Buying a house is exhausting and soul crushing

[Earvin Infinity]

July 6, 2020 edit: as the backup buyers, we got the offer on the last house we bid on. The original buyers backed out due to shady reasons and tried to ask for $10,000 less after an inspection that they refuse to give the report on. We're going in for inspection on July 7, 2020 and it's a contingent inspection so we can back out without losing any money if there are major issues with the house.

Original post:
My wife and I have been trying to move into our first very house together since January 2020, and so far we are 0/4. Bidding wars on every house here in WA state, but it is Summer time so everyone is trying to move in before school starts. It's discouraging when you think you put in the best offer possible, yet it's still not good enough. Tough market out there right now, so maybe we should just wait until Fall when people aren't really buying. Just so antsy to move in already... sigh. Anyone else having a tough time buying a house?

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

Moved into our second house about two years ago. Same story even here in the Midwest. Multiple offers over asking were turned down. Super discouraging at the time, no doubt. But ultimately we ended up in a house we love more than any of the others.

My recommendation? Don't get desperate and settle. After marriage, kids, and schooling, a house might just be the third or fourth biggest decision of your life. Don't let 3-6 months of disappointment ruin the next 5-60 years of your life.

Good luck! You'll snag something great!!

 

[BringBackSonics]

My wife and I have been trying to move into our first very house together since January 2020, and so far we are 0/4. Bidding wars on every house here in WA state, but it is Summer time so everyone is trying to move in before school starts. It's discouraging when you think you put in the best offer possible, yet it's still not good enough. Tough market out there right now, so maybe we should just wait until Fall when people aren't really buying. Just so antsy to move in already... sigh. Anyone else having a tough time buying a house?

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Oh man..sorry, Yeah its a freaking bloodbath..even though the economy is tanking, homes are still getting multiple offers and at or over asking price.

 

[whatsinaname]

It definitely is! Keep at it and good luck.

(I started earnestly looking in a Fall, hoping there would be less people looking. Didn't find something till the next March... -_-)

 

[blitzblake]

The thought of buying anything half a millions dollars or more, through a competitive, designed-to-push-you-over-your-limit-in-panic auction is horrifying..

 

[hurlex]

WA is definitely a tough market.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

It took me legit seven months to actually win a bid on a house, and then another two or three to move in because of all the renovations I had to have done. Market is just fucking nonsense right now, and starter homes are tens of thousands more than what they should be. I really like what I bought, but I had to redo all the floors, repaint everything, and overhaul the entire kitchen to make it modern.

The only good thing is I got it for a really nice price because clearly no one else wanted to put in the work :P

Everything else I bid on? Outbid within hours.

 

[BringBackSonics]

Just a note, my barissta recently was striking out in homes, But they found a house on the market, that had HORRIBLE staging/photos, so it looked like a dump. So they got the house they wanted, and at under asking price, because the realtor/seller really didn't do anything for curb value or photo framing or anything.

So maybe find a home that looks' like a mess, but in reality, the pictures are deceiving and the the foundation is there for a good home.

 

[Aprikurt]

Buying mine a year back was a massive emotional and financial toll, so can't imagine what it's like buying during COVID. Best of luck, it'll be worth it in the end!

 

[BringBackSonics]

My brother is one of the top agents in the east side, if you need some guidance, i can give you his contact info.

 

[Earvin Infinity]

Buying mine a year back was a massive emotional and financial toll, so can't imagine what it's like buying during COVID. Best of luck, it'll be worth it in the end!

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We thought, "everyone is at home right now, either on unemployment or WFH so it's probably a good time to buy!"

Everyone else thought this -__-

 

[Deleted member 1086]

Just closed on a house on Monday, but I had a very unique and frankly fortunate circumstance. Basically a family friend had a house they wanted to sell for cheap(to screw over an ex husband as much as possible) and asked if I was interested. With interest rates super low and me using a VA loan I bought this house for 221k with no money down.

now I'm in the fun stage of moving

 

[Petruccis Biceps]

Its a pain in the ass yeah. We closed back in November after about 9 months of searching. I literally would wake up in the morning and as soon as I could would check listings. Then check listings again when I got to work, then again at lunch, then again before I left work. A lot of times you'll see a house pop up on the MLS and within an a half hour already has an accepted offer and inspection scheduled. Its ridiculous. Then you have people swoop in and fuck you with a cash offer.

We once had a listing that showed up on the MLS and within minutes had an accepted offer on it.

 

[Violence Jack]

I went through the same thing 2 years ago, but our realtor gave us a lot of good advice, and we actually beat out someone for our perfect starter home who made an ungodly high cash offer.

Hang in there, and don't get discouraged is my best advice.

 

[Deleted member 69573]

I got lucky in that we put an offer on the first house we inspected and got it a week later.

Our luck soon ran out when we discovered the myriad of issues it had. Burst pipes after a week, bathtub spa which was completely fake, one shower also mostly completely fake, shoddy heater, fucked up electrics, bad diy's everywhere... I could go on.

Could be worse OP. The right house will come.

 

[xxracerxx]

Took around a year and looking at over 110 homes (4 offers, before accepted on our house) for my wife and I to find something, we were not in any rush though.

All in all, I am very happy those first 4 offers fell through, our house is so much better than those.

 

[Ziltoidia 9]

About 5 years ago when market was really starting to heat up, i put in about 5 offers, all of which got rejected due to investors coming in with cash and just buying stuff up. Had to move back home and save for 2 years, spotted a house and amazingly had my offer accepted on first try. It is a long ass process with a lots of ups and down, but also take the perspective that you need it to be "right". On thing my realtor (Who helped me the last 4 years) said was that sometimes things are just not ment to be. When you are in that situation, retreat, regroup, and prep to strike.

 

[Earvin Infinity]

About 5 years ago when market was really starting to heat up, i put in about 5 offers, all of which got rejected due to investors coming in with cash and just buying stuff up. Had to move back home and save for 2 years, spotted a house and amazingly had my offer accepted on first try. It is a long ass process with a lots of ups and down, but also take the perspective that you need it to be "right". On thing my realtor (Who helped me the last 4 years) said was that sometimes things are just not ment to be. When you are in that situation, retreat, regroup, and prep to strike.

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This is good advice and something we keep in mind.

 

[scottbeowulf]

Houses around me will go up for sale then have a sale pending sign within a day. The market is nuts right now.

 

[Ultima_5]

ive been trying for a year. it can get worse lol.

idk what its like where youre at/price wise, but theres no stock anymore and what goes up is gone immediately and sometimes quite a bit over asking. and i live in the midwest

 

[Soapbox Killer]

Just a note, my barissta recently was striking out in homes, But they found a house on the market, that had HORRIBLE staging/photos, so it looked like a dump. So they got the house they wanted, and at under asking price, because the realtor/seller really didn't do anything for curb value or photo framing or anything.

So maybe find a home that looks' like a mess, but in reality, the pictures are deceiving and the the foundation is there for a good home.

Click to shrink...

This is what we did last year when we bought our house.

The pics looked like dogshit. Our realtor said it's a piece of shit but come to find out there were 2 sets of pics out there. One on Redfin and one some other site. It's good thing we went cause this place was a gem.

Can I refinance since interest rates are so cheap?

 

[Futureman]

The market really makes me want to sell my house but then I'm worried I'll be in an apartment for a year making offers and getting turned down.

 

[Wrexis]

I see what you did there OP.

I'm hoping to buy next year. There will be a dip in the market due to Covid. Tbh I feel a bit guilty about it, as I've been waiting 3 or 4 years for a drop.
A number of banks aren't giving mortgages to people who take stimulus/covid payments which sucks. I'm ok, but many people are not.

 

[Brass Body Dave]

Loved the chase, but was in a good situation to leave. It's a buyer's market right now. Inventory is motherfuckin SCARCE. If you're unhappy with your agent, find a new REALTOR, I recommend it...

 

[Anth0ny]

it is

especially when a 1 bedroom condo goes for $590k in your area

and that entry level number is only climbing

 

[Birbos]

Washington in the Seattle area is especially brutal yeah. Never stopped booming.

 

[Firebricks]

Still looking in Austin but so few people are selling right now.

 

[tacocat]

My wife and I have been trying to move into our first very house together since January 2020, and so far we are 0/4. Bidding wars on every house here in WA state, but it is Summer time so everyone is trying to move in before school starts. It's discouraging when you think you put in the best offer possible, yet it's still not good enough. Tough market out there right now, so maybe we should just wait until Fall when people aren't really buying. Just so antsy to move in already... sigh. Anyone else having a tough time buying a house?

Click to shrink...

Stick with it man, It took me like a year and a half to buy a house in San Diego. Put half a dozen offers down on different places. Ended up with the PERFECT house though so it was worth it. The process sucks but you will get there if you are persistent.

 

[Euler]

Me and my gf bought a house back in January. We found 'our' house at the 4th one we looked at. We were kinda lucky in that there were only 3 other people looking at this house so it didn't get too expensive.

 

[Evo Shandor]

I hear you OP. My wife and I looked for two years during a really hot market with low supply. The only thing I can say is that as this continues, if you continue to save for your down payment, you will become more competitive in the bidding process.

When we won the bid on our house, we got an offer for $50k above what we paid. It can be crazy.

 

[Ryu]

I see what you did there OP.

I'm hoping to buy next year. There will be a dip in the market due to Covid. Tbh I feel a bit guilty about it, as I've been waiting 3 or 4 years for a drop.
A number of banks aren't giving mortgages to people who take stimulus/covid payments which sucks. I'm ok, but many people are not.

Click to shrink...

Do you think a necrobump on Transistor 's thread would be appreciated? Like, just maybe. Never gave the thread a fair ending anyway, as we don't know if the house got sold!

Spoiler

/jk of course :P

 

[Cat Party]

It can be for sure. I love house shopping, but the buying part is never fun. Last time we were shopping, we got two great houses poached from under us by assholes who could overpay. Next time I buy, I am buying a new house so I don't have to deal with that shit.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

Market here in Boston is usually cutthroat, but my gf and I put in a lowball offer at the height of the lockdown in March/April and managed to get a place that checked most of our boxes.

I think the bidding wars have already started up again...

 

[ParanormalFupa]

Yeah we kept losing out on houses a couple years ago even though we were offering 10-15k over. Shit is heartbreaking and exhausting, by the end I was open to pretty much anything. In the end, I was offered the entire duplex I was renting a single unit of for less than any of the SFH I was offering on, even ones just down the street. So now I have two kitchens.

There's just so little inventory in the sub 250k market right now. I just feel fortunate I can live within walking distance from the heart of the city, in a house, for under 200k where I'm at.

 

[Transistor]

Do you think a necrobump on Transistor 's thread would be appreciated? Like, just maybe. Never gave the thread a fair ending anyway, as we don't know if the house got sold!

Spoiler

/jk of course :P

Click to shrink...

No. It did not get sold actually. We gave up and still live here.

It's ok, though. We refinanced to a 15 year and are doing a lot to fix the place up. :)

 

[bastardly]

yep, i live in LA so the market here is nuts at times. before we finally got a place, we were living at my wifes parents as well since we sold first, which also makes you start bidding on questionable property. The one time we found something perfect for us we put in a slightly under asking bid, knowing we'd go much higher, then for some reason the agent never countered and just took an offer which we found out later was at asking, our agent even said we were willing to go way over, he didn't care, I'm like fuck this dude must hate his clients or something, because we were willing to go like 20k over since it was a good deal. That one still hurts since I still drive by it now and then.

 

[L.E.D.]

Indeed nuts out there. Out bid by like 50k$ everywhere. Even new homes with high prices (never buy, they are built shitty), are going for almost 100k more.

 

[Rice Eater]

Just thinking about how much the market has sky rocketed since the early 2010's is depressing to think about. My sister bought a house for 140k in 2013 and it was gorgeous. She sold it last year for 215k. Hell, my wife and I were actually looking 2 years ago but decided to hold off. Back then a pretty good house was normally going for 180-200k. Now you can't seem to find anything decent under 210 it seems.

I've been obsessively looking at Zillow almost every day but any time something decent shows up at a good price it's gone very quickly. Anything decent after that won't last that long. Which really fucking sucks because my wife and I are on Furlough right now and that's preventing us from even trying to buy a house because we can't present check stubs showing our full pay despite making way more money on furlough.

We have no choice but to wait until late August at the earliest to seriously look for a house. Hopefully things cool down a little by then and we have less comp to deal with.

EDIT: Another thing. How the hell are people supposed to afford new homes anyways. Everything is like 250k or so which feels fucked up because most regular people typically make like 30k a year I assume. Can a couple making 60 even get a loan for those kind of homes because I'm not really seeing much or anything decent under 200k. Or I guess the message is that you poors just gotta hold that.

 

[EddyLovesTunaRolls]

I still remember the applying to a job was soul crushing thread when it first came up because I was also looking for a job at that time.

Now that I'm trying to buy a house this thread pops up. It's like fate or something. Yeah OP this shit is the worst I hope we get what we deserve soon.

I'm capped at $100,000 so I can't buy anything that's move-in ready. Funnily enough there's like 0 houses within 45 minutes of my job and I really don't think I can justify driving almost 2 hours a day to a job that only pays me less than $15 an hour.

 

[Deleted member 3542]

I'm in the middle of escrow buying a house, moving from LA to the Fullerton area. We lucked out, its the one we wanted out of the ten or so we saw, we were the backups and got the go-ahead, but at the same time it's not over till it's over and drowning in paperwork, moving money around and constant uncertainties has made for bad sleeping, constant tension in my back and shoulders and my wife and I stress eating making our so called "quarantine diet plant" go right out the window. Every person I know that has bought a house says it's just an awful process, including our realtor, but the stress takes a toll physically on top of mentally.

I will say, having a realtor looking out for you is big. I don't think my wife and I could do any of this without someone out there looking out for us, making sure our paperwork is in order, dealing with the loan office if need be and the sellers etc...

 

[Lace]

I still remember the applying to a job was soul crushing thread when it first came up because I was also looking for a job at that time.

Now that I'm trying to buy a house this thread pops up. It's like fate or something. Yeah OP this shit is the worst I hope we get what we deserve soon.

I'm capped at $100,000 so I can't buy anything that's move-in ready. Funnily enough there's like 0 houses within 45 minutes of my job and I really don't think I can justify driving almost 2 hours a day to a job that only pays me less than $15 an hour.

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Capped as in 100k down payment or the total amount for a home?

 

[Captain Tuttle]

Don't settle for something that's just "OK". Take the time and get something you love. It sucks but the right deal will come around and you'll know it when it does

 

[fragamemnon]

I live in the Seattle Eastside and bought in three years ago. It was misery but I found the perfect place after three months and plan to live here until I die.

My condolences, the combination of Satya and Bezos bucks, contractors in short supply, and lack of new supply is just crushing the market out here.

 

[EddyLovesTunaRolls]

Capped as in 100k down payment or the total amount for a home?

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total amount for a home. I can make the 10k down payment easy because I've been saving.

If it was a 100k down payment I'd be so happy omg. I can't even imagine having that kind of life.

 

[EMBee99]

I close next week and the anxiety I have over moving is keeping me up at night.

 

[fundogmo]

I'm currently on the last week of escrow -- took a while for my new build to get a certificate of occupancy from the city, during COVID times. My wife and I have been looking for about a year, and absolutely fell in love with the place we ended up going with.

I agree that it's soul crushing at times to get your hopes up only to be let down, and you aren't kidding about eating stress over all the things that come up. I can't tell you how many times it almost fell through, or we got sudden cold feet and were thinking about pulling out for one reason or another.

The market is crazy right now in LA with some of the lowest mortgage rates in decades. Best of luck to you, but remember that you're in no rush, and the perfect home is always out there.

 

[Lace]

total amount for a home. I can make the 10k down payment easy because I've been saving.

If it was a 100k down payment I'd be so happy omg. I can't even imagine having that kind of life.

Click to shrink...

Ah, in that case I would suggest having ~15-20k in your account if you're looking to make a 10k down payment. So many first year expenses pop up that can drown you if you don't have some reserves.

Out of curiosity what market are you in that <100k homes are available?

 

[scurker]

My wife and I went through the same process 3+ years ago, we looked for a house over a period of about 2 years. We lost out on about 4 different offers before we finally got our current house. The 200-300k market is just brutal as that's probably the average price range that I would guess most families are looking for and can reasonably afford.

 

[Witness]

We are in the middle of buying our first home. We got lucky and found one that was on the market for only two weeks, they had no other offers yet. We did our earnest deposit on Monday so we are in escrow and we have the inspection tomorrow. Appraisal should be next week. Keep plugging away OP, right now with the market still hot across the country so a big part of it is the timing. Make sure your contract has language in it for appraisal and inspection contingencies in case anything goes wrong during escrow.

 

[Coolverine]

EDIT: Another thing. How the hell are people supposed to afford new homes anyways. Everything is like 250k or so which feels fucked up because most regular people typically make like 30k a year I assume. Can a couple making 60 even get a loan for those kind of homes because I'm not really seeing much or anything decent under 200k. Or I guess the message is that you poors just gotta hold that.

Click to shrink...

i would assume it is relatively easy for people making such money to get a loan, since they're spread across 30 years. 250k isn't much. Granted, I say that as someone born and raised in Los Angeles, so my perspective on what is cheap/expensive for a house is WAAAAY skewed.

I won't be able to get into a house I like for anything less than $700k