I had no idea buying a home was so intense

[MJForum Poster]

Sometimes it is just not possible. I know of people in the Bay Area who had to drop the inspection and financing contingencies. They just took the inspector along on their first viewing or to the open house to point out any glaring faults.

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Argh, I would have major concerns about that. There are so many issues and tests that need to be done.

One of my favorite channels is The Home Inspector, its a bunch of quick, less than 5 minute videos about things he finds when doing home inspections that you would never think of.

 

[plain]

I thought you were talking about my home until I read the Michigan part.

 

[XuandeXun]

I experienced the other side of this, with my wife acting as Power of Attorney for a recently sold home in SW Ohio that we were living in. We were in a rush to hit the spring market, with a house in poor condition (no working a/c or heat, physical damage, old house, wiring problems, etc). Instead of getting asking price, we were advised to shoot around 10-20% higher than what we could live with for our asking price, then take the first reasonable offer on it. That ended up being a little under 40k when our listing price was 44k. That sale was to a house flipper who will likely invest around 30-40k themselves, then try to resell for 100k.

We wanted to get more, but the house was literally falling apart by the week. Just in the short time we were on the market, the water heater went out and we had to bounce around in extended stay hotels to close the sale.

 

[Expy]

Highest bidder usually wins out. If you're not prepared to pay a premium in a house then don't expect your bid to hold out very long if there are multiple bidders on it.

 

[qaopjlll]

Meanwhile my former landlord's been trying to sell his borderline luxury apartment for over 15 months and hasn't had a single offer.

 

[Phantom]

Maybe I got lucky? Visited only one house, said I wanted it same day and negociated a price all within a week. For 250k CAD in a nice suburb. Kind of a small house, but we don't really care because at that price we can still afford to live. Lots of people buy 400k+ houses, have car loans etc. and can't even catch a break because they're basically spending 100% of their income on mortgage+other debt.

 

[Dr Funk PhD]

As someone who bought a house nine months ago... yes, yes it is.

And we were REALLY lucky too. I checked MLS and saw it the day it was listed, scheduled a showing the next day then made an offer the day after. And even by then there were already 6 or 7 showings lined up. What worked in our favor if that the place was disgusting. Not cleaned, cigarette smoke and water stains, water in the basement, lawn covered in weeds, just a mess. And even then we put in an offer and got in a multiple way bidding war and we ended up paying 27.5k over asking with no inspection.

Luckily there was nothing seriously wrong with the house and after about 20k in renovations it's really staying to look great. It's in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in my city and identical houses are going for over 50 or 60k over what we paid in purchase price plus renovation costs less than a year ago.

Anyways the point is you've gotta be decisive!

 

[Petruccis Biceps]

I know how you feel OP. Wife and I are looking for a house since January. There was a house that went up over the weekend, sold last month for 210k,already back on market at 430k. Simple reno-flip. The market is ridiculous right now.

 

[ty_hot]

My last flat: I stayed a year renting the place, decided to leave. Talk to the agency about that, they asked to come to take pictures and advertise the home. Next day they came at lunch, took photos, posted the ad. In the afternoon they called me asking if they could bring people to visit next day, 4 people in the morning, 4 in the afternoon. (yes, in a matter of 2 or 3 hours they set 8 people up to visit). Next day in the morning 4 people visited it, after lunch they called and said they didnt need to show the flat anymore in the afternoon because someone already made the proposal and it was already accepted. Little detail: new rent price was 20% higher than what I was paying only a year earlier.

Welcome to Barcelona. Both that flat and the place we current rent were similar, we visited the place and confirmed our interest a few hours later or during the visit itself. If you need half a day to think you lose the place.

 

[PrimeBeef]

Build your own then. My wife and I kept looking in the Austin area. Our budget was 350-600k and nothing we saw really fit what we wanted and we built our own for 550k that in my mind is better than anything I've seen for us and am very happy with it. The only problem is it takes 6-8months. But atleast everything is the way you want.

The most expensive thing about owning a home is selling it so it's best to get what you want and keep it for a while.

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Wouldn't the most expensive part be the interest paid over the length if the mortgage? More often you 2 or more times the homes value just in interest.

 

[Kill3r7]

It sounds like you live in a very competitive housing market or the house was listed way below market making it a perfect target for flippers.

 

[ParanormalFupa]

The worst is getting your game plan together hitting that house showing ASAP and putting in an offer slightly after only to hear back that they will be taking highest best offer by the end of the weekend...

 

[Br3wnor]

Sorry to hear OP, it's rough out there in some markets. Around here you have to make over ask price offers within a few days to have any shot, it's crazy. We got our house in spring 2016, right before the market really took off, I consider us very lucky.

 

[thewienke]

Seems like most well maintained and newer houses that are sub $300k in the midwest are gone in a day or two especially if they have 4 bedrooms. We sold our house in St. Louis in 2 days.

My wife and I were looking at houses between $300 and $400 and we had weeks to consider some of them but these were like 4000 sq ft+ houses. Anything more manageable in the 2500 sq ft range at like $250 would be listed and sold within hours sometimes.

 

[Dr. Mario]

I bought my house in 2008, when it was the previous peak (of course one month later the whole financial world and housing market collapses). I think we made about ten bids before we got lucky. The good thing is that if you keep asking for how much it went you get a very acute sense of the market, better than some realtors. In the end we got our house by bidding €10,300 over asking price. The 300 was meaningless in the total amount, but there were 3 other bids of exactly 10k over, and so the sellers thought 300 is a nice bonus. Another good thing is that actually the house we got was way better than all the previous ones we missed out on, precisely because of how acute your sense of the area and market becomes.
The bad thing is that yeah, you're making the biggest investment you ever made at that point in your life on a whim. People fret longer about which game console to buy than jumping into a €300k investment.

 

[Deleted member 17402]

Am I foolish to think that buying a co-op would be relatively easier, in that there isn't as much of an inspection required, given that it's continuously maintained by the building? Because if my girlfriend and I were to move away from renting toward owning, it would definitely be a co-op.

I say this as someone who moved into a large home with his sibling last summer, but the place is effectively his - he mortgaged it, he's furnished it, etc., and I pay him rent to live there. I was with him throughout the process. He didn't have to rush to market as quickly as some of the anecdotes here, but he still had to make an offer within a few weeks. He even had an inspection on the place, which identified some termites that were easily removed, but a year later he's had to renovate and excavate around the entire flank of the house to build a drainage system and replace large pieces of the back of the home because there were termites that weren't found during the inspection.

He's sunk $40k into the home just to address these two issues. I cannot imagine putting an offer on a home and eventually owning it without ever having done an inspection. I also can't handle the idea of having to unexpectedly dish out money to fix something in my home. I'd rather pay the maintenance fee of a co-op to handle all of that.

 

[CaptainK]

I bought my condo the same day it was listed. When I saw it posted in the morning, I emailed my realtor immediately for a viewing. I left work early to see it in the afternoon. Submitted the offer around 5pm, with no financing or inspection clauses. The sellers accepted before 9pm. So basically it was available for 12 hours max. I think I was very lucky that there was only one other offer, which I guess I out-bid. Another unit I bid on had 5 offers on day 1, whew.

 

[BDS]

My parents just sold their house about 48 hours after putting it on the market.

 

[stone616]

Put my house on the market had two offers over listing same day.

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Did they view the home first?

 

[Rocketz]

Metro Detroit here. I know the feeling.

I bought in Ferndale last summer and it was the same way. We saw the house the day it came on the market and put the offer in. We found out we got the place the next day. There were offers higher than ours but we had a better down payment and could close faster.

We were 15k over asking but the house was priced low. We still came in under the appraisal. We lost first offer of a place in Berkley but it went the same way. Saw the place when it went on the market, all offers were due that evening.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

As someone trying to buy a house, most of this thread is just concerning. Looked at one i liked, threw an offer in, it was countered within minutes. I asked the seller to give me the weekend to check some stuff, tried to put in a better offer on Monday, and was told he went with the other one. Like dude, I'm going "I'll give you more money if you wait and let me talk to my banker" but he wanted his home sold NOW even though you can't do jack shit on a Saturday night.

Process fucking sucks, and I don't have the funds to go over asking price on the homes I'm looking at. Hell, most are already overvalued.

 

[stone616]

Metro Detroit here. I know the feeling.

I bought in Ferndale last summer and it was the same way. We saw the house the day it came on the market and put the offer in. We found out we got the place the next day. There were offers higher than ours but we had a better down payment and could close faster.

We were 15k over asking but the house was priced low. We still came in under the appraisal. We lost first offer of a place in Berkley but it went the same way. Saw the place it went on the market, all offers were due that evening.

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Your down payment matters to a buyer?

 

[whatsinaname]

Your down payment matters to a buyer?

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If everything else were close (or equal), yeah. Someone putting down 20% will more likely not have financing fall through. A 250k offer with 20% down is worth considering over a $255k offer with 5% down.

 

[Rivenblade]

We shopped for our house in January/February. It was pretty stress free.

Sorry to hear about your stressful experience. :-/

 

[Rocketz]

Your down payment matters to a buyer?

Click to shrink...

If everything else were close (or equal), yeah. Someone putting down 20% will more likely not have financing fall through. A 250k offer with 20% down is worth considering over a $255k offer with 5% down.

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What whatsinaname said is basically what happened. We had 20% down but a $5,000 less offer. The other person didn't have a down payment (our realtor was shocked someone was doing this).

Seller went with us since we were less of a financial risk of falling through.

 

[Kill3r7]

Am I foolish to think that buying a co-op would be relatively easier, in that there isn't as much of an inspection required, given that it's continuously maintained by the building? Because if my girlfriend and I were to move away from renting toward owning, it would definitely be a co-op.

I say this as someone who moved into a large home with his sibling last summer, but the place is effectively his - he mortgaged it, he's furnished it, etc., and I pay him rent to live there. I was with him throughout the process. He didn't have to rush to market as quickly as some of the anecdotes here, but he still had to make an offer within a few weeks. He even had an inspection on the place, which identified some termites that were easily removed, but a year later he's had to renovate and excavate around the entire flank of the house to build a drainage system and replace large pieces of the back of the home because there were termites that weren't found during the inspection.

He's sunk $40k into the home just to address these two issues. I cannot imagine putting an offer on a home and eventually owning it without ever having done an inspection. I also can't handle the idea of having to unexpectedly dish out money to fix something in my home. I'd rather pay the maintenance fee of a co-op to handle all of that.

Click to shrink...

When it comes to co-ops it depends where you live and how well others perceive you would fit in the "neighborhood" because the board review/interview process is a hassle.

 

[MrHedin]

When we shopped for our current house we lost out of three before we found it due to bid wars. When we looked at ours now we were likely the among the first people to view it and put an offer in before it had even been listed for 12 hours. Luckily we didn't have a bid war on this one which I always felt strange because I think its a much better house than the ones we tried to get before. It took a whole four days for us to sell our old house and we got a lot more than we were expecting going in.

 

[Petruccis Biceps]

Am I foolish to think that buying a co-op would be relatively easier, in that there isn't as much of an inspection required, given that it's continuously maintained by the building? Because if my girlfriend and I were to move away from renting toward owning, it would definitely be a co-op.

Click to shrink...

I live in a co op right now, fuck HOAs.

I originally felt the same way, I got into a co op because i didn't want to waste money renting and still have he benefits of maintenance taking care of stuff and then being able to sell it later.

Unless the HOA is REALLY good at what they do, stay away imo. My place, we're responsible for everything on the inside, the outside is maintained by the HOA. They're slow as fuck and they're assholes on top of that. Annoying rules like not allowed to have a BBQ and crap like that. I'll never move into a condo/co op ever again. I know not all HOAs are bad, but my experience with them soured me for life on it.

I had a leak in my ceiling in the closet next to the gas burner Feb 2018. I wasn't sure where it was coming from but somewhere or something in the attic was leaking. Attic isn't our responsibility. Called and called and called for months, nobody ever returned calls or came to look at it. Finally in June, I talked to one of the board members and finally they started taking a look. They said it was a leak in the roof and fixed it. Two days later, still leaking. They then went on the roof and said it was a issue with the the gutters(I'm on the 2nd floor). A week later, leaking again. I told them at the start to look in the attic to see the source but they never listened to me. Finally they went up there and noticed that whoever put the new burner in, installed it without sealing the pipes, so the pipes were leaking condensation onto the floor of the attic and penetrating my ceiling. It took NINE months since I started calling to fix this.

Then a couple of weeks later on Thanksgiving day, a squirrel in the attic(a problem that apparently they cant seem fix) smashed through a weak spot in the attic floor and terrorized my wife while she was getting dressed. I had to call my Dad over and luckily I had a catch and release animal trap(again, due to squirrels in the fucking attic). We finally managed to trap it, but it shit all over the bedroom in the process. They never returned my calls or apologized and my ceiling still has a wood panel my Dad helped me screw into the ceiling temporarily. The only saving grace of this story is that my Dad and I now have a Christmas Vacation-esque "SQUIRRELLLL!!!!!!" memory we shared together.

I'm never gonna allow myself to be at the mercy of a shitass maintenace crew and board ever again. "Why PetruccisBiceps did you not try to fix it yourself?" Because of HOA rules they can litigate if you attempt to fix certain things yourself(like the burner). Fuck that noise.

And dont skimp on the inspection unless you really know what to look for or have a trusted person that can walk along with you and really point stuff out.

 

[shadowzinthedark]

Yep welcome to the housing market, in Sydney (Au) when the housing boom was happening, ppl were buying houses unseen just off pics.

 

[stone616]

If everything else were close (or equal), yeah. Someone putting down 20% will more likely not have financing fall through. A 250k offer with 20% down is worth considering over a $255k offer with 5% down.

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I'm only putting down 5% because I refuse to cash out my stock portfolio to put down more. I actually plan to put down more and as time goes on I keep saving to add to my down payment but I've got more than enough assets to afford the home I put the offer in for. My financing wouldn't have fallen through. I guess I need to tell my credit union to raise that 3% they put on my pre-approval letter.

I guess it doesn't really matter because I'm not willing to do the sorts of things people in this thread say you need to do to get a house so I'll be stuck as a renter long term anyway. I won't waive my inspection and I'm through putting in offers for homes on the same day. The last two homes I put in offers for I was lukewarm on at best. One of them I put in an offer for $13,000 under asking knowing I'd probably lose it.

 

[fick]

bought a house recently. It's a new construction, so there's obviously the things that go along with that. But, the biggest advantage was there was no bidding or competition.

Walked in on Saturday with no agent, looked at the house, put our name down for a 24-hour hold, then came back the next day to put our good faith money down. Easiest fucking real estate deal in the world.

My brother-in-law in LA went to look at a property recently. Wasn't told until he arrived that the house was condemned and he'd just be buying the lot. Now that's some bullshit.

 

[Torpedo Vegas]

I bought a home 3 years ago and it was nuts. Homes were selling the day they went up. I got my home because I saw it on Zillow it had been put up a half hour before I called. My agent got me in to see it that night at 8:00PM before they started showing it the next morning. I put in a full price offer and it was excepted. My home was only on the market for 4 hours. I had put offers in on 6 different place before that. It was insane.

 

[Deleted member 25712]

It's insanity to sign up for a 30 year mortgage and commit to something after maybe taking 30 minutes to view it. Thankfully there are some mitigating factors, like an inspection and appraisal...hopefully the whole thing is vetted appropriately by people who know wtf they're doing. But yeah...I've rolled the dice twice and it's thankfully worked out both times, but it's definitely a nerve racking and stupid process.

 

[whatsinaname]

I'm only putting down 5% because I refuse to cash out my stock portfolio to put down more. I actually plan to put down more and as time goes on I keep saving to add to my down payment but I've got more than enough assets to afford the home I put the offer in for. My financing wouldn't have fallen through. I guess I need to tell my credit union to raise that 3% they put on my pre-approval letter.

I guess it doesn't really matter because I'm not willing to do the sorts of things people in this thread say you need to do to get a house so I'll be stuck as a renter long term anyway. I won't waive my inspection and I'm through putting in offers for homes on the same day. The last two homes I put in offers for I was lukewarm on at best. One of them I put in an offer for $13,000 under asking knowing I'd probably lose it.

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True, and that is a call you need to make. I rented for 9 years for the same reason. Investment returns meant I was ahead of buying a house even considering rent. I finally bought last year because of non-financial reasons and at a point I could put down 20%+.

But you also have to consider the SE Michigan market and how rents are going up like crazy. Not sure what area you are in but it has been crazy where I am.

 

[evrythngwastakn]

When my folks sold their house a few years ago they got 12 offers in one day. The winning bid was $83,000 over asking. No subjects. For a meh house in the burbs. Vancouver housing is still insanely priced but not as many crazy bidding wars anymore.

I'm pumped to pay $500k cdn for a condo. Sigh.

 

[FreeMufasa]

Looking to buy next year here in Japan. Anyone that's been through the process care to share their experience?

 

[fick]

It's insanity to sign up for a 30 year mortgage and commit to something after maybe taking 30 minutes to view it.

Click to shrink...

Not really. My wife and I had been looking (mainly online, some open houses) for months, trying to get a feel of different areas and what we could realistically afford. I kept telling her that once we found "the house" we'd know. And we did, hopefully.

Same thing went with the first house I bought with my ex. We had looked for months and months. Even fired our agent because we were going to take a break from looking. Then we saw one pop up on Zillow, called my friend who lived in the neighborhood and was an agent himself, and set up an appointment for the next day. We saw it and knew instantly, and put in our offer that night.

Plus, like you said, there is the inspection + appraisal. And in the long run, if you find out you made a huge mistake, losing the good faith money would be worth it.

 

[Deleted member 17402]

I live in a co op right now, fuck HOAs.

I originally felt the same way, I got into a co op because i didn't want to waste money renting and still have he benefits of maintenance taking care of stuff and then being able to sell it later.

Unless the HOA is REALLY good at what they do, stay away imo. My place, we're responsible for everything on the inside, the outside is maintained by the HOA. They're slow as fuck and they're assholes on top of that. Annoying rules like not allowed to have a BBQ and crap like that. I'll never move into a condo/co op ever again. I know not all HOAs are bad, but my experience with them soured me for life on it.

I had a leak in my ceiling in the closet next to the gas burner Feb 2018. I wasn't sure where it was coming from but somewhere or something in the attic was leaking. Attic isn't our responsibility. Called and called and called for months, nobody ever returned calls or came to look at it. Finally in June, I talked to one of the board members and finally they started taking a look. They said it was a leak in the roof and fixed it. Two days later, still leaking. They then went on the roof and said it was a issue with the the gutters(I'm on the 2nd floor). A week later, leaking again. I told them at the start to look in the attic to see the source but they never listened to me. Finally they went up there and noticed that whoever put the new burner in, installed it without sealing the pipes, so the pipes were leaking condensation onto the floor of the attic and penetrating my ceiling. It took NINE months since I started calling to fix this.

Then a couple of weeks later on Thanksgiving day, a squirrel in the attic(a problem that apparently they cant seem fix) smashed through a weak spot in the attic floor and terrorized my wife while she was getting dressed. I had to call my Dad over and luckily I had a catch and release animal trap(again, due to squirrels in the fucking attic). We finally managed to trap it, but it shit all over the bedroom in the process. They never returned my calls or apologized and my ceiling still has a wood panel my Dad helped me screw into the ceiling temporarily. The only saving grace of this story is that my Dad and I now have a Christmas Vacation-esque "SQUIRRELLLL!!!!!!" memory we shared together.

I'm never gonna allow myself to be at the mercy of a shitass maintenace crew and board ever again. "Why PetruccisBiceps did you not try to fix it yourself?" Because of HOA rules they can litigate if you attempt to fix certain things yourself(like the burner). Fuck that noise.

And dont skimp on the inspection unless you really know what to look for or have a trusted person that can walk along with you and really point stuff out.

Click to shrink...

This sounds like a nightmare Ahhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[Soapbox Killer]

I just closed 6 weeks ago in just outside of Philadelphia. Shit is becoming bananas. People are putting in offers site unseen. Either that or some inside trading is going on. My wife would find a house and it would have an "contingent" label within 6 hours. WTF? There are still a lot of houses on the market but Philly is becoming a very cut throat location (has been for a few years)


I had to "overbid" on the house we bought since there multiple offers in. I just wanted to move out the hood so bad I just said fuck it. $5,000 aint that much in the grand scheme and we had $10K sellers assist and no down payment since I'm a VET. I only had to pay like $4,000 total out of pocket including inspection and appraisal.

 

[stone616]

People are putting in offers site unseen

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This has to be the case here. There's noway people are properly viewing the homes so fast. I don't understand how people could do that either. Homes cost too much to buy without even seeing what you're buying unless you're an investor with big money at an auction.

 

[Deleted member 25712]

Not really. My wife and I had been looking (mainly online, some open houses) for months, trying to get a feel of different areas and what we could realistically afford. I kept telling her that once we found "the house" we'd know. And we did, hopefully.

Same thing went with the first house I bought with my ex. We had looked for months and months. Even fired our agent because we were going to take a break from looking. Then we saw one pop up on Zillow, called my friend who lived in the neighborhood and was an agent himself, and set up an appointment for the next day. We saw it and knew instantly, and put in our offer that night.

Plus, like you said, there is the inspection + appraisal. And in the long run, if you find out you made a huge mistake, losing the good faith money would be worth it.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I'm probably overstating it the way I did...sometimes though I still see something new or weird about my house even after being in it over a year and I'm like what the hell? How have I not noticed that? And how would I ever have noticed it on the first walk through, where we felt pressured to get an offer in like 4 hours after it was on the market? But, there are those people whose job it is to essentially make sure the bank isn't buying a lemon, so hopefully they know what they're doing at least.

 

[Deleted member 907]

Houses by me start at 600k for a beater...lolz.

I've seen houses that are listed at 800k that go 100k over asking. Places that are over 1.6 mil go for 300-400k over asking on the regular.

 

[Devil]

Yeah, it's terrible in Berlin as well... I'm already losing motivation to keep looking for anything decent. Building one ourselves would be even more stressful with how the conditions currently are. We are already looking at apartments instead of houses to buy, but that's not much better either.

 

[makonero]

My wife and I just bought our new house (closed yesterday!) and yeah, the market is rough. We used Redfin and often would plan on attending open houses that never happened because the house would sell before then.

For our house, we viewed it the same day it went up, put an offer in for asking price and asked the seller to pay the closing costs. The seller got six other offers that day, but apparently we were the most financially stable because they countered us and asked us to go five thou above asking and pay the closing costs. They wanted a firm sale because they already had a house bought apparently and our agent was very good at their job. We agreed to the $5000 more but not the closing costs and we still got it. We did have an inspection (pristine condition!) and have had no bumps in the road at all. The seller is even paying us $100 a day for a few days they have to stay past closing so that's cash for us!

At any rate, it takes a lot of luck right now and also a lot of gumption. Good luck OP.

 

[jakeh111]

Just closed on a duplex and I feel your pain OP.

 

[Poltergust]

Honestly, my friend and I got really lucky when it came to finding a house a few months ago, which is good because we were pressed for time with our lease ending last month.

Basically, we only went through like 9 or so different places but we somehow ended up with:

-The house we overall preferred (his #1 and my #2, but he's the owner and I'm only renting from him)
-Waiting a week (!) after our initial showing to make an offer on it (surprisingly, a lot of the worse houses for similar prices actually got sold during this period)
-Paying asking price (which is honestly super cheap considering this was a flip, with new roofing and A/C)
-Close to work and other places of interest
-Nice area
-Humongous living room and yard

I was seriously suspicious that there was something wrong with the place because I simply couldn't believe how we lucked into this, but after inspection turned up OK and after living there for about a month, I have very few complaints.

 

[Futureman]

If you are relying on Zillow to find new homes, you are one step behind other people.

Our real estate agent has us hooked into this MLS Matrix system and we get emails based off our price range and location. They show up on there before Zillow.

 

[Deleted member 11069]

Such a big jump and after an inspection (if even, depending on the market) you just have to hope for the best.
"Hope it works out fine!"

While on the other hand you scour the internet for reviews and opinions (for hours) about a dumb HDMI cable that costs a couple of bucks.

 

[Soapbox Killer]

This has to be the case here. There's noway people are properly viewing the homes so fast. I don't understand how people could do that either. Homes cost too much to buy without even seeing what you're buying unless you're an investor with big money at an auction.

Click to shrink...

I think maybe 40% of the market are investors. We looked at damn near 50 houses before settling. Some of those were shells and rehabs (203k Rehab loans) and some were basic flips. There were a couple that were listed wrong and went under contract before going back onto the market again. Keep a list of the ones that go off the market too quickly, they often fall through.

 

[GoldenEye 007]

Yeah last year it was kind of crazy in DFW when we were looking. Especially at the 150k-ish range we were targeting. That's prime for cash offers and investment properties. So we'd frequently try to setup showings for homes when they came online and either that day or the next, they already have offers.

Open houses with people flowing in and out almost non-stop. The agent said yeah things are a bit crazy there, but once you hit around $200k-250k or so, it slows down quite a bit.

Futureman Yeah good point on the internal MLS systems. We did use that with our agent over Zillow, etc. but even with that, it was still crazy.