I’ve been having a lot of anxiety about the housing market. My husband and I initially waited to buy a house when we moved to our area since it was a “seller’s market” with higher prices and less flexibility and power for buyers. Then just before the pandemic when we found out I was pregnant we decided we wanted to go ahead and buy a home. Some homes we really liked had just been sold in the couple of weeks before we started looking.

We started looking and basically what we wanted for our long-term family home was no longer available for two years with significant housing shortages. We have continued actively looking but even though we are now seeing some places that fit what we wanted coming available in the last month or two, houses are going for $100-200+ thousand dollars over asking with waived due diligence periods, taking as is, 30-150k+ due diligence costs (can’t get back if you back out on buying the home after seeing an inspection). Interest rates are increasing almost daily and so what would have cost us X amount a month ago now costs us $75 thousand dollars more on top the high prices (50% higher than last year in the area we are looking).

Our area has the second highest population growth in the country + top 3 I believe for housing shortage in the country.

I am caught between being afraid to buy right now due to prices being so high and the requirement to basically take the home AS IS AND offer 10-20% over asking even IF we are able to find what we want and manage to get a winning offer and being afraid we will be priced out of area and will be unable to afford to live in the good school district within my work commute and also closer to my parents. It has felt like a roller coaster.

My thoughts – There’s no low risk options. I could be making a huge mistake either way. We likely will not be able to have the kind of lifestyle we want and had planned on because housing prices have gone up so quickly and because of inflation. This really sucks – other people have just made 600k flipping their house in 2 years without really doing anything to it while we have essentially gotten a lot poorer and still don’t have the stability of owning a home.