Metro Phoenix Area: 2, Brad & Beth: 0
Yesterday was a real heartbreaker in our ongoing home search. As I mentioned in my last entry, our realtor has been sending us home listings up to 3 times a day, depending on if new ones enter the market in the area we're interested in. On Tuesday evening, a strong contender popped up, and on Wednesday morning, I decided what the heck - I'll go take a look at this thing so that it doesn't sit until the weekend and everyone else gets a peek.
So I call up our realtor, arrange for a hasty viewing yesterday at 1pm and check it out. I loved the place, so again - wanting to avoid the unpleasantness of last weekend, decided I'd better get Beth to take a look ASAP. The soonest she could see it was yesterday around 6pm, since she got off work at 5 and had class at 7. The drive from her work to the house was roughly 45 minutes, so she'd be late for her class, but if she liked it, we could potentially just end the whole hunt right then and put all this aggressive home-market crap behind us.
We arranged with the seller to meet there between 6 and 6:30 pm. Then, fate steps in: our realtor called us around 4:30 and mentioned that, shockingly, a bid had just been placed on the house for above the asking price but that we had time to place a bid if we wanted, since the seller has 24 hours to accept. I felt pretty strongly about this one, so we talked it over with our realtor and decided that $5k over the asking price should seal it without grossly overvaluing the house and potentially running into appraisal issues. Beth gets off work and we haul ass over there. We are no more than half a mile away when our realtor calls us to tell us that the seller just accepted the offer he got earlier in the day. This was at 6:15 pm, and let me tell you - it felt pretty devastating. On the plus side, Beth never got to see the inside of the house, so she'll never know what she missed.
So now we have an all-new, even more aggressive plan. If I see a house that I think we'll both end up loving, from now on I'm going to make an offer on the spot, sight-unseen to Beth. How could this possibly go wrong? ;-)
Comments
That's kind of weird. Usually the seller likes nothing more than to set up a bidding war between two people who want to buy the house. I've never heard of anyone accepting a bid so quickly when they already have an appointment for someone else to see it. (At least, that's how it is when it's regular individuals sell their house, maybe it's different when it's just people turning around properties for profit.)
If it's any consolation, the first house my wife and I bid on we didn't get, and it was pretty heartbreaking because we'd been looking for a while and that was the first one that really suited us. But it did push us to go a little higher with our next offer, and wouldn't you know, the next house we looked at a week or two later was much better, and this time we got it. This is a common experience among homeowners I've talked to, not sure if it's psychological or just the fact the more you like it the more you are willing to pay, especially knowing how much you'd intended to pay for the previous, inferior house.
Hang in there, don't panic...
Posted by: Matt Diamond | January 27, 2005 07:10 AM
I agree with Matt that it was unusual for a seller to accept so quickly in a hot market. My experience comes in the Bay Area of California, talk about a hot market!
My wife and I have been through what you describe three times now and it does get easier...a little. You do want to be careful that you don't have major buyer's remorse after you buy and have to pay the mortgage and find things wrong with the property. You will have some no matter what, so be prepared.
On our third property, which we bought in Denver, we decided that it was better to find the right location and type of property rather than finding one which made us all warm and fuzzy inside right away. You always make changes to a place, so we thought, why not buy one where we had that in mind? It helped a lot because we looked at properties that were lower in cost because they needed work done and we factored that in to the price.
Anyway, just my $0.02. Good luck from a casual observer of your blog.
Posted by: Pat Wolpert | January 27, 2005 11:58 AM
Wait, you are in AZ... I just donned on me that a good friend of mine's ex is very big into residential real-estate in phoenix. He has a lot of connections and is very much against the over-commodization and over-commercialization of the housing developments down there. Even if you don't need it, I will give him a call and ask. He may have a little further insight or advice for your situation.
Posted by: rpg | January 27, 2005 02:11 PM
"Even if you don't need it, I will give him a call and ask. He may have a little further insight or advice for your situation."
Any advice or insight would be very welcome at this point. Thanks. :-)
Posted by: Brad Oliver | January 28, 2005 12:42 PM