Home Buyers: How do you cope with losing the one? (sales, real estate)

[cleveland86]

Wife and I found a house we really liked that was new on the market. I called my realtor to check it out last Thursday and she is away on vacation for the holiday. I leave a voicemail to see if she can have someone else from her office show us the house and never get a reply back. Monday arrives, realtor returns, and sets up a showing for us. I don't have much knowledge in the real estate business (first time home buyer), but its my understanding that you can't show a house under contract. So we walk through the home, my wife falls in love, and I think we finally ended our 2 year search. I tell the realtor we want to make an offer and to give the seller their full asking price. I didn't want to mess around because I got burned a few months back in the current market. Neither one of us were able to sleep that night. Wake up, get a phone call from realtor, and she tells me that we didn't get the house because there was another offer that came in on that Saturday, the sellers already accepted, and they were just finalizing signatures over the weekend. Don't realtors, who work for the same firm, have access to see if offers have been accepted or pending? Why would our realtor show us this house and make us feel like we had a chance of purchasing it? Both of us have felt like crap for 2 days now and every house on the market does not compare to the one we just lost. It had everything on the checklist. It will be very hard to get over and move on..

Anyone experience this ?

[L2DB]

2 years? Wow. Where is it that you're looking?

My guess is it's one of those unfortunate things that happens. There's always a chance that the deal falls through at inspection or something so having someone that wants it waiting in the wings can never be a bad thing from the perspective of the seller's agent. Inspection should be within another week or so and with you chomping at the bit, my guess is the seller's are going to take a pretty hard line with regards to any necessary repairs, especially if the accepted offer is lower than full asking price. You're not necessarily not getting this house yet, IMO.

As to it happening in the first place... if you're aware that the market you want is really hot and sales are happening in this kind of timeframe, I suppose you could have skirted the "rules" and contacted the list agent directly and seen if they could show you the house. Even if there's not an official offer submitted yet, I think you would have been able to let it be known at the conclusion of looking that you would be making an offer and the list agent could have perhaps stalled the other negotiations in order to let you get that offer in and potentially start a bidding war.

Outside of that, you could try and find a new realtor, but that seems kind of a ****ty thing to do after 2 years. I'd suggest you adjust your expectations downward and start thinking about good and not about perfect.