We've had a pretty tough market out there for buyers lately so I thought I would make an article talking about what you can do if you're a buyer and you're trying to find a home in this market so I know it's been pretty tough. 

There's not much inventory out there if you uh look at the reports that I attached to this email you'll see in this last column the month's inventory is about one and a half which is unheard of very historic low even during the boom we never saw the months worth of inventory that low and what that means is if not one agent took another listing um then bring. 

Beginner's Guide About How To Buy A Home In Seller's Market 2020

You know put didn't put any more homes on the market at all it would take one and a half months to sell all of the homes that we have listed for sale a normal market is about six months and if you went back to the bottom of the recession which was in 2011 you would have 28 months worth of unsold inventory so that was now the other extreme that no one had ever seen before either so um I've never seen the inventory this low in the 15 years or so that I've been in real estate here in Tampa it's. 

You know it's a little crazy so if you're a buyer I'm what you know well first off what's causing this so it's a combination I think of the virus a lot of sellers have canceled their listings I've had myself set up on search and a number of canceled listings every day that are sent through on the email from the MLS is just unbelievable. 

You know like a dozen or two dozen a day so I guess the sellers are just you know as more cases the virus is spreading um the sellers just don't want people walking through their homes some of them are you know more worried about it than others then they just don't want strangers bringing germs into their houses which is totally understandable um so I think that's a lot of it and plus buyers are still out there looking for homes because of the interest rates. 

So unbelievably low i think it's like two and a half or two point seven five percent right now which is yeah that's fantastic for buyers too so that's kind of driving the inventory issue um so what should you do if you're a buyer and you really need to you need to buy a house you need to you're moving here from out of state or you're working from home all of a sudden and you need to each need an office. 

How To Buy A Home In Seller's Market 2020

You have children to a home school which is I really I feel sorry for you if you're having to do all that um I'm sure it's not fun so a lot of buyers are looking for more space they want to be away from the city where they're so crowded and congested um actually that's just a little trend going on right now as the buyers are trying to get away from the cities and move out into the suburbs again which is kind of interesting. 

So I have um two or three ideas that I've been using um all this year and they've been working pretty well so the easiest thing to do is just to go buy new construction the builders are doing all kinds of incentives right now one of them is offering up to thirteen thousand dollars towards your closing costs another one is offering a free pool package um and they have tons of inventory and you don't really have to wait six months for a house to be built because most builders start two or three houses from spec on spec. 

I should say and yeah they'll usually be ready in a month or two so you just have to kind of look around and you know to check out different builders and see what they have to offer and if you don't want to buy new construction and you're making an offer on an existing home just make the strongest offer that you can some of the things you can do would have a short inspection period like maybe seven days try to go conventional instead of f8 VA or FHA. 

Some people tend to not like VA and FHA loans I don't know why but they don't um make a larger deposit um one of my buyers put down a 10 000 deposit and that helped her to get the contract to get the um to get the house and just you got to be pre-approved you absolutely have to be pre-approved before you even think about writing an offer these days because I don't think anyone's going to take your offer seriously. 

If you haven't spoken to a lender yet um and the last thing which I've tried this a few times that's worked is to have you know right to sit down and write a letter to the seller, uh you know talk about your family or your you know yourselves whatever whoever's buying tell the seller a little bit about yourselves um just show that you're in earnest that you really like the house and you're motivated to buy it and uh just talk a little bit about how much you like it. 

Conclusion

You know look forward to working with them and that's actually pushed some of my buyers over the edge and helped them get the house that they wanted this year at least two or three times so those are just some tips if you want to discuss it further feel free to give me a call or email me and if you're a seller thinking about upsizing or downsizing.