Weddingbee boards

We've been looking for 7 months.  About a month ago we put in our first offer, but the bank accepted a higher offer.  I'm insanely jealous you found a house so quickly.  

Since you have not been looking for long, my advice is to take a while to think about it with your husband and think about what you like and whether this is really the right house--are there little things that kind of bother you (there should be some, but what are your deal breakers).  Is there enough space for the family you may want to have some day (like do you want 2 kids in the next 10 years, but this house only has two bedrooms?).

In my experience, looking online doesn't really help you start thinking about what's important.  There's something totally different about walking through the space, thinking about the layout and really being IN a house that you can't get online.

Good luck!

We put an offer on our house three weeks into our search. The house that we bought was actually the second house we walked through although it was not love at first sight for me.

Long story short, the house smelled like smoke, was larger than what I thought we needed and the price was out of our price range. Three weeks later two other houses got snatched up as we were trying to put offers down on them. We needed to jump on another house fast, so we put an offer down on our home. Luckily we outbid a competing offer and got the home for a price we could afford. If you are curious, I fretted that we would have the whole house fumigated because of the cigarette smoke, but the sellers clarified that it was just their adult son who was living there that smoked sometimes in the house eventhough he was not supposed to. So that turned out to be non-issue.

This has gotten long winded, but what I am trying to say is that if this home is really what you want, go for it. A house you see may be gone the next day, you never know in real estate! If you find something you love there is no point considering endless other options. Good luck!

We looked at a few houses in May of last year but didn't find anything.  I had all these crazy limitations - 6 block radius of our current rental house, at least 100 years old, wood floors, garage, yard, and a price range.  About 6 houses fit the bill and we looked at all of them.  We loved one, but it was too expensive.

The seller emailed me in August to say they were having a price drop.  I figured it would be a couple thousand, but it was TWENTY thousand!  We put in an offer that day, and moved in exactly one month later.

So finding the house took a little bit, but once we found it, we closed and moved in immediately.

We started casually looking online autumn of 2008. I saved and categorized all the homes I liked and got familiar with the area before I arrived that upcoming spring. We started going to Open Houses summer of 2009, but back then we wanted something completely different. Actually, we changed our "ideals" 3 times before finding our current house. At first we really wanted to live in the countryside, be surrounded by nature and have a ton of land. Then after driving through a few gravel and dirt roads, we realized we weren't hardcore farmers afterall. We needed to live somewhere with at least a grocery store close-by.

That's around the time we were seriously considering in buying a townhouse since we would save on rent and at the same time have a place of our own. We planned to upgrade into a detached home later, but given the dynamics of the Swedish real estate market, we realized it was a much better idea to just wait until we found our forever home.

Then came our house. We 1st saw it on Valentine's Day/Lunar New Year. It was a house we weren't really planning on looking at and when we did see it, it took awhile before we fell in love with it. It was the very first detached house we saw that was in a small town (not in the boonies like all the rest). It had almost everything we've ever wanted, just not the exact way we want them. The biggest downside was it has a small kitchen! Something I thought was a deal breaker ...but it turned out the attached bathroom trumped the kitchen size! It's very, very rare to see an attached bath in our area and the way our kitchen is layed out, it looks like it could be easily expanded.

So in a way, we had a little of both - we've been looking for awhile, yet we bought the first detached house that we saw (in an actual town, not the boonies). I absolutely love the area, and everytime we visit, I love it even more (we don't move in until June 15th).

My advice: if you love it, and know exactly what you want, there's no need to look further. Consider yourself lucky in finding a home right away! Remember that a little paint, gradening, and some renovation can truly transform a place, but it sounds like you already love it and that's a really, really good sign.

I agree with missmouse29, you have to look into your local market to see if bidding that low is realistic. In my case, it was, but it wasn't us that started the bidding. Another couple made the first bid $31,000 less than their asking price! Like the house you're interested in, ours was slightly overpriced. Either that or it was just way to cold for people to be bothered with looking at homes (it was a freakish winter with record breaking snowfall).

We started off by raising their offer by $7000, which was still way low, but since no one else was bidding, we had an advanatge and were able to negotiate with the sellers. In the end we got a $14,000 discount and we're totally happy with that.

I think you made a good decision to pass up the other house. Location is very important, and it's thanks to the Bees that really convinced me about that. Keep in mind that when you make an offer, be prepared to negotiate. For instance, we purposely spaced our offers to anticipate their counter-offers - so in the end, we would lead them to the price we wanted.

So basically, we wanted it for about $14k discount, but instead of saying that outright, we set a much lower offer, $25k, then $17.5k, then $15.5k. In the end, they were the ones that cut to the chase and flatly offered a $14k discount - although in our minds, we were leading them to another round. We wanted to play hardball and make it seem like they were squeezing money out of us, although we were really prepared to pay more for the house if we had competition.

Try to find out their reason for selling the house, it can really help you if it comes down to negotiations. Good luck! Keep us updated.