Property market FOMO: I’m living it.

About a month ago, a lady knocked on my front door and she said “Cam, would you be interested in selling your house?”.

Kirsty and I had actually talked about selling and moving on to something new but it wasn’t part of our immediate plans. Still, the question was a welcome surprise and I said “yes… for this price”. We shook on it there and then, a few days later the paperwork was drawn up and then about a week later it was unconditional.

Too easy… Was my price too low?!

Too late now mate, you’re gonna be homeless in mid-May. Better find a place to buy I spose!

Kirsty and I went to an open home that weekend in Red Beach. There were about 20 other couples, a queue at the door with some of them showing clear signs of OHF (that’s Open Home Fatigue). It was the first open home for this particular house and as I scanned the Covid thingy I heard the agent quietly say they’d already had 2 offers.

I sat on the couch in the lounge listening to the conversation, to see if I could glean anything about my competition or the vendor. I overheard some useful info. And because I was this random guy sitting in the lounge I attracted the attention of the agent, he came over to talk and I was able to dominate his time and others had to walk on by.

I asked him “who in their right mind makes an offer in the vicinity of $1.3M on a house they’ve seen for less than 15 minutes?”

I do, that’s who.

I’m about to be homeless and I’m not letting these other desperate sods get this house!

Naturally my finance is ready to rock, I’ve got that in writing from ASB. Turns out, an offer of $1.275M on a house with CV of $1.025M and 3 days for finance wasn’t strong enough.

What a dumb ass, I should’ve known better.

Oh well, on to the next one, this time in Orewa.

We saw some of the same people. We saw some new ones too, one lady was even brandishing a tape measure and you could hear people whispering ‘she looks serious’. I must remember to do the same next weekend. I’ll get Kirsty to wander round tapping a pen on a clipboard and really mess with some minds.

I’m not all that worried. Well, maybe I am a teeny bit. Dealing with property market stress is something I do every day but it’s normally someone else’s stress, not my wife’s. The fear of missing out. It’s a rising!

That said, the search has only just begun. But if we haven’t found anything by May then we really will be packing ourselves, if you know what I mean.

It’s a very real thing sitting in the midst of FOMO – whether you’ve been searching for your first home for forever, or you’re sitting in limbo longing to land your next home ASAP before the market jumps another couple hundred K. Just joking… hopefully!

This home searching can seem like a hell of a lot of hard work, little reward when you’re in the midst of the open home monotony. So, here’s a word of encouragement for ya – keep on keeping on, be prepared, be realistic, talk to the agents, get all the info, and have a really good grasp of what you can afford and borrow with. It’ll save you a lot of wasted time, and get you out of the FOMO zone sooner rather than later.

Best of luck to you… see you in the open home line!

Need a refresh on what you can borrow? Get in touch any time.