In case you haven’t noticed, there is a pandemic housing fever going around the country. This is putting a lot of pressure on buyers to buy fast, buy online, compromise, and – probably the biggest mistake – not research locations they’re not familiar with.
Houses, like so many other shiny objects, are emotional purchases, but unlike jewelry, electronics and clothing, they can’t be returned the next day. Even emotional purchases of cars could give you a way out after a few months, but houses are a lot more complicated.
Because of this frenzy, many buyers are living in homes in areas they learn to hate in a very short period of time. They have faced engineering issues not disclosed or easily seen and many have overlooked potential risks in an effort to get to the finish line before someone else does. Waiving inspections is one of the biggest mistakes motivated buyers will make in order to make their offer look better than the competition, but that could lead to costly repairs down the road.
Another big mistake COVID buyers are making is relocating and buying in an area they’re not familiar with. Think of a buyer from, say, low-humidity California or Nevada who falls in love with Anna Maria Island. If you’ve never lived in a humid environment close to or on the water, the concept of mold, dampness and peeling paint could come as a shock – not to mention salt-encrusted windows. Worse still is a city dweller who runs to the country or suburbs during the height of the virus infections and discovers a couple of months later they hate the culture, miss the activity and wake up one day and have no idea why they’re there.
A lot of this frenzy is fueled by the ability to shop online, make offers and close properties without ever stepping foot inside. Online homebuying has picked up speed at an extraordinary pace this past year and so far is not showing signs of slowing. There has been a widespread adoption of tech tools that allow buyers to not just browse real estate but also apply for loans, finalize transactions and even have documents notarized. This is becoming the new normal, especially for millennials who are tech-savvy and not intimidated by sending all their savings to the cloud or some other virtual entity.
Want to know how widespread this is? Look at these statistics according to Redfin, Realtor.com and Zillow.com: 63% of buyers in November and December made an offer on a house they hadn’t seen in person; 41% increase in traffic on Zillow searching for sale listings compared to a year ago; and 63% of millennial homebuyers say their home search is motivated by the fact that they are now working remotely.
Adding to the ease of choosing a home online, Zillow and Realtor.com recently rolled out new interactive home tours. The new home tours are 3D with really exciting imagery and the hope is to provide a better alternative to the existing prerecorded video tours. It gives you the ability to click on a particular room and move about the room at your own pace, and one of them even gives you a bird’s eye view of the interior of the property and the ability to have floor plan interaction. I noticed some of the Island real estate brokers have this new technology attached to their listings, and I expect to see many more in the future.
We’re living in a new world for many reasons, and home buying in particular has changed drastically in the past 12 months. Nevertheless, don’t let the COVID buying fever force you into something you’ll regret. Fevers are bad – both COVID fever and COVID homebuying fever. Stay safe.
