Home Realtors, Homeowners--How Long Does This Take?

[Haven]

Hi, everyone,

FI and I put in an offer for a home on Monday night and we''ve been in negotiations since, which makes me wonder:

Realtors--how long does it normally take for two parties to reach an agreement (when they DO reach an agreement)? Weeks? Days? Hours? What have you seen in your experience? Do you see a change in the current market?

Homeowners--how long did it take for you to reach an agreement when you purchased your home?

I''m just curious to hear about everyone''s experiences. This is a very different market than the one when I bought my condo--back then, condos were selling the day they were listed, and if you didn''t offer the asking price or more they didn''t even consider you.

I really hope this works out, I really love this home. Don''t worry--FI''s keeping me grounded so we''re not buying on emotion!

Thanks for your input!

 

[fisherofmengirly]

We went back and forth for a week and a day, and then were notified that someone else came in and offered a little over 1,000 more and the sellers jumped and took it.

Currently, we are waiting to hear back from a foreclosure. They take longer and we''re on week two of our wait at this point.

The market is different now; our realtor said the homes we''ve seen that have been on the market (and continue to be on the market) for months would have been gone in a week or two back two years ago when the market was hot and everyone was qualifying for hefty loans.

 

[Haven]

Gypsy--Good luck with your current deal. I'm sorry to hear that you lost the last house you were interested in. A similar thing happened to us, too--we bid on a townhome in foreclosure and it took the bank two weeks to respond to our offer. They flat-out rejected it. So we put in another bid, and then an investor came in and offered cash and an immediate close for two thousand less than our offer, and the bank took it.

This is the fourth home we've bid on. The first was a sfh that was a great deal because the couple had relocated to another state, but I got physically ill when the sellers counter-offered with a price that was lower than what we hoped to pay for it. I figured that was a good sign that it wasn't the house for us! (This entire process took only two days, it was a bit fast for me.)

Then we bid on another sfh in a less pricey suburb. The house wasn't ideal, but it was cute and really inexpensive for a sfh (list price was $279,900, I think.) So we thought it would be a great starter home. I even posted about it on PS. We ended up bidding up to the highest price we were willing to pay for it, which was 258K, and the sellers refused to sell it for less than 260K. So we walked away, because we didn't want it badly enough. They actually called us three weeks later and offered to take our last offer, but by then we decided we were happy it didn't go through because we wouldn't have wanted to send our kids to those schools, so it wouldn't have been a long-term living situation. (This took a couple days, I can't remember how long, really.) This house is actually still on the market, and they lowered the price to 265K. I'm guessing they wish they had taken our offer.

THEN, we bid on that townhome I told you about earlier. That didn't work out.

And now here we are, with a gorgeous house in our ideal city, and I really hope this one goes through. This is the first home I really love and can see us living in for the long-term. Of course it's considerably more expensive than the other homes we bid on, but we decided that we might as well go for it since we can afford it and we found a home that's just right. I'm really excited about it, actually.

Here's hoping!

 

[Patiently_Waiting]

I purchased my home a little more than a year ago, so it was a bit of a different market back then (searching for a sfh also). I ended up buying the third house that I had bid on (the other two fell through during inspections). In each case, the back and forth negotiations lasted only a few days. I am a firm believer that the first two houses fell through for a reason - they weren't the house for me. For the house that I bought, the listed price was a bit out of my league, but my realtor said "Why not?" when I asked if we could put in a bid for $25k less than the list price. The sellers countered only $5k above that price (they were moving out of state for a job) and I ended up with a great place in a cool neighborhood at an amazing price! I hope this house works out for you and your FI - sending tons of PS real estate dust your way!!!