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For a whole new level of frustration, try to research any HOA before you buy a house. Their rules aren't typically disclosed until after you ~~buy the house~~ put in your offer and enter escrow.

Stick to a firm budget, and don't go over it. We had a firm ceiling of $400k, looked at around 40 houses, and put in 7 offers before ours was accepted. It was listed for $375k, made an offer for $385k with a 24 hour expiration. Appraisal came back at $412k. We closed about 6 months ago, and it took us 7 months of looking at multiple houses every week to get to it. We were also using a VA loan, which turned some sellers off due to the added time for the VA appraisal and potential to either force them to fix things that aren't an issue for most people, or back out of the contract.

My wife was pregnant at the time (and miscarried two months later), so I get the added pressure of trying to find something NOW. Don't dig yourself into a hole that you can't climb out of for thirty years because of that pressure.

We got lucky with this one because the previous owners were going through a nasty divorce. I get the frustration, and it was disheartening as fuck constantly being outbid, especially after you like a house enough to tie yourself to it for decades. Our realtor was great, and knew most of the agents in the area, so he was able to get us some inside info on a few of the houses we looked at. If your agent isn't being transparent with you, find a different one.

Treat the search as a business transaction. You have a list of criteria, you're reviewing options within your budget that meet the highest number of your needs. If it doesn't meet your nonnegotiable criteria, don't bid. The most important one of those criteria should be that you like the house. Have a checklist to run down in your walkthrough (roof, crawlspace, foundation, visible water damage, age of HVAC and major appliances that will convey, etc), and try to weed out as many major issues as you can before paying for an inspection.

It's tedious, extremely frustrating, and disheartening. Eventually, you'll find one. You may have to compromise on some things, and it's ok to gradually improve the house after you buy it. Just make sure the basics are solid. Also, allocate way more time for painting than you think it'll take, especially if you're doing it without help. Everything will take longer than you think, be patient with yourself.

Be stubborn as fuck during this process, and be willing to walk away. I get that you want to get out of a lease (I rented for years, and it sucks compared to owning), but once most sellers are motivated to get shit done once they're under contact just as much as you are. They don't want to start the process over again either, especially because if a major issue is uncovered during an inspection, they are legally required to disclose it (my realtor threatened their agent with this fact over some mold in our crawlspace when the seller wanted to walk away instead of fixing it. He told them that he has access to their system and would personally make sure the next offer received a copy of the inspection report and would report the agent if they didn't disclose it).

Until the US passes laws designed to make the main purpose of homes to be housing, and not just profit for the already rich, millennials, Gen Z, and anyone else not already house-rich, will forever be locked out and forced to pay their hard earned wages to the rich just for the luxury of not being homeless.

You can put in escalating offers when you place your bid. Say you want to pay 400k, but you are willing to go up 500k to get the house. Your realtor writes up the offer with the escalation listed. "Our offer is 400k, but we will escalate past any bid you can verify by 10k, up to 500k."

We did this to buy our house. We got close to, but not up to, our limit.

In a seller's market, you need to work backwards.. Instead of spending a lot of time finding and falling in love with the house you want, you put in offers, sight-unseen, on any and all homes that meet your general criteria. Include a 10-day inspection contingency and a financing contingency.

Only when a seller accepts your initial offer do you actually view ("inspect") the property. If you don't love it after your "inspection", you exercise your contingency and walk away.

For another level of frustration, you are also competing with international buyers who may find your local market cheap investments. There are legit overseas organizations that advertises to rich people to buy real estate, they work with equally legit local real estate agents to gain access to these “easy” clients.

You the local resident is disadvantaged as are the local real estate agents. But it’s great for these overseas client.

Yeah I bought a house 5 years ago and Zillow says it’s worth $100k more now. If I was looking for a home right now I couldn’t afford the one I’m living in. In the last 5 years I make $35k more than I did then but it still wouldn’t be enough to buy this house.

Back when I bought my house is was considered aggressive to offer their full asking price, which is what I did.

The whole system is beyond broken at this point.

Yeah, it's fucking depressing. At least you guys still have reasonably priced houses. House values have tripled here in the last decade. Some areas have doubled just in the last 2 years. Owners are sitting on $700,000.00+ in equity. Rental owners are making an entire average income just because they happened to buy a house before we entered the bizarro timeline. My landlord owns 3 houses, 2 that she's renting. She's getting about $70,000 per year in equity from renters. Her mortgages are under $12,000 per year on each house. It must be nice to be just a few years older, or have become stable in your career just a few years earlier, and get rewarded with two million fucking dollars in make-believe house money. What's even more frustrating is knowing this is an unsustainable bubble that will eventually come crashing down. We've been taking it easy for a few years hoping some sanity would return to the market, but it just keeps going up. So that's a constant fear while looking, that it'll all come crashing down right after we finally buy something, and we'll be left holding the bag while the wealthy go find some other market to plunder.

Wait. With the interest rates as high as they are if you can give it a year or so the market will cool rapidly. All those people bidding way over the value are taking on way more debt than they can afford and once job losses start increasing we are going to see another 2008ish crash.

I just went through this over the 3 years of the pandemic. Saw maybe 250 houses. Put bids on at least 8. It’s absolutely insane and I can’t see how it can continue.

Houses that I bid $30,000 over asking price and someone still swooped in and bid even more.

Asking price is such a lie. But also keep in mind that it's not just about price, it's also about contingencies. Hyperbole but if I have 2 offers, one is $450k all cash no inspection, and the other is $550k contingent on their cat liking it, I know which I'm going with. That being said DO NOT waive the inspection. Unless you're a contractor who can handle anything that goes wrong, you don't want to risk it. You could get a great house, or you could buy a money pit.

It's crazy, I got my offer accepted because their realtor liked my realtor better than the others. They talked to my realtor on the side, said they had another offer for 4% more than ours but didn't like the other realtor and if we met it they'd accept with no counter.

I’m not sure what market you’re in or what your budget is, but the pains that you’re talking about (other than the actual price of the houses) can be mitigated by working with a competent realtor. You want someone who both knows that particular market and also knows how to identify comparable sales. That means knowing the neighborhoods you’re looking at as well as prices and trends.

I’m not a realtor, but I did buy a house fairly recently in an extremely hot market. People here will bid $300k over asking and waive all contingencies. That’s just the nature of the market right now - at least in some areas.

Basically, look at the asking price but use something like redfin or zillow to get their estimation of what the selling price of the house will be. The sites will also (try) to show you comparable houses. The sites tend to err on the high side with estimated values, but if you’re not in a market that’s open to bargain hunters it will be close.

It’s a big step - probably bigger than it should be. I believe that the majority of American families have the majority of their net worth invested in their house.

Closed bidding is how it’s always worked, though. Generally, the people selling the house will pick the top two or three offers and make a counter-offer or otherwise solicit additional offers. When a market is hot, they can additionally push for a quick closing. As a rule of thumb, you’ll probably spend less for houses that have been on the market for a while, but you can likely expect the same kind of issue when it comes time to sell it. If you buy in a desirable market where houses sell within a few weeks, you’ll again probably see that kind of thing when you sell. Bargain hunting in real estate - waiting for the chance to get a smart offer approved - can lead to you being frozen out - or worse, getting taken for a ride that more informed buyers are staying away from. It can be like buying stocks in that way, except with hundreds of thousands to millions on the line with a single investment.

Anyway, find a realtor you can trust - possibly through a referral. Ask around at work or something if none of your friends has someone. It makes the process a lot smoother. This depends on the state, but the seller may pay the realtor’s commission, and in any case should be considered part of the cost of buying a house.

Ya know....

Around a decade ago, I picked up my house for around 110k USD. Nothing fancy, a nice little house, with a decent amount of room inside and outside.

These days, the exact same house is worth over double that. Supposedly, its worth 200k.

Now, that sounds absolutely fantastic, except for- the process to build my dream house, went from costing 200k, to nearly 500k now.

Guess, i'll be stuck in my now tiny house (kids. lots of kids).... until the damn housing market returns to somewhat normal.

Been there. Lived in So Cal and knew a guy who bought a house for 200k turn around 6 months later and his neighbor sold (nearly identical house) for $500k. He got lucky and bought in a neighborhood that got "popular".

My wife and I were DINKs and realized that we would still never afford a house there, so I let them keep their houses, changed careers, and bought a house in a quieter place on the other side of the country (well, moved, rented for a couple years, and then bought). Took a 40% reduction in salary to do it. Still worth it.

I thought the housing market was crazy in 2020, so waited till 2021. I understood what crazy really meant in 2021 but ended up buying a house at the peak of the crazy market in 2021. Or so I thought. It was crazy in 2022, and it’s still crazy in 2023. What the fuck is going on?! At least I managed to buy before the crazy interest rates came by (2.875). I’m making calculations, and at the current mortgage rates, even if I buy a house for 100k less, I would still be paying more per month.

Same. What a time to be alive.