We’ve been in the throws of house hunting for a few months now and all I can say is it’s a huge pain in the butt.
Now I realize that this is one of those first world problems and that I am very lucky to be able to afford to buy a home and yada yada. But I would just like to say that house hunting is not a fun as everyone painted it to be.
Ever since our wedding was over, we have been dreaming about the day we could start searching for a house. And now that we have started searching, I dream of the day when the searching will be over.
I spend every day scouring the internet for new or reduced price homes for sale and setting up tours for our weekends. The weekends are then spent driving around from house to house as we gradually become more and more disappointed. And why are we so disappointed?
Well, inventory now is absolutely pitiful. I would say 75% of the houses we’ve seen are foreclosed vacant homes (that have mostly been trashed or neglected and need a lot of work) and the other 25% are utterly overpriced nonsense.
Most of the overpriced homes were bought in the thick of the real estate boom and now that the bubble has burst homeowners are still looking to sell their home for the same price that they purchased it. On the other hand, the older homes that we’ve seen are just as overpriced because they require A LOT of updating. And for some reason, homeowners seem to think that these homes should be priced at the same level as newer homes.
We’ve actually gotten so fed up with the lackluster real estate inventory in our area that we’ve decided to start look at to be built homes (which I was totally against in the beginning). They actually seem to be more reasonably priced, which makes sense considering the builders probably purchased the land sometime after the market crashed.
But even that hasn’t been panning out so well. Most of the new to be built homes aren’t in the nicest of school districts. And if they are, they are way out of our price range. I guess you can’t really have it all?
So while we were hoping to move by the end of this year, it looks like that will be a long shot. But at least when we find the one, we can truly say that we’ve seen all that there is to offer 
And now my house hunting whining is over…for today anyway.
Was your home search frustrating or fun?
Anybody else disappointed with the still incredibly overpriced real estate market?
