How long did it take to find your home?

[juliahenry]

The real estate board seems kinda slow, so I'm posting my RE questions here - I hope you don't mind!

We're beginning the process of looking for our dream, maybe forever home. There are two tiny, neighborhoods that are perfect for us and tick all the boxes. The trouble is that there are very few houses for sale in this area. Right now there are no listings, and over the past couple of years maybe 4 homes have sold.

we were hoping to buy sometime in the next 6-18 months. I know that the state of available listings today does not say much about the number of properties that might or might not be available in the fall, and we are open to other options (including potentially building) but I would love to live in one of these specific homes, and I can see it working for us for ever.

so.. What's a reasonable timeframe to find and buy? And how long would you wait and watch a specific neighborhood for new listings before moving on and setting for something else? Have you waited to buy? If so, how long did you wait/look and did it work out for you? Did you get what you wanted in the end?


thanks for any answers!

[simpsongal]

Today is our house-iversary. We closed 1 year ago today

It took 5 weeks to find. In your situation, I'd be ready to pounce now and probably wait 1 year. Just keep in mind that there may be others like you eyeing that neighborhood (which may mean a multiple offer situation).

[susieq]

If these neighborhoods are what you really want I would not settle. Now if you find something else you truly love and decide you will be ok out of the area you originally wanted than go for it.

My story is when we moved to this area (company relocation) I begged DH to look for land and build while renting a small place to live. He refused to rent past what the company was willing to pay as part of the relocation. We found a nice house and decided to buy and then look for land. We have been here for almost 7 years with no land in site. DH will now tell you he wished we had bought land and rented until we could build.

[sillygoosegirl]

We looked online for most of a year, then in person for most of a year, then put in an offer on a short sale and waited most of a year for it to go through.

We actually visited our house only about 6 months into the in-person process, but it was out of our price range at the time. Well, really it was just above the top of our range, but since it was also a fixer, that put it out of reach.

We had two neighborhoods in mind that are right next to each other. One was a lot nicer, but also most of the houses were out of our price range. We also looked at houses in nearby neighborhoods, but didn't see anything that really tempted us to compromise on the location. There weren't a ton of houses for sale, but more than you describe. I think there are 3 houses for sale in those neighborhoods now. There were 10 or so for sale in early 2011 when we started looking in person, but that was before things picked up. Most had already been on the market months or years and hardly any came on the market to replace them as they sold.

It was getting really frustrating by the end, but I'm really glad we held out for a house in this location that we also loved and feel we have room to grow into. I'm not sure we would have had the discipline to wait a lot longer, but I'm glad we waited for this house and even if this house had fallen through, I think I would have regretted compromising on the location.

[juliahenry]

Thanks everyone.

One of the reasons were thinking and talking about this now is because we want to make sure we know exactly what we want to buy I hope that if we plan and narrow down our list enough, well buy the right thing and not the first thing. I would prefer to wait a year and get it right than buy right away only to regret it in a year or so.

It sounds like waiting and watching is the thing to do.

[stephm0188]

I agree that watching and waiting is usually a good pla.

We were in a rental and had decided to build in a cookie cutter development, so we went to check it out and work on an offer about 6 months before the end of our lease. Over the course of a week or so we worked on picking a floorplan, choosing finishes, and negotiating what features they might include for the price. I wanted white cabinets in the kitchen, and they said no and would not budge.

So I ended up looking over some listings that day in the newspaper because I was depressed about not getting the kitchen I wanted, and I spied an open house for a home in our price range. We went to check it out and loved it. We scheduled a showing right away to come back and see it again, and made an offer.

It was like the stars aligned.

[kitty]

It took about 18 months from the first open house to closing. I had been looking online for a couple of months before that as well. We were looking to buy a forever home in one particular section of one particular town. We put our first offer in about 3 months in and were outbid. Five months later, we went under contract on a short sale and sort of stopped looking (this was also over the late fall/winter when not much is on the market). Come spring the short sale hadn't made progress so we started looking again and finally found our house. We had branched out to looking in other sections of our town but were never willing to pull the trigger. All three houses we made offers on turned out to be within a 1 mile radius! All three were also multiple offer situations (in 2009/2010) so this was an area that is in high demand.

I'm glad we held out for what we really wanted. What helped was that we had nothing to sell and had moved out of our rental and in with the ILs to avoid signing another lease. We could afford to take our time and make our move when it was the right house. The down side was living with the ILs for longer than I was mentally prepared for. The plus side of it taking so long was that we were able to save up more money which let us start looking at higher priced houses. I think upping our price range was part of what finally did it.

I would have loved to build but there is barely any land available in our town. Most people buy tear downs which cost 250-300k so your final cost is $$$$$.

[sillygoosegirl]

Oh, also, I could hardly believe the number of people who told us we were being too picky. My dad, my sister, and a good friend who lived in that neighborhood were supportive of us waiting for just the right house, but just about everyone else IRL had negative things to say about us taking so long to find the right house. (Okay, some people had nothing to say about it, which I guess is fine.)

We figured that if we are going to live there 30+ years, not to mention taking 30 years to pay for it, we should get the best possible house and it was worth being picky and waiting for the right one! But the negative comments got hard to take. We probably shouldn't have told anyone we were looking.

[treedimensional]

I looked at a couple dozen houses over several months. It was so emotionally draining I actually stopped looking for a while. I was single, in college, working, living on my own, no family to talk to. I started questioning whether I wanted to follow through. I felt very alone, and had to take a break from it.
It all worked out after that. I got a great house at a great price in a great location. It has been, by FAR, the smartest investment I've ever made, more than quadrupling in value since I bought it.

[nessness]

We looked for about two months, and made two other offers in that time (we pulled our offer on the first house after the inspection revealed major structural problems, and couldn't agree to a price on the second one). We ended up finding our house as an open house that we just randomly drove past and I convinced DH to stop it. It was slightly over budget and didn't have everything from our original must-have list, but we just fell in love.

[prazenjc]

we were able to find our house during the 1 week we had paid for by my company as part of a relocation package. we had done extensive on-line searches before hand and our REA seemed to really understand what we wanted and the prices we were willing to spend (didn't sell our house in NC right away, so holding 2 mortgages was holding us back). anyway, i think we saw this home on day three and it was in our top 3 when the week wrapped up. we finalized our decision shortly after returning home. worked out really well, all in all.

[aweilba]

It took us about a month to find our home, but we were on a big time crunch.  I had just gotten a job at the start of May, and we were getting married the first week of August.  We didn't want to rent for 6 months when we could afford a house.  Looking back on it, I wish we'd shopped around a bit more before making our decision; our house is fine, but it doesn't work well for us in some aspect, particularly storage.  

I'd say that if you are in no particular hurry to buy a house, and you have a neighborhood that you love, wait until something you will love opens up.  Or continue shopping around until you find something that you love in another area.  

[darkling_glory]

8 houses and 9 days until we made an offer on a place.

We're waiting on an appraisal, so hopefully that goes well, and then we're scheduled to close May 23rd.

[TBM]

We looked online for months, knowing a relocation was coming. We narrowed it to an area that we were pretty sure that we wanted to live.

When the relo package had finally come and had been signed, and DH was there on business, we gave the realtor our list of homes to view, but by the time DH could go, (around Valentine's Day) there weren't many left to see because everything I liked went under contract. Every day we had to add more to the list, in hopes that something would still be available by the time DH went to them.

We found one amazing house the day that it was listed, and let our realtor know that DH wanted it added to the list (actually, we wanted it at the top of the list) for the next day. DH was in meetings, but the house was so popular that the realtor arranged an evening viewing that night, and they went with an offer prepared (just in case). We had to wait a few days to hear whether we got it, but DH kept looking at houses and I kept looking at listings and adding to the list. We lost it to an all cash offer.

On a whim (and out of frustration) I looked at listings in a city that I didn't really want to live in (nothing awful, just not quite the area that I wanted), with the idea that we could use it as investment property and rent it out if/when we found our dream home in the other area.

We needed somewhere to live (renting with four dogs was not a good option for us), so we needed to find something, and I wasn't willing to take just anything. Dh and I found a cool house online one morning, and he went to see it that afternoon and put an offer on it. We wound up with a seller who was out of the country and only reachable by email, so it took days to get an answer and to negotiate after the inspections. We are pretty enamored with the place and have plans for it, so I guess we will stay for awhile, if not permanently. We close on it next Friday (supposedly/hopefully), and will be moving the middle of April.

[lys]

House #1 took 6 months to find
House #2  (our forever house) took 4 years to find.

[emjacobs]

Started the process looking: 1/4/2011

Put a contract on a house: 1/25/2011

Contract Accepted: 1/27/2011

Shortsale package "submitted" to the bank: 2/5/2011

We signed multiple extensions, and turns out the bank never did anything and said the owners had to go into foreclosure to sell.

We cancelled the contract: 4/20/2011

We signed a contract for a new build: 4/15/2011

Closed: 9/9/2011

[Deleted]

Started looking in early April of 2012, went under contract in late July 2012, closed on September 7, 2012. So five months total.

There was a shortage of inventory in all of the neighborhoods we were interested it. We feel so lucky we got ours. Actually, someone else went under contract on ours before we were even able to get in to look at it but it fell though and we pounced the day we realized it was back on the market about five weeks later.

[Marmee]

House 1--wasn't looking
House 2--4-5months of serious looking (new city)
House 3--4 yrs of casual looking