\tWhen we found out we were being relocated to Peoria this spring, we thought it couldn\u0092t have come at a better time: the midst of a buyers market. Sales are down, inventory has been sitting for months (even years). Prices have to drop like rocks to get anything sold.<\/p>\n
\tSo, from the other side of the world, we started our house hunt online. We fell in love with houses. Got our hopes up. My husband started tracking prices and imagining a virtual free-fall. As our trip to find a house got closer, he talked of crazy low-ball offers and buying a house at tens of thousands below what the owner had dreamt of pocketing. He talked to someone who touted buying a house for 90 grand less than its original listing price. My husband started looking at more and more expensive houses, while our budget didn\u0092t budge.<\/p>\n
\tThen, houses on our \u0093watch list\u0094 started to sell. Our realtor said no one was closing 90 grand below asking. No one. And the closer our trip got, the faster houses started to sell. <\/p>\n
\tWe finally arrived to find a house, armed with a list of 40 we wanted to see. The first house we looked at the first day was an instant favorite. By 8am the next morning, it was under contract. With someone else. I started to feel a wave of panic. By the time we headed out for day two of looking with the realtor, two houses we were scheduled to see were under contract. Sold. She didn\u0092t think the looming end of the tax credit was the reason. She was just giddy with the idea that maybe it\u0092s the beginning of the end of the real estate slump. For her that\u0092s good. For us, that\u0092s trouble.<\/p>\n
\tWe quickly narrowed our long list down to three favorites. But I was sick with worry that not one, not even two, but all three would be gone before we\u0092d even had a chance to make an offer. And don\u0092t even get me started down the path of worry about a bidding war. I mean, you\u0092re not supposed to get into a bidding war in the midst of a buyers market. Are you?<\/p>\n
\tAfter going through our favorite house three times, we were ready to go ahead and make an offer. The realtor asked if we wanted to sleep on it first. No way. It might be gone by morning. We came in with an offer $33,000 less than the listing price. Then we spent the evening jumping every time the phone in our hotel room rang. <\/p>\n
\tHere\u0092s how our negotiations went. We\u0092d made our offer and asked for three changes in the house, too. The builder said ok to two of the three changes and dropped his price two grand. We were so excited he didn\u0092t just reject us straight out, we jumped up 13 grand. Great negotiating skills. You can imagine where it went from there. He dropped a grand. We realized we were stupid and went up a grand. Back and forth, back and forth. Till he got to his bottom number, which wasn\u0092t so very low. Seriously. It was 15 thousand below his original listing price. A far cry from 90. But he had us. We wanted the house. We caved.<\/p>\n
\tThat\u0092s how a buyers market quickly becomes a seller\u0092s market. When you find a house that even though you say you\u0092re willing to walk away from… you don\u0092t. He knew he had us. And I don\u0092t think changing our negotiating would have led to a different deal. <\/p>\n
\tMaybe our car negotiations will go better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When we found out we were being relocated to Peoria this spring, we thought it couldn\u0092t have come at a better time: the midst of a buyers market. Sales are down, inventory has been sitting for months (even years). Prices have to drop like rocks to get anything sold. So, from the other side of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}