During the past 6 weeks, the San Francisco real estate market has picked up. I don't know if we can attribute it to tax season, Spring time cheer, or IPO fever but the home buyers are back. And as always in SF, there is little to sell them. We just don't have a lot of housing stock in this town so there are rarely very many listings on the market, regardless of "market conditions."
With competition comes multiple offers. With multiple offers comes a winning bid and well, the rest of the them. So what do you do when you find your dream home, you make what you think is a strong offer to purchase and the offer gets rejected? As Aaliyah would say, you "dust yourself off and try again...try again." (Yes, you can sulk in your Sonoma Syrah but only that evening!)
The truth is that if you know what you want, are realistic about your goals, have a great team (real estate agent and mortgage broker) and set your intention on finding the best home for you, it'll all work out in the end.
We have seen this time and time again. If a buyer does not get their first bid accepted, they are devastated. They feel that they lost out on the perfect pad and contemplate giving up, muttering things like "This market is nuts." "My coworker says this is another bubble!"* "It's not fair. Why did they like that all-cash offer over ours?" "We wrote a heartfelt letter and included a photo of Fido?!" But then, they buck up, sprinkle some fairy dust in their cornflakes and hit the open houses. And each time, voila, the true perfect home for them emerges and this time, their offer IS accepted.
For example, we are working with buyers right now who are moving back to San Francisco from overseas. They have cash to buy and know what they want. After looking for a few weeks, they found a beautiful farmhouse in Noe Valley (though further out than they originally wanted) and were outbid by another all-cash offer! Three weeks later and on the verge of giving up, the true dream house emerged - the ideal house and location for them. Yes, there were multiple offers - in this case we think there may have been 20+ of them! - but this time, it was meant to be and it worked out. Happy ending because it was the right home for the right home buyer.
So, have faith. Don't worry too much about the competition. You will end up with the right home for you.
* It's always a bubble. The difference is where are we in any given cycle. Where are we now? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/15/MN7U1NVVU3.DTL
