'OMG I Just Want to Buy a Freaking House'

My wife and I are in the home-buying process right now. We're supposed to close escrow on Monday. We were looking in this price range, somewhere between $350k and $450k. We have a 20% down conventional loan. My realtor summed it up: "Cash is king. After cash comes conventional with 20% down, then 10% down, then 5%, then FHA loans, and then VA loans." The first house we offered on had 9 other offers. The second had 2 others, but the owner is flipping the house and we were the only non-FHA offer he got, so he took our offer. I guess we're lucky that we can put 20% down and get a conventional loan in this market.

Posted by Fred | reply to this comment
October 23, 2009 1:51 pm

I just purchase a house in March, 2009. Prior to the home purchase, I had placed an offer on a short sale for 10% over asking price and never heard back on that offer. I must have hit it just right with timing and the 20% down seemed to be key. I offered 399,000 on a new townhouse when the asking price was 439,999. The developer had four units and was about to go into foreclosure. If I understood correctly the VA and FHA loans may be difficult for the seller to deal with (I may be off base on this). I did look around for a few months and saw some pretty aweful homes for sale. Keep looking, it took me a while.

Posted by Jane | reply to this comment
October 23, 2009 3:39 pm

Called my agent to look at a house I found on Craigslist. The agent called to set up viewing but was told that he could not go in and 2 agents have submitted offers. I called personally and was offered a viewing for the next day. Is the broker showing the house which is owned by the bank trying to get the whole comission? Who is looking out for me? Shady if you ask me. Several co-workers are making offers only to be rejected and told they need to up their bid, and then the house goes off the market? Lots of shady stuff going on.

Posted by Flurry | reply to this comment
October 23, 2009 1:53 pm

Wow, does this ever ring true! My wife and I have been searching for our first house, and it's been very frustrating. We've been careful with our funds all these years, and have saved up a decent amount for a down payment and emergency fund. We're also careful now, and will NOT reach beyond what we can actually afford, but every single time we put an offer down, we get elbowed out by investment buyers waving fistfuls of cash and driving the price way above the listing price and well out of our range. With all the talk of Equal Housing and getting people into their own homes that I've been hearing, I'm certainly not seeing it actually happening.

Posted by Bugman | reply to this comment
October 23, 2009 2:21 pm

Hello Everybody, Vicki Inghram, here, Realtor. The situation that we are in right now is that it is a buyer's market and cash is King. Even, ALL CASH BUYERS, are losing out on their offers - because they are being outbid by other ALL CASH Buyers. The investors are out there investing their cash. In this market, No financing contingencies, is what most sellers need. But,sometimes, TERMS, matters more to sellers than $$$. I recommend that your agent finds out what the seller needs & wants, first, before you write up the offer. (Albeit, this requires a skill and perserverance.) You never know...it could be that your seller wants to stay in the property longer or keep his furniture....who knows.....

Posted by Vicki Inghram | reply to this comment
October 24, 2009 11:34 am

I've been looking in the $450-$600 range with no luck. What is on the market has been picked through and is sitting because no one would buy it! For all the talk of the prices dropping, I find it pretty expensive still. I have more than 20% down, perfect credit and no debt so getting a loan was easy but finding the house isn't. I get the sense that many banks drug their feet on foreclosure hoping (probably correctly) that the market would stabalize and maybe start to recover before they needed to move on property. As a result, not much has hit the market. Honestly, I may just decide to rent.

Posted by Steven | reply to this comment
October 23, 2009 3:09 pm

I started looking for a place around March. When i started there was a pretty decent inventory of house, even for use FHA buyers. As the months went by the inventory continued to drop and the offers went crazy. People were bidding 60 and 70k over what it was worth to get into escrow...when of course the loans wouldnt appraise for that. Is the last few months is been almost impossible for anyone with a FHA loan to get anywhere. Most people arent accepting FHA and the properties that do have 10-15 offers within a day or so. I'm glad to be done. GOOD LUCK to everyone in the SD market.

Posted by Eric | reply to this comment
October 23, 2009 7:48 pm

I am a single female with a lucrative income. I spent 8 years in the Navy with high hopes that one day I would be using my VA loan to buy my very own first home..((bonk)). Not happening in today's market. I am happy to see an article about this finally and raising public awareness. i was being to think I was alone. Me and my realtor looked at over 10 properties and my offer was either just out right turned down or severely out bidded. I was looking for a single family home in the price range of $325-350,000. But, if I had the cash or 20% down, like my co-worker I would be in like flynn. I even called Michael Turko about the housing problem and the discrimination against VA loan recipients. What's the point of the loan if youcan'tuseit.

Posted by Tamara Iglesias | reply to this comment
October 24, 2009 5:19 am

Ah, too bad, kiddies. Must be awful to be a pauper even in a peasant's market. I think the smart boys and girls would work to make rent controls a reality here, and pass laws that would force those new, empty condo buildings that recently went up all over SD into either the rent market or for sale within three months of the passage of said laws. That would bring more equity to the market, make more people owners instead of whatever they are now and take some of the shadiness out of RE deals by making it necessary to get buyers with what loans and terms they could scrounge. Sure, call me a commie; it's what the protectors of the status quo always do. But the status quo just brings more woe to many and getting out of this recession by stimulating the market is priority #1.

Posted by Vic | reply to this comment
October 24, 2009 10:28 am

I can afford a $250k house on a 20-year fixed mortgage, but zero-down loans no longer exist thanks to those who screwed it up for the rest of us. I qualify for 3% down, so I'll be able to scrape that up in a year or two, but if I didn't and if I had to wait until I had 20% down, it'd be a long, long time before I'd qualify for a loan.

Posted by Poppa | reply to this comment
October 25, 2009 9:14 am

My husband and I finally closed escrow recently on a condo in Escondido. We were looking in the $250 - $300k range, FHA. We put offers on 5 places. A couple places were short sales, first day on the market, with more than 20 offers. We never heard back on those. Two others were regular sales and though we put full offers we had investors go over the top with cash. We finally found a regular sale, but the appraisal came back low (a problem that's been killing a lot of deals from what I hear). We worked through it thanks to some tough negotiations on the part of our agent and broker. It's frustrating to see families who are trying to buy their first home get pushed out of the market by greedy investors.

Posted by Noticed | reply to this comment
October 25, 2009 7:43 pm

I purchased in July 2009. I am an FHA buyer (3.5% down) and was looking in the range of 300k to 400k. I made 15 offers, several were rejected, several recieved a non-response, and I was outbid on a few. Finally got into a bidding war on a bank owned home and won. Property listed at 325k and my winning big was 390k. I lucked out when the home did not appraise and the bank adjusted the price to the max appraisal of 320k.

Posted by Matt | reply to this comment
October 26, 2009 11:40 am

we started looking since Feb of this yr but still no luck, tried VA but seems like no chance at all if u are using VA type of loan. Now we tried conv w/ 20% down, not asking any seller credit, offering at least in the listed price or 10-15K higher & still no luck... not sure if it is our Realtor or it's the offer or what??? Getting frustrated already... cannot even benefit from VA loan anymore... will hold on for few more months then if still the same better just rent I guess...

Posted by VAloan | reply to this comment
October 27, 2009 1:25 am

We have been house hunting since March. We have put in offers on almost 2 dozen house since. We have approval for both a VA loan and a conventional loan and have been offering 20% over asking price and still haven't been accepted. Last week we finally got an offer accepted and had our home inspection and our inspector told us he wasn;t quite sure the home was fully permitted. we had a permit inspection done and found out it was indeed not all permitted. only 1300 of the 2000sq ft was permitted. Much of the house was added on to the existing structure and the permits were never obtained. The estimate came back at $50,000 to get it up to code and permits. The sellers would not come down in price or negotiate, house is now back on market and the agents haveny disclosed permit problems

Posted by K M F | reply to this comment
October 27, 2009 3:43 am

My husband and I have been looking since March. We're the buyers with 10% down and excellent credit looking in the $350,000-450,000 range, and keep getting rejected even if we offer 20,000+ over list. Some places have had 20 offers. Our agent has recommended placing a bunch of offers without going to view the places and seeing if you get any replies. Then you still have your 17 days to pull out. I wonder how many other people have tried or are trying this approach? We haven't done this, but we feel like we're wasting a lot of time and effort the way we're currently going about the search/hunt. It's hard enough to find a place central coastal that isn't a total dump, extremely close to a train track or flight path and within your range.

Posted by AS | reply to this comment
October 27, 2009 8:10 am

This is no big surprise. Many homeowners are underwater and are not going to sell in this market. The only people that would sell are those that are desperate. The concept of the buyers market is a catch22. It's great that the market has pushed prices down (for the buyers that is), however it affects the inventory because selling is less attractive to current owners. What's left? Foreclosures and short sales. It's really not that hard to understand.

Posted by shawn1874 | reply to this comment
October 27, 2009 10:33 am

In addition, it looks like investors are coming back which will result in another bubble. It'll probably be smaller than before since these are cash investors and not every tom, dick, and harry with a zero down loan. What could anyone do about that, aside from passing legislation that gives first time homebuyers priority over 2nd,3rd, 4th time homebuyers (that probably won't happen anytime soon). There is really no way to stop investors with lots of cash from driving prices back up. That's good for many people with underwater mortgages but not so good for those buyers that are looking for low prices. Oh well.

Posted by shawn1874 | reply to this comment
October 27, 2009 10:34 am

Working with buyers, putting in offers lower, then higher than list, sometimes $20K higher in the $300-380K price range. Using VA, then FHA, even conventional 5% down (on and off 'available' by banks). Just learned from title-there are "ELEVEN THOUSAND VACANT HOMES in San Diego County!-that 'Bailed Out Banks' are "holding" properties! What IS going on here? In 24 yrs. of sales, I've never seen it get this corrupted. We have agents 'listing as new' properties that they've illegally had 'listed,' having gained '6 offers' (vs. 25-30 offers on other properties!) after a few days, then 'reported as PENDING' within 2 HOURS of being 'notified by MLS' with 'list date-now saying 14 days,' This is becoming a very crooked business-perhaps Buyers should boycott offers for a few weeks? Stop any 'sales' to banks til they 'get uncorrupted' or stop dealing with such!

Posted by San Diego is Being Scammed! | reply to this comment
October 27, 2009 11:46 am

• Users may post more than one comment, but should not pose as multiple users. Multiple posts from the same IP address but with a different user name on each will be reviewed to determine whether abuse has occurred.
• Posts with overly personal attacks or unsubstantiated allegations may be edited or deleted.
• Please be patient with the posts -- there may be a delay before they appear on the site -- and make sure to enter the code in the "image verification" box.