Discover How to Overcome Home Buying Challenges Today

By Jamie Reece

20+ years as Principle & Managing Broker, proud UW Business grad, loves competition & negotiating hard, achieving client’s goals thru statistical & opportunity analysis. Can be found sailing, biking, volunteering, or hanging with family when not actively engaged in creating a spreadsheet.

Are you a buyer struggling with today’s market and discouraged, or do you know someone who is?

You’re not alone. For nearly 10 years, the market has been seller-favored, and in the past five years, particularly seller-favored with less than three months of inventory. It’s a tough market, yet during this past decade, we’ve helped hundreds of buyers from all economic backgrounds find success and start or continue their path of homeownership. So, let’s talk about how you can get unstuck and move forward.

Clear Vision

First, we start with a potentially challenging truth: if you have a downpayment and mortgage pre-approval and the desire to purchase a home and it’s taken more than two to three months, you are likely experiencing one (or both) of these:

• Ineffective Representation: Your broker is not doing a great job of continually educating you on the market (with actual data, not feelings) and helping you develop, search, and offer strategies that help you succeed. In addition, they should also be helping you understand the costs of waiting, especially as home prices continue to rise and make your search more challenging.
• Unrealistic Expectations: If your broker is providing education, perhaps you are relying too much on faith that the market will shift in your favor despite available data or trends, or you’ll “hit the jackpot” with the exceedingly rare ‘perfect’ opportunity no one else sees. Unfortunately, the odds of either of these are often extraordinarily low, while the costs of playing this gamble can be significantly high when prices are increasing 5% to 10% year to year.

Effective Consultation & Strategies

The key to avoiding the challenges and keeping you moving forward to a home you truly enjoy and putting equity in your pocket rather than watching is float by is truly effective buyer representation, which includes:

• Needs Consultation: A deep understanding of what you need, want, and dream of in a home and why it’s important to you enables your broker to help guide you to the most rewarding opportunities (and compromises*) in the market.

(*A good broker is an effective compromise consultant. You’re not going to get everything you want, need, or dream of no matter what your budget is—so they guide you to getting the best mix of these within your market and means.)

• Buyer Feasibility Study: Your broker should provide a feasibility study to show your recent market history so you can understand the listing volume, quality, and competition. It’s difficult to adopt effective search and negotiation strategies without this information. This should be updated at least once a month throughout your search.
• Successful Strategies: Using the consultation and feasibility study, your broker will design effective search strategies to bring the best opportunities to you and coach you on the risks and benefits of successful offers for your market so you can win the right home when you find it.

Don’t give up on homeownership; it is one of the most rewarding experiences people can have, personally and financially. The sooner you get started, the greater the rewards, so don’t let ineffective advice or unrealistic expectations stand in your way.

Interested in learning more, or ready to start the process? Reach out to us by phone or email, and we’ll show you how our team can help.