Inside: The boost you need when you’re house hunting, have already been in your third bidding war, and think you’ll never find the one.
When you wake up bleary-eyed and in need of caffeine, you grab your phone to check Zillow. Before pouring your first cup of coffee, you’ve already scrolled through Trulia and Realtor.com. House listings jostle for space in your email inbox even outnumbering the sales emails from Wayfair and Target. (Online browsing for your future house, much?) You’re also pretty sure you dreamed about three bedroom ranches last night.
Sounds like you’re house hunting.
Not long ago I ranked in the house hunting crowd. Those stressed out first-time home buyers in their third bidding war, spending weekends driving 10 miles per hour through neighborhoods hunting houses like stalking shoppers in a busy parking lot. Eating sandwiches in the car while frantically trying to get to house showings over the lunch hour. Always hoping the next one will be the one.
Eventually, I’d been house hunting for so long my hands started to sweat whenever someone asked how the search was going, and my answer changed depending on who asked.
Coworkers at my new workplace? “A little over a year … can you show me how to use the scanner?”
Only-see-so-often family acquaintances? “Oh … close to two years. The market is really tough right now. So, how are you?”
The real answer? Three years.
Lots of factors led to my houseless predicament. Plenty of the blame rests on my boyfriend and I because we made all the house hunting mistakes you can make. Uncertainty about what we wanted, choosing a location (then changing our minds), and the difficulty of compromising all contributed to dragging out the already dragged out house search.
What we couldn’t control? The bigger reality.
Like a slow, drippy leak, the housing market worsened for buyers right as we started setting up house showings.
List prices increased, while the housing inventory on the market looked like the remnants of the Dollar Spot at Target after a holiday. Other millennials like me decided they wanted to buy houses too. (Come on! I thought we were the generation that splurges on avocado toast brunches because we can’t afford mortgages.) Supply vs. demand was not in my favor.
I hoped if I waited, it would get better. Instead, what started as a slow, drippy leak turned into a burst pipe with water oozing all over the floor.
It started long before I ever had house buying dreams. Right after the Great Recession, investors swooped in on the low prices and bought up single-family homes like shoppers and a sale on throw pillows. But unexpectedly, the trend didn’t stop. And because today new, affordable housing isn’t being built to keep up with demand and flippers are flipping like never before, you’re nearly guaranteed to get in a bidding war over that sweet three bedroom bungalow.
We’re in a housing crisis that isn’t getting better soon. If you’re house hunting, you’re feeling it.
You’ve felt the crushing defeat of putting in too low of an offer and the completely impractical inability to pay cash for a house — yet someone else did. You may feel like it’s never going to happen. I know I did.
I felt like a complete failure. A can’t-even-buy-a-house-i’m-a-privileged-nincompoop failure.
So, what’s my point? Should we all despair and go pay overpriced rent for apartments we don’t want? Give up on our home-owning dreams?
No. It’s going to happen. (I did, finally, buy a house after all.) But you may need to adjust your house hunting strategy.
5 Things I Learned About House Hunting for the First Time in a Terrible Market
While reveling in my own pity party, turns out I was also learning a lot during those three years of house hunting.
So, stick with me here. Maybe I can save you from a home hunting heartache.
These are the house hunting do’s and don’ts I learned after three years of looking for houses in the worst market in decades.
1. Worry about the future (a little) less
When it comes to buying a house, you try to make a good investment. No home buyer chooses to buy at the top of the market but if you want a house within the next five years, you’re probably not going to get a bargain right now.
I’m not saying be careless. Don’t go cash out your savings and buy the most expensive house on the block. Please. But if you fret too much about what might happen in the future, you may miss out on the now.
Here’s what happened to us.
We bought a house priced slightly above where I felt completely comfortable. Not because we couldn’t afford it, but because we already worried about selling it in the future. What if we lost money on it? We would be those people who didn’t know what they were doing. We would look stupid.
That’s when I realized:
Who cares? After three years of house hunting, it was time. We loved the house and we would be paying less for our mortgage than renting an apartment half the size.
We made the right decision for us.
2. Go with your gut
You know what you want in a house. You do.
But here’s the thing.
It may have less to do with farmhouse sinks and the number of bathrooms than you think. You know the feeling when you walk into a house and you can immediately tell it’s not the one? While you politely walk from room to room and peek in cupboards so as not to appear to waste your realtor’s time, think about why your gut says, “This isn’t it.”
As I look back, I finally understand I wasn’t looking to check off all the features on my wish list. Instead, I craved a certain feeling from a house.
We passed up houses with four bedrooms and two and a half baths for our little three-bedroom-one-bath midcentury ranch because they didn’t feel right. We couldn’t see ourselves living in them, which ultimately matters far more than a laundry room on the main level.
You’ll know when it’s right.
3. You’ll have to compromise (some)
Before I get too sunshine and rainbows about loving my house, let’s take a step back.
You’ll know when a house feels right. But there’s a catch. After that moment, you’ll second guess yourself at every turn.
Deciding to buy my house was agony. The constant questioning about if you’re doing the right thing. The wheeling and dealing of putting in an offer. The sheer magnitude of making the most expensive purchase of your life.
It makes all the little details and potential issues about a house amplified.
Things that went through my head: Can we really live with only one bathroom? I wish the house was less (yes, less) updated; how am I going to do projects for my blog? Is the driveway too steep?
I’m putting this out there now: Everything won’t be perfect. You will need to compromise. It will be hard.
4. A little deadline doesn’t hurt
As someone who looked for houses longer than it takes to build one, I’m a complete hypocrite for talking about deadlines.
Still, when my sister (who helped me box up my stuff and let me live with her while I house hunted) said she loved me but I had to find a place to live in the next three months, it happened. We bought a house.
Serendipity or looming deadline? Maybe it was a little of both.
5. When it comes to house hunting, always expect the unexpected
House hunting will never be how you picture it. Even if you’ve done everything right:
- Chosen a real estate agent
- Made a wish list but are flexible
- Look past the shiny new features and decor during showings
- Check listings regularly (hello, it’s the first thing you do when you wake up)
It still won’t go as planned.
I can think of two friends off the top of my head who found houses, loved them, backed away for different reasons and then ended up with those same houses rather unexpectedly.
And me? I ended up in a suburb I said I’d never move to, in a style of house I didn’t expect, and I’m happier than I could have imagined.
Now all I have to worry about are real-life drippy pipes.
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