Hmmm. Good question. A couple of months? I forget. We kept getting outbid, it was insane. The bidding wars, the agents that were double ending everything. I hate that entire industry. No fucking wonder houses cost a mil. You have to feed about 45 people with one transaction.
ETA: I guess if you count looking online, it was a couple weeks. But we put in an offer the first day we actually went out looking at houses with our realtor.
This. I spent weeks searching online but our first day out we made an offer on house number 12 or something crazy like that.
Post by messykitchen on Nov 12, 2013 0:50:46 GMT -5
About 18 months, and I looked at hundreds of homes. I had specific ideas and didn't want to move again soon. I want to move when my son goes to college in four years, I should probably start shopping now!
3 days.... We tend to make decisions quickly, and kinda lived by the seat of our pants at that point in life.
We went to our hometown for Christmas and the house beside my childhood home was for sale and we thought it would be fun to look through it. We did, it was gross and disgusting inside. (Short sale) we then thought we have the money lets move back to our hometown. (Always a dream of ours, but our timeline was 1-2 years from then) We put an offer in on the 3rd day looking, with a 45 day close and the owner died so it ended up being a 90 day closing. (I worked OOT and could commute from any city in the province I wanted, and dh had some friends offer him work if he ever moved home) looking back the 90 day close worked out better for us.
1 1/2 years in the home and we could not be happier!
Post by sillygoosegirl on Nov 12, 2013 4:13:46 GMT -5
About 20 months of driving around viewing houses with an agent. Plus like 6 years of trolling listings before that (but we lived in 3 states during that time).
This house was worth the wait. We don't ever plan on moving.
It was about 10 months. The first house we saw, we loved, but the owners of it were going through a divorce and the ex-wife wouldn't sign the contract. We put in offers on about 10 other houses and none of them went through either. The ex-wife agreed to sign the contractfor the first house 7 different times if the ex-husband agreed to her terms, but she never signed the contract. We finally saw the house we are in now and closed in under a month on it.
I spent 4-6 weeks looking at mls listings and this is the only one I actually looked at. It still needs a few finishing touches but I love it and am really happy here.
Post by themoneytree on Nov 12, 2013 8:08:01 GMT -5
The money pit was an impulse purchase so not long at all. We did do some due dilligence and look at some comps, but I knew we would never find another house like this for the price (short sale).
However, we'd hunted for a couple of weeks, gone under contract to build a house, and the builder had made like zero progress in several months, so we cancelled the contract and bought an inventory house nearby.
A year+. Our first agent was incompetent. Our second agent, who we worked with for maybe 3 months was wonderful. We saw at least 100 houses, if not more. We put in three offers with agent #2 and the third offer was finally accepted.
20 minutes. I'm not even kidding. It was his grandma's house. Allll in the family. I'm still bitter I didn't get to house shop lol
This is us, but my dad's house. My family asked if we wanted to buy it and we said sure. I love the house and the memories in it but wish we would've been able to look for a house.
Our home was destroyed in a flood, 3' of water on the 2nd floor. We bailed out to my parents' house for the duration. They were planning to sell and move to their beach house since my mother was retiring. We came up with a price and settled a few months later. Done and done. It isn't my dream house, but the schools were great and it's been a good place to raise DS.
We watched the market in our area online for about 1.5 years. The actual search, when we were looking at homes in person was about 2 months, and we were under contract before closing for another 6 weeks (per our request).
We looked at a new build and negotiated on upgrades and price before deciding not to do it. That day I found an ad for an open house for our current house. Saw it, fell in love, made an offer.
We weren't really looking to buy at that point. It sort of just happened.
Post by leancuisine on Nov 12, 2013 9:42:24 GMT -5
2 days. We knew we were being transferred here and flew down for the weekend. We looked at 15ish houses the first day and each narrowed it down to our top three. We toured the top four again the next day (some of our favorites overlapped). We put in an offer that night.
We were really at the mercy of our realtor since we knew basically nothing about the area. She was great and I love our house, so it all worked out.
ETA: We did a lot of online looking beforehand and had a pretty good idea of what we wanted/what we could afford before we flew down.
Post by thebreakfastclub on Nov 12, 2013 9:57:58 GMT -5
We did our own on-line research for a few weeks. Once we had an agent, we saw maybe 10 houses over a couple of weekends and made our offer. The sellers were a couple of weeks away from closing on their new home, which was x3 the price of the one they were selling, so they were maxed out and ready to deal.
H's townhome had an offer in less than 2 weeks, with a 2nd backup waiting in the wings. We did price competitively and it had newer appliances. That was a pleasant surprise.
Post by schitzengiggles on Nov 12, 2013 10:48:43 GMT -5
For our first home, it was at least a few months of looking with our realtor. We were renting an apartment at the time of our search. That was in 2004.
This time around, we stalked listings for a few months, followed by checking out open houses on our own for a couple of months. Finally we got a realtor and looked at probably 20-30 houses with her over the course of a month. The home we bought was completely different from what we had thought we wanted (thought we wanted modified 2 story, ended up with a ranch), so our realtor never thought to show us. We saw it was an open house and the location was awesome, so we went to it on our own on a whim. LOVED it, so immediately requested a private showing w/our realtor. She got us in later that same day and we offered that evening. There were at least 2 other people who also requested private showings right away after the open house, but ours was luckily the first, and the sellers luckily accepted our offer that same night as well :-) Once it happened, it happened FAST which was good because I am almost positive if we hadn't snagged it, somebody else would have the following day.
We started seriously 'looking' at the beginning of the year, online only, just to see what was out there. Got our realtor squared away in late May. Started going to look at houses in June. Found THE house in mid-July and were under contract July 18. I remember the date b/c it is DS' birthday. We signed the last week of August and moved in in mid-Sept.
We pre-qualified with our C.U. in June so we knew our price-point. I asked for $xxx and the C.U. approved the amount. So we knew to stay under that #.
We were in a month-to-month apartment so we took our time. About 6 months, I think? We looked at about 25 houses in person. It was really difficult because we only brought a Chicago-size down payment to the table. Where we moved, housing is 40% more expensive, but like 90% more depressing and blah than the beautiful condos we could have afforded in Chicago.
We had to compromise but it worked out pretty well. I hope we move someday to a place with more charm, but with the interest rate we locked in, we'll probably keep and rent this place forever.