So that house a month ago where it was an awesome place and the seller's agent was super enthusiastic about my offer and then right before it got signed they came back and said another similar offer came in and blind auction bidding war and I generally held to my guns because it was very sus and I might even be bidding against myself with no actual other buyer and then I lost?
Well it closed today and I saw the closing price and my counter that I filled out and was going to submit before I changed my mind and put a much lower counter was $1,000 higher than the other bid that won.
Meanwhile I lost out on one of the best unique custom houses I've probably ever see, I've spent like 300 hours of deep depression, stress and anxiety, and lost $1,500 on inspections on another house I backed out of in the month since.
Just shitty luck. I figured if there was another buyer for real, either they were way richer than me and were going to counter big in which case I couldn't keep up since the house was at the top of my budget, or that they were at the top of their budget and couldn't move up either.
Because it was a blind auction and we didn't know what the other person was bidding, I was only going to go up $6k over asking price (my initial offer was $10k under, so that'd be $16k more, I ended up offering another $5k so I was still $5k under asking), well the other person went $5k over asking. I guess they got spooked too by the blind auction and were afraid to bet big as well.
Just really shitty luck.
To be fair, even though it was kind of my dream home, it wasn't 100% perfect. The master bedroom was really small and could only fit a bed and nothing else (but giant walk in closet and giant master bathroom) and there wasn't really a great place to walk to from it for daily walks.
Plus it had amazing bathrooms, a really cool unique kitchen, a great looking front, and a really nice palm springs-esque open area yard that everything looked at and led out to.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/18102-Casselle-Ave_North-Tustin_CA_92705_M16812-95906I'm just ranting about shitty luck and it's fine and I'm like 95% over it a month later. But given the market prices in my county have jumped up significantly as inventory has completely vanished over the last 5 weeks, I'm probably going to end up buying something that's like $100-200k more that's not as nice by the time I find something so it sucksss.
*edit* if I don't find something by the end of the month, I'm just going to rent for the next year so I can fix my current condo and either move back or sell it but at least will be off the time pressure to get out of here and will be able to wait out the market until things get better.
For anyone who hasn't been keeping up with the latest and greatest in the housing market in the USA, it is currently
the worst housing market since the great recession this last month or two. The reason is that housing went like this:
2021 - low interest rate, prices insane! Tons of houses on the market because fuck yeah, money for sellers. Also pent up demand from buyers because there was a lack of inventory in 2020 while people didn't want to sell during a pandemic.
2022 first half - same
2022 second half - Oh shit, interest rates going up, sellers trying to dump stuff for a bit cheaper before things get really bad, buyer's get scared because now interest rates are higher and things cost more. Less buyers, less sellers as time goes by.
2023 why we are now fucked - the sellers from summer 2022 have finished dumping their properties, meanwhile sellers who are sitting with a house at low 1-3% mortgage rate have zero motivation to sell their house now and be forced to try to buy something in this market of the highest prices ever + being stuck with a 6-7% mortgage rate on their replacement house, that's if they can ever find a replacement house lol. The number of buyers have gone down since summer 2022 because the higher interest rates + highest prices ever, but because the inventory of people selling houses has dwindled so small, the small mountain of buyers keeps increasing steadily and still outnumber the sellers.
So right now you have a market for the first time since the pandemic hit with almost no houses being sold, despite the start of prime selling season, and a bunch of built up number of buyers so when the one or two decent houses go on sale each week in an entire 50-100 mile radius, you have every single buyer in that range swarming on them and so every single thing is a huge bidding war and sellers are getting ridiculous prices because fuck it, they can sell for any price they want when they're the only good house in 50 miles in that price range.
It's high interest rates + high prices + no inventory at all = if you're trying to buy you are fucked beyond belief right now. Which again is why people who own a house and would otherwise think about selling and moving up or down or a different location are like "fuck this, I'm sitting tight" which just exacerbates the lack of inventory and keeps the cycle rolling.
Experts seem to say that once mortgage rates start going down again after the feds stop raising rates to curb inflation, people will start selling again, but there's going to be so much pent up demand as there is now, stuff will still fly off in bidding wars and crazy prices for a while until enough houses get back on the market to outnumber the buyers.
It's like this is pandemic era 2020 again (except way more expensive) and when the fed rates come down it'll be 2021 era again.
And when mortgage rates go down again there'll be more buyers jumping back, so...basically it's going to be a long while until shit stabilizes unfortunately.
