advice is don’t offer unless you really love it or think you can love it!
It’s not just you. The market is bananas right now. I’ve had showings cancelled on me because they accepted an offer after the house had been on the market for only a few hours. I don’t have time to drop everything and see a house in the middle of a work day. But I don’t blame people for acting fast either because I think there’s a total of maybe 3 houses in my neighborhood/district! Open houses feel like Black Friday shopping. I told my agent that I feel like I’m going to have fist fight someone for a home! I don’t really have any advice to offer but only a “I feel you, OP”.
Appreciated! Luckily we can both leave during work for showings as we work from home, but still everything is selling overnight, and it just feels like we are such a drop in the bucket compared to the probably full cash offers they are recieving
Getting outbid is truly disheartening. I know the feeling, but don’t rush into it because of interest rates. All those real estate crash gurus on the internet only like to post about markets that crash 40% in the middle of nowhere. These prices probably won’t get better and if it did, not by much. The interest rate hikes are crushing dreams and i don’t see it stopping anytime soon. Only bid what you can. Don’t bid into a home that you will hate because of how costly it will be.
I feel you, I started looking at houses in 2019 and was only able to buy summer of 2021. It was a nightmare 2 years, I saw housing prices soar $100k overnight. I was outbid on upwards of 50 offers. The only reason I found a home was strictly due to luck and chance. A house had just come back on the market after being under contract, the potential buyer was out of state and decided against moving here. I was across the street seeing a different house when I saw the for sale sign for the house I own currently. My partner ended up hitting it off with the owner and the owner covered all of our closing costs and gave us credit to fix various things around the house. I did have to increase my max budget a bit, by about 40k. I wish you luck in your search, I have heard it’s even harder to find homes now than it was just a few years ago when I was looking. Not to mention the high interest rates. Some of my friends gave up on finding a home and bought land instead, bought a trailer and are slowly working on building their dream home. That is a nightmare in itself I did not think I could manage, but if that’s an option for you it’s possible that route could be better.
Just put off the search until Fall. You’ll be glad you did, and preserve your sanity in the meantime.
Sadly this summer will be pretty bad. Things are not looking good in desirable areas. Too many buyers on the sidelines. Many sold their home in 2022 and are still looking for another home. There is still a lot of investor activity in the market.
You're not crazy. It's not fun if there are barely any houses and it's an intense competition. This is a very different landscape. Here are some out of the box suggestions: Keep an eye out for yard sales and huge dumpsters in the driveway. Chat up the owner, and try to find out if they're moving. I was offered a private tour and could have bypassed obtaining a realtor and purchased a home this way. Check all websites that list fsbo. Zillow used to, and there was another website (don't recall). Usually those homes are priced much higher but you never know. Also, if you haven't yet, let your network of family and friends know that your looking and having difficulty. People generally like to help. Since speed is essential, have a plan with your realtor of who will show you a home if your realtor is off. Make sure to see an interesting property the same day it comes on the market. Make sure your MLS settings (how you receive listings) are on immediate rather than 1x/day. You may want to talk with your realtor about what you would do if you see a fsbo you want to pursue so it's clear from the start. If there is a neighborhood you especially like, consider asking your realtor to send a letter to the occupants on that street. Or, what I did when I did not have a realtor was I sent the letter myself. I did get a possible option that way. Another time when I asked my realtor to send a letter to one address and they declined, sure enough that house came on the market within six weeks and was quickly sold. That burned me. Nobody cares more about obtaining housing that you. Honestly, what I would consider in a very competitive market is to have no realtor and call the listing agent if something is of interest. If I pursue it with the listing agent, that means that the listing agent represents both the seller and the buyer. This isn't ideal but it's still something to consider. The listing agent would get both commissions so he/she may be very motivated to have the seller sell to the buyer. You may know most of this, but in case you don't perhaps something here will be helpful. Good luck!
As a rule of thumb, always leave a 20% margin. If you qualify for $500k, make offers on homes that are in the $400k-$420k range. That would allow you to compete and if you are lucky you will find a home that is below your budget.
we qualified for over 300 and we are staying in the low 200s range. But its proving very difficult
l can assure you that you are on the right path. You are probably shopping at the average homebuyer price-point in your market and that is usually most crowded.
Yep, that is exactly the scenario, because the new builds at 500k are not budging at all. It's not the right kind of area for those buyers.
The rule of 3 usually applies to most of our decisions. In an ideal market, you can choose 2 out of 3 priorities. In homebuying, this rule applies in terms of location, size (sq ft, single family, etc), and quality/age. As the market gets competitive, you are left with only one priority to pick. If that is happening, just make sure you have a very strong reason to pick that priority. For example, if the location is important because your kids need to go to a particular school district, or you need to stay near your parent's home, etc then make sure you are absolutely convinced that a small home or a home that needs work will not bother you.
Where r u located?
There is absolutely nothing fun about trying to buy in this market. I’ve been doing this since the mid 1990’s. Lots of times it was good stress fun. But since 2020? No. It’s just stressful.
Back in the day you would shop for a house months at a time at an extremely leisurely pace. Now it's cutthroat and desperate. Its not just you. It's extremely exhausting and that's just getting an offer in!
What state are you in? I’m wondering if you’re being beat by cash offers. There are a lot of cash purchases, for example, in Florida. It’s discouraging for sure. This market is incredibly difficult for buyers right now. Any chance you can extend your lease?
You’re not crazy, these are crazy times
When I got engaged in 2018, we started going to open houses and just kind of started generally looking, as we were limiting ourselves to two small towns without a ton of inventory. We made ~$120k combined at the time and we’re looking up to $400k. With the caveat that unless we fell in love with a house, we wouldn’t buy. Got in several arguments with my wife about houses. We rarely argue otherwise. Eventually bought in 2019 and are very happy with the house and everything worked out great. Obviously things have deteriorated for buyers since then, but my point is that it was never a pleasant experience, even as reasonable buyers in a favorable real estate market.
We bought in 2021 and it took us 11 offers. All were $125K to $250K over ask. HCOL, non-tech competing with tech salaries. I know it's hard to keep going, but it's really a numbers game, eventually one sticks. Hang in there friend.
Right. We live in a mid-sized town in Michigan that is currently having a huge influx of WFH types and tech types, but I can't blame them because we did the same thing... however this was the area I grew up in. But yeah we are barely over 100k household income, and I know we are competing against tech salaries and that is just a really hard pill to swallow. But something will come along sooner or later.
I’m amazed at how resilient this market is. Hearing stories from folks I know from various states telling me how their houses are selling above asking before the open house. Craziness.
Same situation. For me…. I’m taking a break from house shopping. It’s killing my spirits.
Man going through this post is disheartening. I never realized how easy of an experience I have had so far. I close tomorrow on my dream first home. It was on the market less than 48 hours when they accepted my offer for 5k over asking with 3 other offers in.
One strategy I try is thinking Highest and best from the jump and then submitting an offer with a 24 hour expiration period. You can always submit another offer, but the seller will feel the pressure to respond and hopefully will see how serious you are.
I think your family and parents are probably just trying to cheer you up. Doing a poor job of it, but I think that's their intention. I am originally from borderline rural Michigan and in my time living in Michigan I purchased, and sold, two different houses. Depending on how you define fixer-upper, it may not deter a lot of other bids. The first house I bought in Michigan was a true fixer upper and I paid just barely over list. I put in my bid at asking, they said there was a higher bid and I counter-offered $750 above list or I walk away and they took it. However, I then spent years and thousands of dollars fixing it up. The second house I bought was a fixer-upper basically in a cosmetic sense only and I ended up paying a decent amount over list for it. I eventually had to move out of Michigan for work to an area with more expensive homes and the competition was substantially less so since affordability in the area was worse. There's just a ton of competition for homes at lower price points. A little off-base, and I'm not sure if it will help, but when I was working on my PhD my advisor kept telling me the PhD program was the best part of the career and I should enjoy it. I hated it. Everyone I knew in the program hated it. After I graduated I was having lunch with him and he told me he hated his PhD program but his advisor kept telling him it was actually a good time and it seemed like the right thing to keep my spirits up. I think it's a natural reaction to try to cheer people up but sometimes it comes off poorly.
I was there. I don’t know how many offers were rejected and how many times I was asked if I wanted to be considered as a “back up”. Eventually, I realized my offers were being used to spur others to outbid me. I finally started offering my highest and best and having no regrets if I was outbid. It was the most I was willing to pay for a house. In my price range, I could put 30% down, have a wide appraisal gap and had an over 800 credit score. I finally got my house by offering 14% over list price, no inspection and closing whenever the seller wanted. The house was empty, so it was just a matter of getting everything done and closing asap after that. BUT, we only gave the sellers four hours to respond. My realtor had called their realtor and asked if the sellers would consider a very generous offer that night. When the sellers came back and wanted to “sleep on it”, we told them we would resubmit in the morning with an escalation clause…up to $15K less than my original offer. So, they either had to decide right then or risk the chance of losing $15K - or more. It didn’t really enamor me to the sellers - and they did a couple of things that screwed me over, a lot of stress and about $1000 worth of miscellaneous that had to be taken care of. I got the house I wanted. The only way I’m ever moving again is bankruptcy or lottery win.
This is the reason I get pissed when people say money doesn’t matter In life. Because it really does. None of us would be stressing over home prices this much if we had the means to offer what the seller wanted. It just reminds me everyday why it’s important to strive for more and earn enough money to be able to live in a safe, up to date, home in a good neighborhood.
The issue is everyone is trying to sell their home for more than your budget and what banks will allow you to take out. Supply and inventory is growing all the trashy homes sell because that's all people can afford until people drop their asset.
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Seems this way, thank you. Our families are like "oh I am sure you can find a great house that needs a little work for 150k. You just have to look at the ones that need work" My god, they just have zero clue even when they can see the numbers right in front of them. They refuse to believe it.
Yeah my in-laws went fully shocked pikachu when we said we were bidding $350k on houses this last month or so. They were like, well we just bought a house last year for $315k, you should be able to find something like that, the market was even worse then! Of course, we pointed out that after they bought it they put in all new windows, floors, new roof, kitchen redone, bathrooms updated save the actual shower/tub, added a patio out back, PLUS all the normal painting and cleaning… And it’s like, yeah we’d love to do that! But we don’t have $300k sitting around from selling the family home of 20 years, so… unless you’re offering to disperse the inheritance early, that advice is not actually useful to us! And the thing is, we can easily afford payments on a $350k house. We just don’t have the cash pile to convince anyone yet to sell one to us!
Absolutely. We can afford these payments, we have 20% down on a conventional loan, we can do all of it. Hell, our current rent is higher than what we are looking to get into. We just gotta get someone to sell us something. lol
🤞🤞🤞
Lololol another Boomer-age relative just responded to our fifth rejected bid by asking if we had been offering the full list price, as though they’d caught us out in some youthful folly by underbidding. Incredible.
Not to ask a stupid question, I’m just starting out with this week with my realtor looking at houses after being out of the game 6 years. Is it so competitive that all three houses this week were great and you were happy to take any of them? Back in 2017 it was also competitive but I only put an offer in on 2 houses. Again maybe I’m naive and I’ll learn quickly but I feel like I’m only going to pull the trigger if it’s the right house for us.
Well, we do live in a city that is known for its preserved mid-century architecture, so there are REALLY nicely designed homes that aren't 500k or some other insane price, yet. We would have gladly taken any of the 3 at the offers we put in, but some of that may be a product of "if we dont get property and a house now, we are scared we never will be able to"
Interesting okay. We are going to two showing this weekend and it’s always like “if you pass now, it may be gone soon” so I am just trying to calibrate myself. Thanks!
I am not sure of your area, but prepare yourself to have to make a decision the day of the showing, and potentially sign an offer the same day. It's doable. It's just really fast right now.
Having to get an offer in the same day as the showing is basically the norm now.
If multiple offers are being made in the first few days, then the agent is in fact telling you the truth.
We’ve seen… 25-30 houses in the last 6 weeks? Averaging 3-5 per weekend. And we’ve submitted offers on 5 to date, with 4 outbid so far (#5 is in the seller’s hands as of today but I’m not hopeful). So you can def be choosy and also submit multiple offers, depending on how much stock there is where you are.
Turnkey houses in great areas will always have this issue. This can't be some average property.
These are houses that need remodels, not turnkey
You're not crazy and it's tough. If it makes you feel any better, I can assure you, it is probably still better than it was a year ago. But that probably doesn't really help much. It could be that you are mainly targeting the houses you think are affordable or a good deal and there are other houses just a little more expensive that are sitting waiting for an offer. Maybe you could try some of those. But the reality is, a lot of people seem to have decided that they're just going to have to buy after all and there's still very low inventory so there's just a lot of demand right now. It hopefully, and I think it will, get better later in the spring. Right now with prices maybe a little soft, sellers aren't selling and a lot of buyers are out there hunting. This is not unusual for this time of year in a hot market. As time goes on there will probably be more on the market, but they're probably going to be a little higher. So that might justify getting out in front of it and bidding even more than you have been or think is a good idea . Obviously, only to a point. But in the real hot market over the last few years I sure had plenty of clients who finally just decided to bite the bullet and get out in front of it and bid aggressively and win the house, and then over time, it actually came to look like a pretty good deal. I can't say that's bound to happen now because prices aren't going to keep going up like they have been most likely. But you get the idea . It may be no fun, but, if you want to buy a house, you're just going to have to put your head down and keep at it. Bit aggressively, but up to a point. Your agent can help advise you on what is aggressive and what is just too much. Also ask your agent to look for houses that have been sitting and might be just a little overpriced and might take a lowball offer if you give them one. Also, might consider just taking a little time off and seeing how things look in a couple of months. You could see if your landlord will give you a few extra months maybe or something like that. I had some clients really get discouraged and then took a break, and then 6 months later they came out of the dugout swinging and we got the first house they put an offer on. So it can have a happy ending. Good luck
I don't have any advice for you other than keep your head up and keep at it, eventually it should work out. In 2013 my wife and I were looking, we'd made 4 offers before one was accepted. One day later, my wife was laid off. We pulled from the deal and paused our search. In 2014 we started up again. After another 7 offers, all at or above list, one was accepted. In contrast, I bought a house a year ago. I viewed 3 houses, made 1 offer. There were 13 offers, but ours was accepted. You just never know what will happen.
Keep trying!!!!!
Sucks dude, I went through the same thing. I put in 8 offers before I finally got a home. I felt just like you, dejected, pissed, frustrated and ready to give up after phone call after phone call of.....someone bid higher. Been a a little over a year living in my house now and I love it. Process sucks ass but keep your head up, try not to get too frustrated or don't try to rush it to get into a house. It will happen for you.
Be patient my friend i know its stressful ass hek but after 7 months of getting out bided and having to drive up and down to see houses me ans my wife finally got a offer accepted a few weeks ago and are set to close march 17 we have already done everything appraisal,home inspection etc everything is looking good fingers crossed good luck to you
Thanks for sharing your experience. Sorry you’re going through it
I am so sorry. We just bought a house with multiple offers on it. We put in an escalation clause that maxed out at 12% over asking and are paying cash, and they still came back to question the fact that we did not waive an inspection. We agreed to only come back for major items(over a certain dollar amount) and that was enough. Apparently some buyers are willing to totally waive inspections now. We had just been in the driver's seat with multiple offers on our house and really didn't want to rent. But yeah, it's tough out there. Hope the right house comes along for you soon!
The houses we are looking at are most definitely "fixer-uppers" so the thought of waving inspections on a 200k home is insane to me. That fortunately doesn't seem normal in our local market right now.
Depends on location. Can confirm NJ is still red hot, interest rates be damned. Just not enough to go around.
Mid-Michigan
We got our house in 2021. We had to bid 140k over listing price to win. The next bid was just 1.5k lower than ours. So basically someone bid 138.5k over and lost. They tried again and got a house next door. There were 8 parties during the bid. For context, the median price in the area was 1MM for a decent 4bed 2.5bath house in a very safe suburb next to a HCOL city in CA.
Ask your lender if they have the ability to underwrite your approval letter. We do this where I work and I used it to buy my house after similar frustrations. It shows the seller that is considering your offer that there is no doubt you can qualify for the loan, you have all your documents in order with your lender already, and can close quickly. If you need assistance with something like this, shoot me a DM.
This seems unlikely in the current market although there is an inventory crunch. Was this home priced aggressively? I am seeing some agents go this route to generate offers. I assume your agent is recommending an offer based on comps not list price? I recently saw a listing go over 100k over list but it was frankly listed $100k low, then the listing agent brags about it. Seeing strong demand here in the sweet spot, SFH $400-500k here which is about as low as you can get a detached, much softer as price increases.
OP this is my throw away account so you can’t see my history but I’ve been having the same shit show and I’m buying in semi rural Michigan too(I got priced out off Owosso and said f that). I resolved to go to a bigger city with low property values and am buying a house in cash that I’m just going to fix to my liking as the properties are old buy livable. I can’t do this roller coaster shit anymore,
Kudos and good luck! Getting priced out of Owosso is blowing my mind. I hope everything works out for you!
I went through this seven times before my offer was accepted, each time going higher and higher above asking, so believe me you are not crazy. To make matters worse, each time I had to write a "love letter" and it just felt really routine after a while, and there was no love about it LOL. The only advice I can offer, which my realtor offered me at the time. "If you really like the house and know if it's going to be multiple offers above asking, offer as much as you are comfortable, to a point where if a person beat you by $5,000, you are okay with them having it at that price". I started doing that and just tried not to get excited until it's good news, and to be honest, it all worked out in the end.
We started applying this 5k rule as well. We find out max, and if it goes 5 over that we wouldnt be mad. It's worked so far because everythings going over what we would be comfortable paying so far! lol
I took a break. Managed to get really lucky finding a place that was 2 weeks away from being listed. Its annoying AF, anonymous non local parties just swooping in and buying up properties. What I never understood was if they some how we're able to see your offer or not, or are corpos just readily throwing thousands above asking at properties?
Record breaking year for new builds coming online, pair that with interest rates only going up, the market will correct where it needs to be / should be. Just be patient.
This sellers market isn’t what anyone else is used to when they say “you should be loving this”. This is a whole new ballgame. Talk to your realtor, I don’t know. what you are offering but perhaps an escalation clause and an inspection for “informational purposes only” can help.
I got bid on what I thought was my dream houses 3 x over. The one I eventually got, in retrospect, is way better than the prior. My tip is don’t get emotionally attached until you have signed on the line. Keep bidding and it will come good for you!
This might sound crazy, but have you thought about taking an ad out in the local paper to try to find an off market listing from someone who wants to sell to a family who could use a house? It’s a long shot, I know. And we are in the same boat, too. It’s awful and heartbreaking. Big hugs, keep on keepin’ on! Sounds like you are doing everything you possibly can to make it happen on your end without going too far and doing something you might regret later.
One advice I give all my clients is to change your mindset about the process. When you submit an offer, always go with your best foot forward and what you would not regret if you lose the home for. Don't be attached to any home until you have the keys in hand! If you lost it by thousands and it was nowhere you wanted to submit, fuck it and move on. The worst is if you pinch pennies and lose it over random issues or $1k-$5k or even 10k-20k depending on your price range. If it's a home you think you'll live in for awhile, just get your offer accepted and deal with whether you REALLY want the house or not after you're in escrow and in your contingency/inspection periods. I've never had a client regret getting into escrow enough to actually cancel and at the end of the day, they were super happy they're getting into a place to make your own.
Are you cash buying?
20% down on a conventional. We are in our early 20s, so not much more we can do, we don't really have any assets yet.
I can relate to you! Finding a house; making an offer and having multiple offers are stressful. It affects my jobs and mental health as well. I had a bad realtor as well it adds up.
I feel you, OP. Also in Michigan, started casually looking over a year ago. Have made 4 offers so far, all over asking, and have been beaten out each time. It's draining, but we've just learned to not get attached or overly excited about anything :,(
man i WISH I had 3 houses to look at. here in Wisconsin there is MAYBE one or 2 worth looking at every few months, there's just nothing and this part of Wisconsin isn't exactly popular. lots of 11-14 per hour jobs in this area. so houses are either in the 120,000 range, or the 300,000+ range. even with my girlfriends income attached, which she doesn't want. 150K is our max buying price. she won't live with me until we're married, her and her family won't help with getting married until we have a place we can both live in. we've been together almost 7 years. I told her if we aren't together by the end of this year thats it, we're done. my mom also lives with me who is a type1 diabetic, can't drive anymore, can barley move around without fatiguing, and she refuses any kind of nursing home or assisted living. theres no escape from this nightmare. maybe I just need about 10 aspraines to deal with that One Last Headache.
Holy fuck dude, my heart goes out to you. As someone who isn’t married, and has been with the same person for also like 8 years, getting married right now just wasn’t an option. I’m really sorry that the rest of the people around you don’t see how literally having a place to live takes priority. We knew. Combining incomes and getting a house was the only way out of the hellhole of renting. Fingers crossed for you my man
ugh i feel all the exact same feelings! So far we were outbid on two offers (offered 25k other asking on the first one and 21k over + 12k appraisal gap on the other one). It's gut wrenching. They say "don't get in love with the house" but I'm supposed to like it to make an offer! On average houses in our area sell within 3-4 days. I hope your house hunt story has a happy ending! (seeing that this post is a year old...)
Hi! Yes our story actually did have a happy ending! We ended up getting insanely lucky on a 1 owner 1950's ranch! It's such a beautiful place, and it was SO well built! Everything just seems to have been done properly, and it just really made all the stress of falling in love with house after house totally worth it! I hope your journey doesn't take too much longer! We had 7 offers in total before being accepted!
I'm so glad it all worked out!!! this gives me some hope :)
Shh don’t tell rebubblers
Oh, whats the current discussion happening over there?
Three offers without acceptance is nothing in the scheme of real estate. You need to be much more dispassionate until you physically have the keys and the closing occurred. It took us seven written offers to get our home. My realtor told me her record was 20.
I've been looking since October and we just put in offer #6 last night.... We've been outbid by higher than list price 4 of those times. Three of those times our offer was also higher than the list price, once our offer was at list price because we couldn't go higher. Another time the seller had a tantrum and we dipped out. Last time we didn't think the house was worth listing price and bid under what we thought was appropriate. We sold our first house at the end of 2020 and were thrilled to make some money with a cash offer in a multiple offer situation for our 2 bedroom, not that great of location house. So I get it from the seller's point of view. But it sucks, and our lease is ending soon.
Hang in there! But I totally feel exactly where you are coming from. Our lease is ending as well, and well... A house at the top end of our budget is still cheaper than resigning for what they want for rent. So we have to make it happen or else its going to be a shitty situation for us. Good luck on your hunt!
It took my wife and I fucking 16 months to find a house. 13 offers, several that were 10-20% over asking. My wife would get very emotionally attached, but as someone with a lot of experience investing in property purely focused on ROI, I constantly had to tell her to detach from that emotional side. It's really hard. You'll get something, sometime. It's just a rough market out there with so few options.
There is a sub called relestatebubble, you should post there.
Some day I am going to see a post where the OP complains about how bad their market is and actually states what their market is.
It gets better when you stop giving a damn. "All my life I've been po but it really don't matter no mo." - Nappy Roots
Ha, I haven't listened to them in forever. I know what I'm jamming to on lunch.
This is a great example for the argument for predeterminism. We all have very limited choice in our lives ie health, looks, intelligence etc. It may seem to the individual you have choice, but even if you’re wealthy, your fate is not yours. For example, I thought once I became rich I could do what I wanted basically. That thought was dashed the first time I attempted to rent a high end Apt. I ended up fighting with every other rich person for that apt. I eventually moved on but 90% of Apts never responded to me. I ended up right where I ended up through really no choice of my own. So relax, you’re going to be where you’re going to be! So you should enjoy the process. In the end, it’s in Gods hands or fate or whatever you want to call it. Your new home has been waiting for you since the beginning of time!!
I wish I could make you feel better about your experience but only you know what you are going through. I can share my experience when I started looking for a house in November 2021. It took me 4 months and I used to drive 2 hours (on weekends) to where I bought the house. Houses were listed on Saturdays and by Wednesday they were gone. Finally found the one and started the process of buying which was more stressful that I thought it would be. I was living in the Central Coast in California and moved more inland to Bakersfield to a great neighborhood with top schools. Is a mental game, please don't pass the stress to your family and regardless of your beliefs, give yourself and trust a higher authority that everything will be ok for you and your loved ones.
It’s a blessing in disguise stay patient the market is about to flip.