Buyers - when did you start looking?

[kithara]

How many months did it take you to find your home? How many months/weeks were there from offer to closing?

DH and I are going to look into buying our first home this year and I would like to time things close to when our lease is up - but I'm not sure how much time I need.

[pixielou]

i started this thread a while ago on this same topic.

http://www.constantchatter.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10156

in the end, it took us about a year to find our house, it took us 3+ months to actually close on the house, then another 5 weeks before we moved in - so 16 months total.

~pixie

[PinkMartini]

After we decided to actively pursue buying a house it took us 2 months to find one and make an offer. We had been semi-looking for 2 years prior but were in CA and there was no way we could afford 99.9% of the houses at that time.

We were doing a 30 day closing.

[Jenyfer9]

I think that it depends on your local market. When we bought our second house, we started looking in late Feb/early March and we closed May 25th. If your market now is as slow as ours is, then you are definitely at an advantage since (it appears anyways) that you don't have anything that you have to sell. I think that sellers are much more flexible on a closing date (ie, sooner than they might otherwise expect) if you don't have a contract based on the sale of your present house.

[mamax2]

You are in the very fortunate position of buying without having to sell! In many markets, you're going to be calling a lot of the shots, so basically the closing time frame might be totally your decision. I would give yourself 3-6 months from start to finish, although know that it could come much faster. Also, for the right house at the right price, sacrificing part of your security deposit isn't really that big of a deal (especially if you account for that in your negotiation process).

For us, we always buy quickly - usually within the first month of looking and this has held true for single family homes, rental condos, land and commercial property. Buy, hey, we also got engaged 7 months after we started dating, so maybe that's just us :lol:

[kithara]

We definitely are fortunate not to have to sell first - although we may have to take out a first mortgage on DH's house in England to meet the 20-25% down payment that most co-op's in NYC require.

We have talked about selling DH's house in England anyway - but we're still up in the air about it. The rental income is nice to have and it gives us the option to move to the UK easily if we decided to do that one day. At the moment we are looking to move forward without selling if at all possible.

I've pretty much decided on the neighborhood (price has a LOT to do with that!). And I'm really excited about owning instead of renting soon.

[dpangel33]

We're in the process of buying our first home so in our experience it really only took a month to find a house and the closing will take less than a month. We are also lucky that we don't have to sell anything and instead of renewing our lease, we opted for month to month giving us two weeks to move out.

[BTB]

We bought our first home last spring - looked casually for a year (just on the internet, didn't go to any open houses) then once things were official for the move, we looked for a home for three weeks, and closed four weeks later. We moved in the day after closing. Spring '06 was a little different market though, prices haven't changed that much where we are but there is a whole lot more inventory now. I think we managed to see everything in our price range - and some things that weren't, in both directions - in just three weekends of searching. Man, I wish we were house-hunting now instead! :)

[melnv]

We weren't looking to buy, but I've always browsed the MLS list in our area for fun. I saw a houseI fell in love with mid July and we closed less than a month later.

DH loves to tell people how I woke him up at 3 in the morning to pull out his tax info. I couldn't sleep and wanted everything in order to be pre-approved the next day.

[kanga1622]

We looked at houses for about 6 weeks. Once the offer was made, it was 5 weeks to closing.

Of course, once we saw the address on the MLS listing, we were pretty sure that was the right house. We both just fell in love once we walked in so it went fairly quick after that.

[GeekGirl]

We found our house on the first day of looking (actually, the second house we looked at!), put in an offer, and closed within 6 weeks. Everything moved incredibly fast!

[Standrea]

Both houses we have purchased/purchasing, the deal was sealed (or will be) within 30 days. We looked at the houses one day, put in an offer the next.

Our first house we were sent a bunch of listings from our agent, and went out to see about 10 on one day. The house we ended up buying was an accident-I gave her the wrong MLS #.

The house we are in the process of buying, we have been getting MLS emails from the agent for about a year and a half. We saw 2 houses that we liked within 2 weeks of eachother, and put in an offer on one of them the next day. We should close sometime next week.

We were lucky that we didn't have to sell our one house before we bought the new one, so that could make a huge difference.

[KrissyCat7]

It took us about a week to find our house. It took about 45 to close.

[kk junebug]

when we decided to "browse" we had looked at only 2 houses. Then our friend got relocated to the west coast and he agreed to sell us his house!

so we're right in the thick of things. signed a binder w/a closing set for 5 weeks later.
hoping to close the day before thanksgiving!

[Hello Kitty]

Both times we bought within a month. We were also very specific in what we were looking for and both markets we bought in had low stock for our requirements.

The first time we looked mid December and closed by Jan 31 - we were renting and subleased our apt. for the remainder of the lease.

This time we looked at houses and online listings for a few weeks. Then we listed our house, got a contract incredibly quickly, and made an offer on the new house the same day. It was really just a matter of the right timing. We're supposed to close in November if all goes well.

ETA - I guess for me I would not start looking unless I was ready to buy, or would be able to make an offer, but that's largely colored by us being very specific with conditon, style, and price of a given home.

[Cativa]

I think it depends on alot of factors, including how picky you are and what the supply is in your area.

When we bought our condo in 3/03 there wasn't a whole lot in our price range in our area. We looked for about a month, and closed 30 days after that. I think it would have taken us longer to look if we were determined to find something we really liked, but since supply was really low, we found the first thing that was just okay in our price range and pounced on it.

This time we've been looking for about a month (though haven't finished yet). In the area we are looking there is a ton of supply, but unfortunately there is also a ton of buyers. Whats happening is the good properties are being swept up within days of hitting the market, but less desireable ones are sitting there for months. Some of the houses we've looked at have been on the market upwards of 8 months! When we finally have an offer accepted it will take us 45 days to close. We won't be held up by the selling of our condo, but we are using a VA loan - which takes a minimum of a 45 day close.

[salysaturn]

We started looking in Dec/Jan, when DH was being considered for a transfer.

He got the transfer papers in March, so we were serious then. The house we picked had been on the market for about 18 months, so they were eager to sell. We made an offer in the end of March and made settlement by April 17. It was quick, cause we had to move fast :)