Buying A Home
*This is not legal advice*
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
How Many Houses?
Did you look at before buying one? I keep hearing stats like an average of 10 houses, but we have looked at far more than that and haven't found anything we are really interested in. Our realtor did say that inventory was down at the moment, and that many more houes will come on the market come spring, so I'm not too worried, but it does get a little frustrating not to find anything.
So I was curious as to how many you looked at before you found the house?
*This is not legal advice*
Re: How Many Houses?
We looked at probably over 100 in person, most of those were open houses. We started looking in July when we were preparing to list our house for sale. We listed our house in September and it went under agreement in November. We made and offer and went under agreement on the house we're purchasing in early December.
So over the course of 6 months, we saw anywhere from 3-5 houses each week. When our house sold, we saw about 20 that hadn't had open houses with our realtor.
I was getting nervous that there would never be something that I wanted. We saw one fix-er-upper that we liked but on the second showing we found tons of black mold in the attic. Other than that, it was over 100 houses that we didn't like enough to even consider.
It is so frustrating. But the right house can pop up at any moment!
I'm jealous. We did have a couple of homes that we considered making an offer on, but for one the owner disclosed a serious leakage problem in the basement, and the other had foundational issues. No thanks.
20-30 in person, I think. Hundreds online.
Hundreds online. So far we've seen about 20 in person, and I haven't found one I like yet. Still looking.
Our REA says there will be more to hit the market in a couple of months, when spring rolls around. I hope so because we are in a buyers market and the actual good homes are almost non-existent right now. Only the good ones are moving right now, and they are on the market for sometimes a week or less.
Don't pay so much attention to the "stats." Whatever is right for you is right. If you look at 100 homes and don't like any, re-evaluate whether you are being too picky and whether you're willing to live without some of the things on your wish list. But otherwise don't let the average get you down. Home supply is different everywhere and if you are looking in a popular price point it will be more difficult to find a good place.
We only visited a handful of houses in person. There were many we wanted to see, but they all had contracts on them by the time of our showing.
We looked at thousands online.
When we finally did find our home, I won't lie, part of it was that I was tired of looking and this one was good enough. Although I don't feel like we settled and I don't think we could have gotten better for the money.
I have looked at hundreds online, been to a handful of open houses and have had 22 private showings. I have made offers on 4 houses and lost all of them to investors.
I wouldn't pay attention to any of those stats. You will know when you find a house worth offering on.
We've been to 4 open-houses so far this cycle.
Last time we probably looked at ... 75? in person. It was awful and I feel terrible for our realtor, but we finally found exactly what we were looking for.
This is sort of my worry-we have friends who settled and who wish they didn't. I don't want to let frustration to make us be like "Fine we'll take it" even though it just isn't what we want. I don't think we are being too crazy with demands at the moment. I think the most out there stuff on our must have list is a fireplace (it gets cold here, I think only one house we looked at didn't have one) and an ensuite bathroom for the master. But maybe there is some subconscious stuff going on there as well. I think if by spring we are still having these issues we will have to re-evaluate criteria or price point.
Same for us. We didn't "have" to move, so we were able to be a bit pickier and could wait until the right house came along. With my very first home (pre DH), I knew an area I wanted to live in and the inventory in my price range was very limited so I only looked at 3.
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When DH bought the house we live in now he looked at about 60 houses.
We've only looked at about 10 this time, mostly because we are moving specifically because my house crush is in the market so we are looking at others simply to make sure there is nothing better we like.
I agree though, the pickin's are slim right now.
Well we found this one- it was the first one we saw, but we looked at around 18 more in the 2 weeks following so we had an idea of what was out there and something to compare it to.
My friend looked at 30 in 3 days, 8 months pregnant!
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I think we've seen around 12 or so. We just put in an offer on one today and are in the counter offer process.
Not sure where you are, but our realtor warned us that homes on the market in spring will be higher priced than the ones out there now. The area we're looking in is a top notch school district, so things tend to fly off the market in ~5 days.