Right now homes for sale inventory is quite low and buyers are having a hard time finding homes to look at and buy. If there is a great home on the market it sells very quickly. This shortage of homes and abundance of buyers has created a bit of a seller’s market. What strategies can you use to help get a home in a seller’s market?

• Be alert – check new listings as soon as you receive them and look at homes that fit your criteria as soon as possible.
• Be ready – be mentally and physically ready to make an offer the first time you see a home. Time is your enemy. If you sleep on it, it could cost you the house.
• Be flexible – Can you be a bit flexible with your criteria? Rather than four bedrooms, will three work, if the house is perfect except for an older kitchen, can you renovate it after you move in? Now is not the time to be extremely picky.
• Be patient – you may find the right home today or four weeks from today, but don’t despair, be patient and you will find a home.
• Be persistent – it is normal right now to lose several homes in multiple offer situations. Don’t despair, learn from each situation and develop a better plan for the next time.

Buyers are finding homes they want to buy and they are buying them, but you need to keep the above strategies in mind.

Buyers are searching quickly for their homes these days! According to a survey done by Homes.com 36% of buyers searched for just one to three months and 24.6% searched less than a month. How many homes are they viewing, where are they finding homes, what devices are they using? Take a look at the infographic to see the answers! Click twice on photo to enlarge.

A lot of sellers right now are all excited about the thought of receiving multiple offers on their home, thus driving up the sale price. This sure sounds like a good deal, but there is one real deal breaker lurking – the appraisal.

The appraisal is a tricky thing. If your buyer is getting an FHA loan, that appraisal will stick with your home for the next six months. This means, if it comes in low, that will be the appraised price for any other FHA buyer for the next six months. If you lose the buyer because of the low appraisal you need to either lower your price or find a buyer with conventional financing or cash. A buyer with a conventional loan may also run into a low appraisal but it will not be stuck with your home like an FHA appraisal.

Do you have other options if the appraisal comes in low? You sure do! You can keep that buyer and just lower your price to the appraised value. The buyer may be able to bring more cash to the table, or you may have a combination of those two options.

Because of the low inventory levels, buyers are ending up in multiple offer situations all the time but that does not necessarily mean your home is worth more money.

Many people are wondering if all this positive news about the housing market and increase in home prices is setting up the market for another housing bubble. The answer is no.

This market increase is very different in several ways.

• Credit has tightened – prior to the housing bubble, loans were very easy to get and that is not the case today
• Homes for sale were abundant – now the market lacks homes for sales, builders are building, some sellers are selling, but no one can keep up with the demand we are facing right now
• Interest rates are low – the low interest rates are motivating buyers to buy now rather than wait as the interest rates are on the upswing
• Foreclosures are declining – the decline in foreclosures is helping the price of homes to increase

During the current phase of home price increases, the market is very different from the market prior to 2006 and the price increases are healthy market driven increases, rather than being falsely inflated.