Home Buying

Tales from Greater Boston’s brutally competitive homebuying market

Engaged couple Will Charnley and Tara Prince, both 26 yrs old currently living in Brighton look at the kitchen at an open house for a unit for sale in Somerville accompanied by their real estate agent, Peter Skambas of Keller Williams Realty. Katherine Taylor for The Boston Globe

By Scott Van Voorhis

March 7, 2016

4 minutes to read

How hard is it to buy a home or condo in the Boston area right now?

Well for some buyers hunting in hot areas or for specific properties, it can take months, or in some cases, years, to land the right place.

There are more buyers right now than listings, with inventory levels (unsold homes) at record low levels and dropping.

And that can mean furious competition when a half-decent colonial in Needham or Wellesley, or a two–family in Somerville, comes on the market.

Just ask Dolores Waldron, who has been hunting with her husband for a year now for a home big enough for their growing family in newly hot West Medford.

The biotech worker and mother of three young children is now kicking herself for not buying a few years ago, when the market was less frenzied.

“2013 was probably the time we should have bought,” Waldron rued. “We probably would have gotten a deal,” adding that prices have “skyrocketed.”

Waldron is hardly alone, brokers say.

Home sales in Medford were up 40 percent in January from a year earlier, and the median price rose to $450,000. – Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

It’s not uncommon for some buyers to underestimate the challenges of finding the right home in today’s tight market, with a steep learning curve as the reality hits home, noted David Crowley, head of marketing at One Boston Real Estate.

Hunting for a house in the Boston areas – and having to make more than one offer before landing something – is relatively common now, brokers say.

The amount of homes on the market across Massachusetts fell by 20 percent last year.

Many buyers start out thinking they can do it all on their own and wind on relying on out-of-date or inaccurate real estate numbers they find online, Crowley said.

“They don’t know what to offer or even craft an offer that would get accepted,” he said.

Others get frustrated and decide to go all out in order to land a home, only to wind up overpaying.

“What also happens is that after months of looking and multiple rejections, it’s not unusual for buyers to throw in the towel and offer more than they need to,” Crowley said.

And the dearth of listings has made it difficult not just to buy a home, but to even look at suitable properties.

Just a few years ago, Michael Cohen, a broker with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices in Needham, would kick-off things with a new buyer by going out to look at several potentially promising homes.

But there is so little on the market right now that it can take weeks “before an interesting property pops up,” he observed. It can now take two or three months to zero in on the right home.

“Today’s buyer certainly faces a significantly longer home search than they would have in the past,” Cohen said.

One local college professor is experiencing that reality firsthand, having been on the hunt for a house in the tony Wellesley and its surrounding suburbs for a year now. He and his wife have been to dozens of open houses and made three to four offers, all to no avail.

After starting off looking in the $700,000 range, he has accepted that he may have to go as high as a million to get what he wants: a basic, 2,000-square-foot home with three or four bedrooms.

“We looked last fall at a house that was just over a million – we got over that psychological threshold,” he said.

For buyers seeking particularly hard-to-find properties, the search can take even longer.

Gaye Korbet, a Cambridge artist who is also an adjunct professor at Lesley University, has been looking for more than five years for a new condo or loft space that would be big enough to accommodate a 500-square-foot studio. She owns a 900-square-foot condo two blocks from Harvard Square and wants to move up to a 1,500- to 1,600-square-foot unit.

Korbet has scoured Cambridge and the western suburbs, but the few units that have met her criteria are simply out of her price range.

Even in traditionally less expensive neighborhoods like Dorchester, condo prices are rising. – John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe

“I have been trying to find a live-work space and that is almost impossible,” she said.

For her part, Waldron, the mother of three hunting for a larger home in the Medford area, has experienced her fair share of frustration during her year-long real estate hunt.

While Waldron and her husband were initially interested in single-family homes, the prices have proven to be too rich and the competition too fierce. Their budget is $475,000, but to get anything livable that doesn’t need significant work, Waldron said they would have to spend at least $550,000.

At open houses, “there are so many people climbing through the property that you can’t even think,” she said. Waldron is now focusing on moving to a larger two-family – she and her husband currently own a two-family near Tufts.

“What few single-families have come on the market, they are gone in seconds,” she said.

Sara Rosenfeld, a veteran Coldwell Banker broker who has been working with Waldron, said the market is tough but not impossible.

It just takes time, said Rosenfeld, who urges buyers to expand the areas they are looking in.

“Buyers must practice extreme patience as we await more inventory to enter the 2016 market,” Rosenfeld wrote in an email. “They must remain focused on themselves when they face the competition and make their best offer. I also encourage exploring different markets in order to expand their options.”