Playing the long Game
A Buyer’s Adventure, Part 1
Searching for a home is not an easy task. You dream about what your home will be like, but you must keep your budget in mind and your expectations realistic, but that is simply hard.
You come up with your “list” the things you absolutely cannot live without, the things that would be nice to have and the things you definitely don’t want. A few of those things may be absolute… or at least you think they are. Then you are faced with an option: there is a home in your budget, it has 5 of 5 musts, but it also has a ‘definitely not’; or, it only has 4 of 5 musts, but several “nice to haves”. You now have a decision to make. What is most important to you? For most people, they simply cannot make that decision without knowing what all the factors are, and that is one of the biggest challenges as a Real Estate agent. I cannot make those decisions for my clients. I know that I could not articulate my decision paradigm if it were asked of me, so I cannot ask it of them.
When you have a long list of wants and there is a lack of inventory, you look at EVERYTHING. Well, almost everything. The buyers I am working with right now, are in a good position as far as buying goes. They own their current home and the only urgency they have to move is to find something that better fits their personal needs and comfort. They aren’t being forced to relocate for work, or family, in this case it is a choice, but it is still a necessary move. Their needs have changed, and their current home simply cannot accommodate those needs. It is a common scenario and a common reason to move, and in a market like this, it is the best scenario possible as it is allowing them to have the time to look and find what will really work for them. This is going to be their forever home, not a good enough for a while home.
I met them 2 months ago – almost to the day. Their list of musts seemed in line with their budget, and I was confident that we could find something for them. Maybe not 100% perfect, but something that checked enough boxes that compromises could be made. We have looked at homes that checked some boxes, we have eliminated homes without seeing them due to some ‘definitely nots’ even thought they checked almost all the musts – but the combination just wasn’t right.
From March 28, until today, I have sent them 142 Possibilities. Of those, 7 went under contract either before they even went from Coming Soon to Active, or within one day before we could view them. Sometimes even when we had an appointment, the appointment was cancelled due to sellers accepting an offer before allowing all scheduled showings.
We have viewed 35 houses. None of them have had the magic combination of Musts, Nice to haves and deal-breakers.
Some might think they are just being too picky, but they just don’t want to settle for their ‘forever home’. I can understand that. Buying a home is a stressful complicated process – would you want to jump through all the hoops and heartache for a home that is just OK, or that you don’t even like that much?
I wouldn’t. We are playing the long game, and we are not going to give up.
That brings us to today. I saw a new listing this morning. It is “Coming Soon” so I quickly made an appointment and sent the listing to my clients to review. They agree, it looks perfect – on paper. But there aren’t any photos. Usually a red flag, but we have been pleasantly surprised before. We are going to see it tomorrow, so this blog will be a first – it is To Be Continued….