How long did it take you to find your first home?

[ISAslot]

Was saving, working, living at my parents, not really searching yet. But one day biking home from work I saw it. It was dusk. The light was on inside, and it appeared in such a way as to remind me of grandparents house when I was little. The place 'spoke' to me. Was meant to be I guess!

 

[nisryus]

About three weeks. Saw three houses before a co-worker told us about the current neighborhood so we took a look at a few houses, saw the one we liked and been here since 2005.

 

[ultimatebob]

About 6 months... Mostly because most of the stuff in my price range was total crap.

Looking back, I should have waited and saved up a 20% down payment. PMI blows.

 

[pontifex]

about 6 months

 

[Possessed Freak]

Bout a week. My parents moved out of this home 2 years before I bought it. I was renting from them for those 2 years and one day I said, how about you sell it to me. A week later, I was paying a mortgage instead of rent.

 

[purbeast0]

i almost bought a house in october or so of 2011, after looking for a couple months. i wasn't in love with the house, but we were kind of settling. thankfully during the final walkthrough, they didn't fix everything they said they were going to, and we could bail.

the following summer, when i had a much better job and could afford more as well, we went looking 1 weekend at 5 open houses and when we found "the one" we just knew it. 2 days later we had an offer in.

been living here for a year now and couldn't be happier. in hindsight i'm ssssssooooooo happy the first one fell through. there is absolutely nothing about the first house that is better than my current house.

 

[Eug]

Informally, several months.
Formally, several weeks.

The place we bought had been on the market for a month. I thought it was priced close to market value, but we put an offer on it at 6% below asking and it was accepted.

BTW, one of the houses we looked at got sold at 10% over asking. I didn't even bother putting in a bid, because I would have bid under asking. It was a nice house and very unique, but if you ignored the uniqueness of it, it was kinda small and not especially well designed. People paid extra for its one-of-a-kind design.

 

[Gunslinger08]

About a year.

As I've gotten older, I've realized that patience is one of the most important things to have. If you can wait, you can either find exactly what you want or realize you didn't really need it anyway.

 

[DrPizza]

It sort of took a few weeks. Started with one realtor, told him we wanted a home out in the country. First one he took us to he found for us was 2 doors down from a Unimart, in a nearby village (not in the city; so he considered that country.) Then he called us in because they had a new listing. That was after we tried to explain what out in the country meant - but he interpreted it as meaning farther away from the city. Next house - smack dab in the middle of another village. Finally, we got him to understand what we mean - and he showed us an overpriced dump. Realizing that all the homes he showed us were from realtor xyz's agency, we, being new buyers, surmised that if we wanted to see homes that were listed by other agencies, we'd have to go to the other agencies.

Went to a new realtor at another popular agency. She checked our income & price range for homes with us. 5 minutes later, she gave us a printout of every house within 30 or 40 miles that was in our price range. A day later, we made an appointment to see one, saw it the following day, made an offer, received the counter offer, countered that, it was accepted. So, within a week with a competent realtor.

 

[jupiter57]

I think my "First" one took about 4 months, IIRC.
Was pre-approved (early 80's, think 13-14% APR!), my realtor showed us a few houses, but there were so few to be had. Finally, I got with a Home builder who had no jobs planned. Made a deal with him to build us one with a full basement.

Fast forward 40 years and several homes later:
Finally used my VA loan to get pre approved, found the home we liked, and moved in ~3 weeks later!

 

[Tommy2000GT]

I looked the first half of last year and stopped looking. Only a fool with too much money would buy a house in a hot sellers market like this. It's better to wait until this bubble bursts.