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how long to find the right house
How long did it take you to find a house? We are first time homebuyers and have been looking online and at open houses since January. We just decided on a realtor last week and she took us to see 4 houses Monday of this week. We really like one of them and she's taking us back for a second showing next week. They just replaced the roof (well the construction will be done next week) and aren't upping the price at all so our agent says it will go quick after that. Are we crazy to put an offer in on a house two weeks after we get an agent?
I really love the house and H likes it a lot. The only things we aren't thrilled about are the pool in the backyard (and thus the lack of yard to play sports, etc in) and that it doesn't have a room for H to have a "man cave" in. The house is 115K and we were prepared to spend up to 140K, so if we buy we would keep some of our down payment in the bank in case we wanted to remove the pool and get the yard back in a year or two. We haven't seen anything near this nice at this size for this price since we've been looking and I want to jump on it, but at the same time we are freaking out because we expected to be looking for longer than this before putting in an offer. Are we crazy or is this normal?
Re: how long to find the right house
Oh God, I hate the expression "Man Cave". It's so idiotic. Please don't encourage your husband to use such a stupid phrase.
...but back to your question. It took us almost 4 years, and that's providing we get the house we made an offer on. We still have less than 4 weeks. We were really picky about where we wanted to live, with our top priority being privacy, and by privacy I mean total and utter seclusion. Not a neighbor in site.
I say if you found a house this early in the game you love, take it!
If you love it, do it! It took us about a month.
That said...a pool would be a deal-breaker for me. I wouldn't want to spend $$$ filling it in / sodding over it, and around here, you have to disclose when you sell if there are "underground hazards" such as "filled in pools", etc....
We were just like you, a bit worse in fact because we found a house before even going out with our realtor. We were just randomly going to open houses in March but we weren't planning on starting our hunt until May as our lease isn't up until July. But we found a house we loved one Sunday. We contacted our realtor to see it with him. He knew we didn't have to jump on it that day so we were going to give it some time but we couldn't get the house out of our minds so we decided to move our hunt up and had the realtor show us a few houses the following weekend. We loved the house but I wasn't going to put an offer in before seeing what else was out there. None of the houses we saw came close and while stalking out the neighborhood we noticed people coming out after a showing. We were so scared to lose it, we knew it was the one. We scheduled a second showing and decided to put an offer in that night. From the day we saw it at the open house to when we offered was just two weeks. When it's the one, it's the one whether it's 2 days into the hunt or 2 years.
But I was just as surprised and somewhat skeptical as you about finding it so quickly. But now that we are under contract and counting down to closing (June 8th!), we can't be happier.
I think if you find something you love and suits your needs, there's no reason to look for an arbitrary period of time. We are actually under contract on a home and we only looked for a week (though we did check out open houses and online listings regularly for quite a while).
To me, though, the pool would be a big enough issue that I would probably keep looking. It sounds like you have enough extra room in your budget to get what you really want. This early on, that seems like a pretty big compromise to make.
If it's the right house, then pull the trigger.
DH and I were like you looking online and informally for a long time. When we went out with an REA we ended up putting on offer on a house (we saw it 3 times) that we saw on our first day out.
The pool would have been a dealbreaker for us since I don't want one nor would I want to deal with removing it. However, if you are fine with that and the rest of the house is what you are hoping for, then there is not set time you "have" to look.
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If you love it and its the best you have seen, go for it. Since you have been looking online for a few months you probably have a pretty good idea of what homes in your area are selling for.
We were first time buyers as well. We searched online for about 6 months to a year on and off before we got serious and got an agent. We started looking with an agent in late January and attempted to make an offer on a house early March but it didn't work out. After that, we said bye bye to our first agent because she was pretty much useless. We got a new agent and were under contract by the end of March on our dream first home.
I would say for your first home staying in budget is a good thing. We had set up a budget up to 150k and actually ended up spending 155k but we were okay with going over by that amount because it was a new build and wouldn't need a thing done to it. Plus we could pick everything so we knew it would be our style.
ETA - I will also say when we first started looking I really wanted DH to have his man space basically because I get sick of watching sports all the time and we host his friends for sporting games, etc all the time. We only saw one or two houses that would have had an extra living room for him and he honestly didn't feel like it was that important. Maybe talk to your H and find out if that is a deal breaker for him. If you have an extra bedroom and no kiddos for now, maybe the room could be his man space for a while. A nice tv and recliner would fit perfectly in most bedrooms and still be perfectly fine for him to have his stuff.
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House #1 - 3 months.
House #2 - 4 years
If you have made a good list of needs and wants and agree where to compromise - then buy what meets your list when you find it - whenever that is.
The housing market is different in every area - inventory, what is avialable in your price rance etc
There's always the possibility something "better" will come along no matter what your price range or how long you've looked. I agree with Jenny and Sisugal. From your posts it sounds like you don't love this house as much as you think you should. For this reason, I would continue to look. Ask yourself, how would you feel living there? How would you feel if you wait and it sells to someone else?
It took about two months of serious looking before we found our house, and when we did we loved it and were both confident it was the best thing we could find in our price range, as you mentioned in your op.
I've been doing online looking for several years for our first home, but we just weren't in a position to buy until now. We met with our realtor for the first time in early February, started going to open houses in February (on our own, we weren't expecting to buy until summer/fall), but the right house came on the market at the beginning of March. We went and looked at it one day on our own, the next day with our realtor, and the day after that we were under contract. We closed last week!
I would say go for it if you do your research on removing the pool and know you can afford it. We're going to have to do some minor renovations within the first year, but we ended up buying a house approx. $100,000 less than we thought we would have to spend for what we wanted, so we've got that extra wiggle room in the budget to play around with in doing renovations (and later on additions). Good luck with your decision!!