want to give up!

Shopping for a house is terrible!! I have seen about 13 homes and one is worst then the next! Please house gods send more homes!

Re: want to give up!

Ugh...I feel your pain. We house hunted for several years before we found the right one. We saw probably close to 100 homes. Not even joking. We even put in several offers and were turned down. It's a hard process.

But this is also the slow part of the season. Give it a few more months. As the weather starts to warm up and spring hits, you'll see a lot more promising homes come on the market. The best advice I can give you is DONT SETTLE! I know it can be discouraging and you probably feel like you'll never find something, but just hang in there. When the right house comes along, you'll know it! It might take some time but it will be so worth it.

want to give up!

where r u looking

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Thanks. I will not settle just to have a house. I bought my last house in 2008 and I remember it was so easy! Now not so much. We sold our current place so we probably have 2 months till we have to get out. I guess we can always rent for a bit if needed.


Looking in Oceanside, RVC, Lynbrook, Merrick, Bellmore, Wantagh, Seaford.

want to give up!

I have so many more requirements for next time around too lol

want to give up!

The inventory in Oceanside seems so limited right now. We're looking (although not seriously) and friends of ours are looking. There is hardly anything. Hopefully in Spring time more will come to market.

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Hang in there for a few more weeks. Hopefully more inventory will come out when the weather starts to change. I agree, though, that those are really popular areas, so it's just generally going to be a bit harder finding (and getting) a new house.

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We just bought in Lynbrook and it was tough. A lot of the houses we saw were smaller or older and oddly laid out. We used Christine Braun as our buyer's agent and she was fantastic. She also recommended checking out North Bellmore, which was a fantastic neighborhood and we felt like the houses were a little more of what we were hoping for when we started looking. Though, we ultimately lucked out and purchased in Lynbrook, which is where we had originally wanted to buy.

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You have looked at only 13 houses and want to give up? Girl, that's nothing. We have been looking for over a YEAR and have looked at easily 100-150 houses and only 5% of them had everything we wanted within our price range.

The last 2 homes we liked a lot and made offers on went into a bidding war and we walked away. We are primarily looking at just a few towns on the south shore but if something in our price range pops up in Plainview or Syosset, we would consider those too. Hopefully we will find something good soon as we already sold our home and all our stuff is in storage.

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Message edited 2/12/2016 10:11:20 AM.

want to give up!

I'm selling my house and I know inventory is very low in many areas. It's a sellers market right now.

13 houses is not a lot to see. Hang in there.

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Re: want to give up!

Posted by TheDivineMrsM

Thank you. I had a good time writing that piece You need to keep your sense of humor when buying a house!

Message edited 2/12/2016 12:18:48 PM.

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BTDT! We took about 2 years to find out perfect house. The market should really open up when the weather gets better.

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want to give up!

We looked on and off for 2+ years and looked at a good 75 homes. Finally when we NEEDED to make a decision quick we did a full day and I just ended up picking one. I so don't regret it at all I LOVE LOVE LOVE my house and would have bought it if it was the first house I saw or the 100th. Hang in there!! You will find the perfect home! Sometimes expanding search parameters is helpful- like for us I expanded price a bit and found what I wanted and was lucky our sellers negotiated a bit

Re: want to give up!

Yes, inventory is low and buyer demand is high in most areas on LI.

But I will just say while the prevailing advice is always "don't settle" -- there is a difference between settling (e.g., rushing into a purchase that doesn't make sense long term, or sacrificing a major criteria, such as location or school district) and being realistic.

Prices have been going up. And most houses on Long Island are older houses (not brand new construction with all of the amenities one might expect from watching real estate TV shows). You really just have to educate yourself well (hopefully, with the guidance and assistance of a good buyer's agent) on what your money can buy in this market, in different areas. I've sold houses for over $1 million and I've sold co-ops for $125,000, and everything in between. Nobody gets everything they want on their wish list when they are buying a home, unless perhaps they are custom building it with an unlimited budget (like Heather Dubrow on the Real Housewives of Orange County! lol).

So while you don't want to "settle" in the sense that you don't want to make an uninformed or rushed, desperate decision, you also want to be realistic.

Some of my buyers really get hung up on what the listing photos look like - if they see an updated kitchen, they are sold, even if then they realize the house is tiny or has an unworkable layout. Sometimes as an agent, my job is to help my buyers see the big picture -- maybe a kitchen renovation is something they can tackle down the road if the house is the right size, location, layout, etc. (things that are harder to change). Sometimes I can recommend other options (in terms of areas, style of homes, etc.) that a buyer may not have considered.

I never push my buyers -- ultimately, it's their money and they will be the ones living in the house they buy. But sometimes as a buyer, you don't know what you don't know. And the market can be very hard to navigate on your own. Once you find a house that you want to put an offer on -- a rare gem -- you can rest assured that other buyers will be jumping all over it, too. So it's not about just the search, but everything that comes after you find the one you like as well, in order to successfully buy.

Of course, let me know if I can help!

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nm! I see the entire post about corner lots now lol. I should have scrolled down a little.

Message edited 2/16/2016 11:24:21 AM.

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We looked in western suffolk all last year - everything needed soooo much work. It seemed like people with the great houses were just never going to sell them. I know some people dont mind doing renovations but in our case, our current house was in a better neighborhood than the homes we saw so we ended up just renovating our own home. In a few years we may still want something bigger but to me, right now judging from what I saw, bigger did not mean better.

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We've been looking for almost 2 years now! Now our home is sold and we need to be out in less than 2 months and there is nothing out there! It's getting to the point where my husband is pushing to move off the island...