What’s it like to shop for a home in “the toughest market to buy a house in Denver metro history”?
It takes preparation, patience and planning, but it is possible to buy a home in the Denver area these days
Realtors say one of the reasons inventories are so low is that people who might want to sell their home worry about how they will find a place to move.
“It’s hard to do a sale of a property and the purchase of a property at the same time” in any period, said Greg Fischer, who is the managing broker at residential real estate company West and Main. “And it’s hard in a global pandemic with low inventory.”
Fischer said programs are available that, for example, offer loans to people who want to move so that they can buy their next home, making them more comfortable about putting their current home on the market.
(West + Main client) Anna Franaszek and her husband, a veteran, discussed taking out a VA loan, an option that would have required no down payment, to buy before putting their home on the market. The monthly mortgage payments would have been “horrendous,” Franaszek said.
“It would not have been good,” she said. “But I just felt we had an option a lot of people don’t have.”
In the end, they were able to find a new home in Westminster without taking that step, and their old home in Arvada sold quickly.
Franaszek and her husband spent a bit more than they had originally planned after finding their initial budget would not have bought much more house. Franaszek said that because they were going to spend more, they ruled out older homes that might need work. Newer homes meant smaller yards, they found. Franaszek is an avid gardener and the couple has two dogs. But they agreed that other priorities were more important, among them having a basement where they could set up a home gym that had been in the garage of their old home. Both Franaszek and her husband are powerlifters.
The two have been spending more time at home since the pandemic. Franaszek has since the spring been working from home as a proposal manager for an engineering firm. Her husband, an engineer for an aerospace company, has more and more days when he works from home.
Franaszek advised buyers to “have crystal-clear priorities. Know exactly what you want and where you’re willing to compromise.”
She and her husband initially could tour homes only virtually because of pandemic precautions. Franaszek remembered seeing houses on websites one day only to find them taken down the next, perhaps because sellers were wary of what the disease outbreak might mean.
Fischer said provisions are being added to contracts calling for a pause in the event that measures related to the pandemic make it difficult to do business as usual. Fischer added sellers are asking questions about what to do if a buyer has to back out because of a job loss related to the pandemic.
“It’s a tough, real circumstance that we have to be mindful of,” Fischer said, adding that while homes are selling briskly now, he’s concerned about the future if job losses continue to mount.
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