Have you ever wanted to get something done in a certain amount of time but kept being met with obstacle, after obstacle, after yet another obstacle? Well sometimes that happens when you are looking to buy a home or a condo.
We just finished helping Greg and Jeny purchase a home in Buena Park, CA. I know what some might be thinking "I thought this blog was about Long Beach real estate". It most certainly is about Long Beach real estate and our clients, Greg and Jeny, started looking in Lakewood which is right next door to Long Beach and where my brother and I call home.
So how do you go from Lakewood to Buena Park? Well you don't do it in 1 week that's for sure. Greg and Jeny are newlyweds and they wanted to get a home before their 1 year anniversary. I figured with 4 months prior to their anniversary date we would have plenty of time to make it all happen.
How did it all begin
The first step to buying a home or a condo is to make sure that everyone understands what we are trying to accomplish. This may sounds like an easy task but trust me you want to make sure that prior to getting into the car with any real estate professional that you sit down with them and go over everything that you are looking for so they and you understand your goals.
So a 45 minute buyers consultation later and we had a few things that we absolutely had to have and they were this:
- Had to be close to both their works - this was doable as they both worked within 10 miles of Lakewood (Buena Park ended up within the range as well).
- They were willing to do some work to the property and didn't have to be perfect.
- The home had to have a yard. They wanted somewhere they could have a place to relax in.
- They didn't want the home to be on a busy street - I thought that this was fair.
- A two car garage was a must - Again another fair requirement.
Let's look at some properties
So we began our journey looking at properties. We of course rated every property on our 1 to 10 scale with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. We spend the first couple of Saturday's looking at properties in Lakewood and rating them and seeing what was working. We even submitted a few offers only to get outbid. That's right in this market we were losing offers on a regular basis. The offers we were submitting were not offers that were asking for 10% or even 20% off the price. We were offering list price on many of the properties but being outbid by 5 or 6 offers. These homes were aggressively priced and needed a little bit of work but we thought we had some chances at them.
We kept this up for several weeks but found the properties in our price range were getting bid out of our affordability.
Changing our direction (a little bit)
So after 6 weeks of looking in Lakewood we decided to expand our search to nearby Buena Park. For those unfamiliar with the location of Buena Park it is extremely close to Lakewood (only a few miles) and in our neighbor county of Orange County.
In Buena Park we had a few more choices available to us then we did in Lakewood. We were able to even be a little more picky as to what we were submitting on because we had a few more choices.
So the story would be easy if it just ended there. We ran into another round of losing a few offers. It was more than a few to say the least. Throughout all of our times we also kept focused on our goal of having a home before the 1 year anniversary.
We find a home we like
We found a home we like and we lose yet again. This one was harder to take than normal because we really thought we had it. The listing agent was nice though and appreciated how the offer was presented, the follow-up, and the effort we put forth so he let me know about another one of his listings that had just fallen out of escrow. Low and behold we go and see this home, submit an offer, and we open escrow!
30 days later
We finally get to start the escrow process and we are on our way to Greg and Jeny having a home. Throughout escrow, there were challenges, we were all happy we found a home that was worth it and was what we had set out to do. So did we make our deadline before the 1 year anniversary? Unfortunately we didn't make that deadline but we got close and most importantly we found a home that they can call home for many years to come.
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