Something that I hear from virtually every client that's buying a home that we've ever worked with: At the beginning they say, “we're going to be really, really picky.” And then about 10 or 15 showings in, they start to feel this pressure because they've looked at a few homes and they haven't made a decision and they start to say, “we must be your worst clients ever!” It's very common. There's a lot of psychological stress and trauma that happens during the home buying process. Lot of people say, “oh, we’ll make the home buying process easy for you!” It's not easy. It's really hard. But the result at the end is worth it. A couple weeks ago I had a client that had just started their search, found a home that they liked and they said, “do you think we should make an offer?” And I said, “well I think this home works for you on a lot of levels but I also don't think you've seen very many homes yet.” They were coming from out of state and the home that they ended up buying was very different and I thought was a better fit for them and so you need to understand that’s what you're going to go through. Your real estate agent needs to create a safe space for you to feel like you can look at a lot of homes. And if you put a property under contract and the inspection is not right, and you just get the wrong feeling, there needs to be a safe place to say, “it's okay to walk away from this home.” You only want to do this once, you want to make it the right fit for you, so just understand, have that relationship with your realtor, set that expectation. A lot of our clients look at 30 plus homes. A lot of times, it's six months between the time that they first contact us and they close on their house.
This is a $2,000 gold coin that my clients received as a part of the winning offer on their house.
Some buyers taking advantage of current conditions, others sitting on the sidelines
Buyers need to be patient now. With a little luck, the right home comes on the market during a downswing in rates.
Larimer County median home price falls 4%, Weld County falls 1%
After 6 months of intense increases in mortgage interest rates we’ve finally see a price correction in the month over month data for Larimer and Weld County. Typically we don’t pay a lot of attention to this data because it’s not seasonally adjusted. But because of how fast interest rates have gone up we’re watching it closely right now. Inventory has increased significantly over where it was last year. However, by historical standards the number of homes for sale is still very low. While the interest rate increases have been terrible for housing affordability. They have reduced the amount of bidding wars so our buyers have much more time to make decisions and they are typically able to keep their inspection and appraisal contingencies which means we can get more money for repairs and ask for price drops if we get a low appraisal.