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I feel like when we were selling a house last year it was a buyer's market. Now we are the buyers and where are all of the great houses and great deals?
More houses should come up with Spring coming, right? I need some hope.
Where do you live? Here in urban Seattle, it's a seller's market... every house that comes on the market gets snapped up within days, if not hours. It's crazy up here... don't know if it's ever been a buyer's market, really. We are under contract for a home that we fought out 2 other offers to get, within 48 hours of going on the market. People are hungry for homes in a certain price range (under $600k)--there's just not enough inventory up here.
Thanks for replying caravan! "Days, hours?" Oh how did you handle that?
We live in San Antonio, TX. All of the houses in the neighborhoods we like aren't going that fast but I swear it seems like the ones we've liked that haven't gone AO in 60+ days are now being scooped up. We had one house we lost out on- DOM 93, (we couldn't agree to them lowering it only by $5K) and over that very weekend they got another offer and now are AO. Another house we just lost out on was 73 DOM, they got a full price offer the same weekend we tried. There are other houses our agent is sending us info on and it seems like the ones we like- boom, go AO before we can even schedule a showing. Right now I am still down about the house sale we just lost. Nothing seems to be as nice (although I still think --and comps support --full price was too much) and I just keep hoping the right house is out there, just waiting to go on the market.
All the best to you! Much happiness in your new house!
ya know i was just thinking the opposite; in Central Fla, it's like a big sign went up on Jan. 4 that says TIME TO LIST YOUR HOUSE! ever since Jan. 4, the Monday after the holidays, the new listings have been piling up and up; and not all are distressed; many are not. it's like people have been holding out on selling for the past 2 years and all of a sudden everyone's dumping their house on the MLS. now stuff is selling, especially the good houses at fair prices. but i just don't know that there are enough buyers to match the supply of homes.
we listed on a Saturday afternoon and accepted an offer that was made the following Tuesday. Realtor told us they were selling like "hotcakes" but didnt believe him. but now we do! he told us if our house was listed as "bank owned" we would have had 10 offers !
Remember, the tax incentive for 1st time buyers and move up buyers will cease come the end of spring. It is helping with sales in my area for now. I fear it will drop off once the incentive is gone. 90% are shortsales/bank owned and many have multiple offers.
In Seattle, very few of the houses (at least, in our areas of interest) are short-sales/foreclosures... I would hazard a guess of maybe 10-20% being short-sales, and I have only seen maybe 2 foreclosures in the last 5 months of looking. There is just not enough inventory up here... buyers hover like sharks around any property in good shape and at a decent price. Our entire mindset about shopping for a home changed completely from when we came into this game--at first, hearing and thinking all about a buyer's market, and how we'd have everyone desperate to sell depreciated properties, and very quickly realizing that we had no room for negotiation or trying to "strike a deal" with anyone, even a smidgen below asking price. I really do wonder if Seattle is so well insulated against the recession (Microsoft is one of several big regional stabilizers up here), or if the shock is just going to finally hit us in a year or two?... no idea. But we're buying right now, under contract this week, so we will just have to cast our dice and see how things look 10 years from now when we go to sell.
Where do you live? Here in urban Seattle, it's a seller's market... every house that comes on the market gets snapped up within days, if not hours. It's crazy up here... don't know if it's ever been a buyer's market, really. We are under contract for a home that we fought out 2 other offers to get, within 48 hours of going on the market. People are hungry for homes in a certain price range (under $600k)--there's just not enough inventory up here.
Same situation here. We are buyers, and we have been looking for over 8 months. Houses get snapped up within 3-4 days here. That is not the main problem for us--the main problem is that there is just not enough inventory. We have only seen one house that we wanted to make an offer on (and we did, our offer was rejected). Most of the houses for sale have a major flaw (like being next to the freeway or on a very busy road). However, we saw lots of properties on the market in the month of January. So far, Feb. is slow but Feb., March and April are supposed to be the biggest selling months here.
Just depends on where you live as its a local market...where I live home sales and home prices are still tanking and the number of homes listed for sale rose over 6% in Jan....the local market now has well over 13K homes listed for sale......Of homes that are selling over the last few months 26% of the sales were either foreclosure or distressed sales
Last edited by rtandc; 02-06-2010 at 09:14 AM..
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