House Hunting

So, our year lease ended this month, the housing prices are at an all-time low, we're pretty sure we will be here for a couple more years, there's a huge tax break for first time home buyers, and we've been saving up....so that only means one thing! We are looking for a home to buy!!


Well, really a condo or a townhome, since we can't afford a real house anywhere in Orange County. But it's still pretty exciting! We've spent 3 weekends looking so far. Last week our first offer fell through. Yesterday we put down two different offers, so we'll see if we get one of those.

(These are the types of places we've put offers on!)

The only thing we don't understand is what a "buyer's market" really is. We thought it meant that the buyer gets to pretty much negotiate any price they want, make the seller pay for closing costs, and that we can pick and choose and take our time. That is NOT the case that we have found ourselves in...at least in this area with the pricerange that we are looking at, which are all mostly bank-owned properties.


Instead, we are finding that if we want any sellers to take our offer, we have to bid 10-20 thousand ABOVE the asking price, agree to pay our own closing costs, avoid FHA loans, and we cannot be picky or take our time. We pretty much have to decide while we're looking at the place whether or not we're going to make an offer. That's because every place that we've seen has had at least 3 offers on the property before we even walk in the door. These condos and townhomes are going like hotcakes! Our first offer that we put down was 13,000 above asking price and they turned it down because someone else offered 5,000 more than we did!


So correct me if I'm wrong, but it don't sound like no buyer's market to me! Not in this neighborhood. I hope that's a good thing for our economy, but it certainly doesn't make it easy for us as dinky, little first time home buyers.