Been trying to buy a house because my rent is going up(and it will continue to do so) and a mortgage would be around the same as what my rent will become in a few years anyway so I figure I might as well build equity and have a house for my family.
Thing is the current housing market is nuts. Houses are put on sale with strict deadlines of "accepting all offers due 12pm 5 days from now" creating a false sense of urgency and to top is off the process is super opaque. You dont know what other people are offering so unlike an actual auction you cant start low and hopefully get a good value. Nope it's a black box and the asking price isnt of any help because that was just an advertising tactic to get more people to look at the house.
So you have to do research based on past history of other homes sold in the area of the same type recently and then place a competitive bid based on that. Of course everyone else is also doing that so you have to make your bid "competitive" and give a little more. How much more is hard to say and you only really get the one bid. So 12 pm comes along and the anticipation in your stomach is insane because this could be it you could be a homeowner and you did put in a competitive bid, and then sometime between immediately and just before bed you get a message saying they went with another offer.
ITS SO DAMN FRUSTRATING! Houses that I bid $30,000 over asking price and someone still swooped in and bid even more. And of course since the process is a black box you dont get told what bid beat you out or what the other bids were(dont want the 2nd place bid to decrease their bid in the event the 1st place falls through). You'll find out eventual final sale price a few months from now when everything finishes closing. I imagine the issue is other people got frustrated with the game over the last few months and now if they see a house thats ok they go all in with their max offer instead of a smart offer.
Oh and the market is limited, but somehow out of sheer coincidence after one round of sales is done the realtors manage to find another round of homes to put on the market. I'm convinced the realtors are limiting the supply on purpose and letting homes trickle in because the ACT NOW PUT IN THE BEST OFFER OVER ASKING tactic probably doesnt work as well if there are more than a handful of homes for sale at a time.
Its so frustrating I just want a house to live in and raise my soon to be born child, and Im willing to pay you what you're asking for it! The worst part is the housing market in my area shot up a lot over the years. So these people playing bid wars are making 100k profit AT LEAST for a house they bought just 5 years ago! And then theres the old people who bought the house for pretty much nothing 30+ years ago
Sorry for my long wall of text rant
I get where you're coming from, but sight unseen in a sellers market is a terrible idea. I commented above about the details of my experience, but there are so many shitty houses with major problems that are evident the second you walk into them. This approach ties up earnest money and can potentially prevent you from being able to jump on a good house.
Yep. We ran into this issue and we didn't even do it sight unseen, we were just moving so fast that we got sloppy. It's hard to continue to be diligent after 30+ failed bids. Ended up with a bid for a house that needed significant and immediate repairs that we couldn't afford. Ended up walking away and losing our earnest money instead of keeping the house, but we're much happier for it.
Our budget also continually increased throughout our search. The same houses we were bidding on at the start increased by 50k just in the couple of months spent searching. We only found inventory once we broke into not a starter home budget category. This has resulted in us being pretty house poor to start, but ultimately we plan to stay here for 20+ years so it hasn't mattered after those lean first few years.
Earnest money is customary, not mandatory. You can tell the seller's agent you're open to the inclusion of earnest money in their counter offer. Alternatively, you can specify that the earnest money be held by the buyer's agent rather than the seller or escrow agent.
Your earnest money also binds the seller. They can't accept a better offer coming in later while they are under contract with you. I have seen sellers double the buyer's earnest money so they can accept a significantly higher offer coming in later from another buyer.
In a seller's market, the buyer needs to get into the negotiation phase as soon as possible. Use inspection contingencies for a cooling-off period.