Temporary reprieve. I know it's only one company, but I keep thinking about what CoStar hiring another *two thousand* employees here will do to the already strained housing supply. :/

Interestingly, open door offered me 10k more for my home this month after their offer being stagnant and/or slightly down for the past several months.

Spring is the busy season so whatever

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market as a whole is flat. Market for done properties in desirable areas is still pretty good

If you're looking in the city limits you're going to keep running into this. Limited supply does that regardless of what the broader market is doing.

Prices are trending upwards. Inventory is extremely limited and I am seeing multiple offers situations every weekend.

I'm under contract (FTHB 🥳) and a tad stressed about the appraisal coming in low. I ran some comps in the Henrico RE database and it wasn't returning much as high as our price/SF (about $270). I also felt like the results were incomplete i.e. some other houses we looked at did not show up in the list.

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You're either getting catfished if they're going for that much over or something about the way your offers are constructed is off. Are you covering the gap in sales price vs contract price in cash?

edit: Not sure why this is being downvoted when it's the reality of the market right now.

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If the listings are priced artificially low (Which is most definitely happening here if you are looking outside of the city and losing) then you're going to need to cover that whole spread. When I am reviewing contracts with my sellers an offer 50k over doesn't mean shit if the buyer can't make up the difference should an appraisal come in low.

It's often more advantageous to go with a lower offer that will cover the whole thing if that number comes in just a bit above comparable properties. You really don't want a seller going wild for the higher offer only to have the appraisal come in low and the seller making out with less money than they would have.

I'm guessing it's a combination of both things here. Artificially low price and not adequately covering the gap.

edit: I should expand on something that gets missed often. When listing agents list low they're doing two things: One making themselves look like fucking heroes because they got "over list", and two they're baiting out people who do have the cash to put into the deal and weed out people who will rely more on financing. This doesn't mean you or anyone else are losing to all cash buyers, just people who can put more skin in the game. Both of these things are incredibly common and dumb and really only serve the listing agent on the deal and not necessarily buyers or sellers.

THIS! Though I could argue it benefits sellers

You could argue a lot of things Charles that's your hidden talent.

One of my family members is a realtor and said they’ve seen an uptick recently. Said inspection waiving had kinda disappeared after the initial Covid surge and is seeing it come back again now.

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Hey I'm right there with you. I've worked with a lot of people in your situation the last few years and it fuckin blows.

I mean it's literally part of the law school curriculum... you get graded on it

but it's a gentle way of saying I disagree with you in some circumstances, and it can be good for sellers

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I don't have any advice to offer, but here to say that were in the same spot when we were under contract a couple years ago. I started having heart palpitations from the stress, until our appraisal came in right at our offer price. Congrats and good luck!

I have to agree with you. I have not bid since last summer, but I’ve kept an eye on ones I’ve quasi liked the in three different counties (not the city), and they’ve all gone over. Now, they didn’t go 50k over, but it was definitely a significant amount over. I keep reading articles like this, and I’m like, where? I guess not in the 5 zips we are looking.

Have you considered building? Not for me, but might be an easier way in.

Could definitely be the realtors pricing it low to get people in as mentioned below.

1. January is typically the slow season (Spring is right around the corner)
2. Inventory is 1/3rd what is typically is in a pre-covid January
3. People are still paying over asking price, waiving inspections, and breezing through closing in under 30 days.
4. Interest rates are much higher (for whatever reason, people don't talk about the MASSIVE affect that interest rates have on mortgages versus the principal loan amount)

Homes are becoming slightly easier for wealthy individuals but we are still incredibly far-off from a normal market where young people can actually afford to purchase their first homes.

The average interest rate on a 30yr fixed loan is around 6.5% versus 3.9% a year ago meaning that your monthly payment on a $200k loan is over $320 more than it was a year ago! I hear so many new homebuyers getting excited about the prospect of lowering prices but the reason the prices are steadying is because of much higher interest rates.

Yeah it is definitely back and I think will be a feature of the whole spring season.

They hire recent grads who are renting in SA and Manchester, not buying homes

I think we might see a slow down again with the future raises in rates coming in.

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✋🏻 with a little luck and compromise we did it though. (finds haunted burial site in crawl space, sacrifices s/o)

Appraisals almost always work out in the favor of the buyer. We ran into that same fear last summer when we bought our first home. In my opinion, the hardest part is done for you 🥹

That hasn’t stopped after 3+ years. Put offers on 7 different houses in late 2020 before finally getting accepted. We got feedback from several sellers that we were beat out by cash offers.

Needle successfully threaded.

Commenter isn’t wrong. I recently purchased and went through the same process. List price was not getting you a house-we had to put at least 10-20k over to even stand a chance.

On the few that returned comments to us (they did this after we started including offer letters), they all said we were beat out by cash offers they just couldn’t refuse.

It all means you have to be rich to be a multiple homeowner, or have already owned prior to the class war frenzy

They really shouldn’t use the word, “correction” in reference to this market. That’s not what it is at all.

Last year, my MD home came in at exactly my offer, which was (gulp) about forty grand over asking.

That is only one role in one department they are hiring for.

This - ours came in at our offer price which was $150k over ask.

Rates don’t matter if people are paying cash... A house just sold in my neighborhood for $403 per sq ft. We got our house for $287 a sq ft in August 2021 after going $50k over asking and thought that was high at the time.

Yeah we gave up after the 7th offer went like this, interest rates ballooned even more now so it’s just back to waiting and stockpiling cash for us. And another year of rent….wooo….

Hmmm. The house across the street that was appraised at $370,000 just sold for $680,000.

Thanks to all the reassuring stories here! The appraisal actually came in last night and it was at slightly above contract price. Feeling very relieved!

Curious what people have seen in the Fan... I have no seen now evidence of things slowing - actually quite the opposite with zero inventory