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Found a nearly perfect house in good location and a fair neighborhood, drove day and night to see it and make as offer, and it’s on a truly awful lot. Almost no backyard and it falls off into a deep ravine behind...
So we leave disappointed again, questioning our evidently impossible wish list, to do some soul searching. I’m surprised our realtor hasn’t ditched us.
[/whine]
I think 2 months is a little too soon to give up on hunting for a house. I have a friend who found her house after 6 months and another friend who was looking at homes for a year until settling on her current home.
Our realtor has MLS and she’s setup a portal for us. But we’ve been watching MLS, Redfin and Zillow every day since late Jan - and MLS is NOT always first in our experience. Sometimes Redfin is first, sometimes MLS. I’ve texted our realtor with Redfin listings that haven’t hit MLS more than once.
Our problem is we have to have a ranch or 1.5 story, and inventory is 80-90% 2 story homes. We’re not interested in 55+ communities either. Those two criteria severely limit our options, but we just can’t change those...
We were planning to drive down today but we already lost out on the house in my OP, it went under contract in under 24 hours. Turned out it was a quick flip (less than 4 weeks) and the two guys who owned it from 4/2 thru 4/27 had a sketchy internet presence. So probably not meant to be...
Still tortured. After 5 visits we know neighborhoods/amenities well enough to make an offer site unseen if necessary. But I’m ready to move and rent but my bride isn’t - yet.
These other sites are fed from our MLS. Not sure how a listing will be on another website first. Sometimes, they aren't true listings, especially zillow is unreliable. I don't have a lot of experience with Redfin, so I'm not sure about them. Have you looked at new builds with inventory homes or ranches. They are hard to find and so are basements.
Does you realtor not have a CRM that you can log into and do your own searches with your own criteria instead of the one that we use from MLS? If I have out of town buyers, I always preview homes that they send me before they have to go out of their way for things like, no backyard, power lines, etc. Did you ask your agent to do that before you had to drive all the way down? Just curious
Does you realtor not have a CRM that you can log into and do your own searches with your own criteria instead of the one that we use from MLS? If I have out of town buyers, I always preview homes that they send me before they have to go out of their way for things like, no backyard, power lines, etc. Did you ask your agent to do that before you had to drive all the way down? Just curious
In the three months we've worked with her, our realtor has never previewed a house for us. All of the homes we've seen were listings I asked to see that we saw on the MLS portal she set up for us or me looking at my own Redfin searches or my wife on Zillow. When we've had specific questions about any home, she looks at the MLS printout or calls the listing agent. When we've asked her to give us some idea what neighborhoods might be better fits for us, she steadfastly refuses to make any recommendations (fair housing laws?) - she just said 'there really are no bad neighborhoods in this area.' May be true, but they can't all be equal, so we've been left to drive through every neighborhood we can making our own judgements - which may be misguided. I can't say we're enjoying house hunting at all, though we just made a colossal mistake of our own, detailed elsewhere.
In the three months we've worked with her, our realtor has never previewed a house for us. All of the homes we've seen were listings I asked to see that we saw on the MLS portal she set up for us or me looking at my own Redfin searches or my wife on Zillow. When we've had specific questions about any home, she looks at the MLS printout or calls the listing agent. When we've asked her to give us some idea what neighborhoods might be better fits for us, she steadfastly refuses to make any recommendations (fair housing laws?) - she just said 'there really are no bad neighborhoods in this area.' May be true, but they can't all be equal, so we've been left to drive through every neighborhood we can making our own judgements - which may be misguided. I can't say we're enjoying house hunting at all, though we just made a colossal mistake of our own, detailed elsewhere.
Have you considered working with a buyers agent? We used one here and had a great experience.
In the three months we've worked with her, our realtor has never previewed a house for us. All of the homes we've seen were listings I asked to see that we saw on the MLS portal she set up for us or me looking at my own Redfin searches or my wife on Zillow. When we've had specific questions about any home, she looks at the MLS printout or calls the listing agent. When we've asked her to give us some idea what neighborhoods might be better fits for us, she steadfastly refuses to make any recommendations (fair housing laws?) - she just said 'there really are no bad neighborhoods in this area.' May be true, but they can't all be equal, so we've been left to drive through every neighborhood we can making our own judgements - which may be misguided. I can't say we're enjoying house hunting at all, though we just made a colossal mistake of our own, detailed elsewhere.
I'm sorry. It really shouldn't be like that. We definitely can't give recommendations on neigborhoods or schools. That is correct.
Their realtor is acting as a buyer's agent. Sounds like the agent is a not helping in finding homes for their client.
I Understand that, but their realtor may also list homes for sale and have their time split in many ways. A buyers only agent can be really helpful, especially in their situation.
I’m not sure what’s up but the Charlotte area must be flooded with new people. Even in Gastonia 1500 sq ft 3/2 homes in working class neighborhoods seem to be starting at $215k ($30k? higher than 4 months ago).
Seems like Charlotte is turning into Cali...at this rate “nice” homes will soon start at half a mill.
It also seems like most of what’s available is homes with some major flaw...like close to a busy road or a backyard that you have to roll down.
Btw - have you considered Denver? Property taxes are WAY cheaper....like half as much.
Wow, this info is so helpful to me. So sorry to hear about so many difficult situations. Maybe some of this advice will help.
1. Try to narrow down the neighborhoods you like. If nothing is for sale ask your agent to send out a mailer describing your needs. This often entices someone who is on the fence but doesn’t want to list or pay double commission.
2. I most certainly will discuss information about schools and tell you where to find the specifics that you are looking for if I can’t give that - the same with neighborhoods...especially if your in my specialized areas. My knowledge is what I get paid for.
3. Our Charlotte MLS feeds directly to Realtor.com and even though I hate to send someone there because the listed agents are not always the agent representing the house, but agents that are paying for leads, it does have the most accurate info.
4. Your agent should be willing to preview homes before she shows them to you if many of them have been a waste of time.
5. Always ask if there is a walk through video or if your agent would do a FaceTime video to save you some aggravation.
6. Use this website and next door to ask questions about the neighborhoods you like.
7. Ask your lender if they have “TBD” to be determined loans. This is a loan type that goes through underwriting before you even find a home. Basically loan approval insert house. In a competitive market this makes a huge difference on who gets the home.
8. Consider the due diligence that you are offering or some of the other terms, price isn’t always the closer.
9. Renting isn’t a bad option, although prices are high there too.
10. Stay positive and make sure your agent is too! They right house does come around every time!
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