- Ashley Nader, 28, has put in 15 presses on houses over the past 14 months. She still isn’t a homeowner.
- She went into contract twice, only to be ghosted by the ahead seller and forced out by the second.
- “All the other offers I’ve submitted have been rejected by greedy agents,” she told Insider.
Shopping for a house can be a lot like dating.
Just ask Ashley Nader, the 28-year-old product manager who has put in 15 presses over the past 14 months. None of them have worked out.
Nader began her house hunt in October 2020 after emotive from the Bay Area back to the Miami metro area she grew up in during the pandemic. She’d been bouncing between the two seashores until her workplace reclassified her as a Florida employee and she began enjoying the tax perks of the Sunshine State.
A remote worker since the end of 2019, she had eschewed the tenet of owning a house in favor of being a nomad until the pandemic prompted her to seek a home base in Florida. “I reasoning I’d be able to own a home and use it as a permanent residence, and then rent it out for six months out of the year,” she told Insider.
That idea has corroborated more fantasy than reality for many in today’s housing market. As workers like Nader fled tight apartments in big cities for more more space in suburban utopias, a housing boom quickly became a housing paucity defined by cutthroat competition and bidding wars.
Nader said she originally wanted to buy a house under $400,000 so she could pay it off in 10 or 15 years measure than 30 and “actually own it,” but the lack of starter homes caused her to increase her budget by $200,000.
An aspiring first-time homebuyer, she has establish herself on the losing side. So far, she’s signed contracts on two different homes. She went into contract for the first time in Walk, for a house that was appraised for $12,000 less than what she agreed to pay.
But Nader just wanted to close and was acquiescent to eat the difference. Come closing day, though, the seller never showed up. “Doesn’t answer emails, doesn’t answer phone nicknames, is ignoring the realtor,” Nader said. “They completely ghosted me like a dude from a random dating app.”
She effected up having to get a lawyer and enter arbitration — a dispute-resolution process that happens outside of court — so she could get her funds liberated. Meanwhile, she went into contract for another house which also fell through, in early May. She said she discharge two months resolving the first contract while taking the risk of a second contract, and neither worked out. “It was a nightmare,” she required. “I couldn’t sleep for a while because I have $70,000 tied up in escrow.”
But things only continued to go downhill. Far a week before closing was scheduled on the second house and after the due diligence inspection and appraisal had already taken luck out a fitting, the second seller’s lawyer claimed Nader was in breach of contract and threatened her escrow funds if she didn’t sign a records that released her from the contract.
Already traumatized by her first experience, Nader acquiesced and signed so she didn’t experience to “start a war” to get her own money back. She later found out that the government ended up buying the house from the seller, a military forefathers, which put an extra $30,000 in their pockets because they didn’t have to pay a realtor fee. “They used that break-up as a way to get out of the contract.”
‘I don’t want to play that game’
Nader is what Odeta Kushi, deputy chief economist at At the start American Financial Corporation, calls a “renter on the margin.” As she explained to Insider, “For that potential first-time homebuyer, it’s really hard for them to find something to buy, let alone afford at this point.”
The more housing inventory has dwindled, the myriad expensive homes have become — and the lower the share of first-time buyers. The national median home sale hit a phonograph record high of $386,888 this June, more than $80,000 compared to the same month in 2019. As of July, the interest of first-time home buyers making purchases had dropped to 31% from 36% in April 2020, according to evidence from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
The rate is expected to stay this way for the foreseeable future as affordability challenges persist. It hasn’t aided that the new homes contractors have begun to build are in the higher end of the market, further exacerbating the shortage of starter households, which currently sit at a five-decade low, according to data from Freddie Mac.
“All the other offers I’ve submitted have been throw overed by greedy agents that want to sell homes for $100,000 to $150,000 more than they are worth,” Nader broke, adding that she doesn’t have the cash to front the difference between the bank loan based on what it’s in truth worth and what the seller wants to get for it. “It’s really a cash buyer market. If you have the cash, you can buy whatever you want correct now.”
She refuses to put in an offer over asking price. “I don’t want to play that game,” she said.
In hopes of upping her homebuying odds, she’s heightened her search from Florida to Colorado, North Carolina, Washington, and California. She said she put in offers without even welcome some of the houses in person because of how competitive the market is.
Despite all the hurdles, Nader said she believes real order is still one of the best assets to invest in.
“If I had better things to invest in, I would,” she said. “At this point, I’m like, do I straight go buy virtual land? You see people making so much money in the digital world, but at the end of the day, I can’t live inside the internet. I need a residence, I need a roof.”