House Hunting: 12 Weeks Later and everything is exactly the same

[benjrblant]

In the past 12 weeks of looking for a house, we've been outbid on 5 written offers, gone under contract once only to have the seller pull the contract (after we paid for an inspection) because they got a late cash offer, and tied an offer only to have ours declined because we wouldn't waive an inspection.

It's been 12 weeks of houses listing on Thursday to have anywhere from 3 to 15 offers by Sunday with completely different inventory on the following Monday. It's insane, and I don't understand it. Even our agent feels that we've made some really compelling and competitive offers but it seems that there's always one better.

At this point, I wonder how many times we've put in offers along with the same other people in our situation. Maybe we could start a help group for the same 15 people we keep submitting offers with but have never met.

Maybe the better plan would've been to move into the Land Cruiser instead of selling it.

A sleepy Marceline for your time.

[i86hotdogs]

@benjrblant We've had to slash our budget because of the high over-asking offers going around. We were looking in the $300-$400k range, but now it's $200-$300k range knowing we'd probably be offering $350k on a house asking for $290k

[benjrblant]

@i86hotdogs We've already had to reduce our search to 2br houses, I'm not sure we can really go much smaller than that.

[i86hotdogs]

@benjrblant Yeah my dream of 5+ acres and a 3 car garage keeps getting more difficult

[Zaphod's Heart of Gold]

@benjrblant I ran into this issue a bit back in 2018 when we were looking for a house. We only put in 3 offers (kinda picky on layout and location) but looked at 15-20 places. Everything worth buying was listed, showed, and sold within 3-4 days. We only had to go 10k over asking (reduced to 5k after inspection) on ours, I can't imagine trying to buy right now. In 3 years with our house I'm confident we could sell for 50% more than we paid in a market much less hot than a lot of bigger areas in the country. It's stupid.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

@benjrblant Didn't know it was legal to pull a contract because they got a better offer after the fact. That sounds like a long story

[Bloody-the-resident-LandRover-apologist]

@dr-zoidberg depends on the state, New Jersey allows the owner to accept other offers while the house is under attorney review however after the house exits attorney review you can't pull out of the sale unless both parties agree.

[Roadkilled]

@dr-zoidberg You can add a contingency clause to the contract that allows the seller to withdraw the contract if they get a better offer. It's worth having a contract reviewed by a real estate attorney to look for these clauses. I wouldn't be surprised that this type of contingency clause would be added in a seller's market.

[Saracen]

I got outbid twice, both very aggressive offers (%25 over asking). The third time I was surprised my offer was accepted, as the asking price was higher...I figured the accepted price would be $100k more.

Just last month, a house around the corner in our neighborhood - smaller than our home, smaller lot, not updated inside - sold for about $200k over our purchase price. So I think we got real lucky.

[Tripper]

@benjrblant That sucks man. Over a year ago we stopped looking at houses and decided to add on to ours instead...I'm not going to go into detail at this point but our house is still the same and we've spent a lot of money and had at least two family emotional breakdowns, haha.

[Huzer]

@benjrblant That sucks, sorry to hear. When we moved in 2016, we lucked out, for the most part. We had the stress of a buyer falling through on financing literally the day before closing. We resisted and went under contract the same day. When we met the couple that put in the offer, they said it was the 17th property they had put an offer on.

[Future Next Gen S2000 Owner]

@dr-zoidberg You can use the seller out options regardless of the actual reason. For instance, if he submitted a new number after inspection the seller could reject the contract as a whole. Find a new seller and voila. New contract.

We went through that with our house. The other contract waived their inspection clause to win the bid but then used on of the many other outs and cancelled their contract immediately after receiving the inspection. Funny how that worked.

[ranwhenparked]

@i86hotdogs Theoretically, my dream of an acre or two and a large garage is still feasible, based on the territorial expanse I'm allowed to live in for work (basically, anywhere in south central PA, southeast PA, DE, or eastern MD), but I've had to come to terms with the fact that my dump will need at least $15-20k put into it for me to have a shot at selling it for a decent price, which means I'm going to have to delay any thought of a fast asap sale and work on getting some stuff fixed up

[benjrblant]

@future-next-gen-s2000-owner @Dr-Zoidberg So, in this case the house had 3 layers of shingle which was no longer legal in the city/county limits and our insurance refused to cover the house with the roof in the current condition. We couldn't finalize financing without insurance. The seller put in our contract to replace the roof, then pulled this offer. Without a roof, we couldn't close.

[Future Next Gen S2000 Owner]

@benjrblant Damn. That hurts.

[Chariotoflove]

@benjrblant said in House Hunting: 12 Weeks Later and everything is exactly the same:

At this point, I wonder how many times we've put in offers along with the same other people in our situation. Maybe we could start a help group for the same 15 people we keep submitting offers with but have never met.

I really like this idea, at least in theory.

Maybe the better plan would've been to move into the Land Cruiser instead of selling it.

That would make for good long form content for us to read!

[TheBarber]

@benjrblant said in House Hunting: 12 Weeks Later and everything is exactly the same:

Maybe the better plan would've been to move into the Land Cruiser instead of selling it.

Hmm, better wait for @Taylor-Martin's article "Why you’ll regret living in your car full-time" before you make that decision lol.

[HoustonRunner]

@benjrblant Dang, that blows. Keep at it (though I guess you don't have a lot of choices at this point).

[i86hotdogs]

@ranwhenparked It's a double edged sword. Either pay over asking price for a finished house, or buy a house that needs works and over pay for raw materials and labor

[Taylor Martin]

@thebarber said in House Hunting: 12 Weeks Later and everything is exactly the same:

Hmm, better wait for @Taylor-Martin's article "Why you’ll regret living in your car full-time" before you make that decision lol.

Not my article, but a MB article lol

[pip bip]

@benjrblant house hunting is nuts at present