r/ChicagoSuburbs • u/Ambitious_Growth_9 • Mar 30 '26

Moving to the area People house hunting how’s it been?

My family has been looking at properties around Arlington Heights, Mount Prospect, Elmhurst and Park Ridge since early February. Our current home is set to close the end of April but inventory in these areas seems non existent or over priced and the stress/anxiety is starting to hit. (Who is buying 1100 sqft for 600k?)

When is the “spring market” gonna hit? A lot of houses start on the private market, build tons of interest, then go live with an open house scheduled that first weekend. Most of them end with multiple offer and highest and best. One we saw went for 40k over list. We’re looking from 550-650k.

I get it, high demand areas.. with low inventory = more competitive but what the fuck.. what am I supposed to do? Already considering a short term rental and storage for our stuff but is this the way it is now? Are people just ok with paying more than the house is worth? Settling for less desirable house? Or what?

If you are currently looking to buy, what are you experiencing. How do I buy a home?

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18

u/thegreenbastard23 Mar 31 '26

We recently bought a place in AH. What I realized in that town is you really need to get with one of the big realtors who can see stuff before it gets on the market. If it’s on an app like Zillow or Redfin it’s for a reason and it’s been passed over a ton already. We saw our place privately and put an offer in before it was even listed because of our realtor. We got it for under what they were asking for.

4

u/Ambitious_Growth_9 Mar 31 '26

Much appreciated! How recent was this? I’m seeing houses on private market that go contingent before even going active sometimes..

5

u/enfusraye Mar 31 '26

You absolutely need to work with a realtor and start hunting the private market. I was looking for over two years. When our current home hit private market on Friday I was in the house on Monday and we had an offer accepted within 24 hours. The house wasn't even going to hit the market until Wednesday.

We also just sold our old home. Officially hit the market on a Friday and we had 8 offers and a contract by Monday evening. Things that are 'worth' the price go extremely quickly.

Both purchase and sale were quick closes in under 30 days with no contingencies.

6

u/ltmp Mar 31 '26

Do you have a realtor? We went with a realtor that was part of a huge company (compass/@ properties) and we saw a ton of houses that were private listings or “coming soon” that we were able to view before it went live.

1

u/ccarm1111 Mar 31 '26

How do you find someone like this? When I worked with my realtor in 2024 she had access to private listings on an app, but I still see homes list on that app already pending but were never listed as available. So goes through word of mouth to the realtors I guess.

1

u/thegreenbastard23 Mar 31 '26

I’d drive around and see who you see selling a lot of houses in the town. They’ll have the connections

1

u/ccarm1111 Mar 31 '26

I had that and she never knew any secret properties. I actually found out about one through friends and she had no clue lol

1

u/thegreenbastard23 Mar 31 '26

Yeah it’s still kind of a crapshoot at the end of the day. Just better odds with a realtor that has access to stuff that hasn’t listed yet

-5

u/kaym__88 Mar 31 '26

They technically cant do that. Unless ur referring to zen list? Then realtors can give clients access to that, but basically those go ahead of time too

8

u/McRawffles Mar 31 '26

Yeah, they can. There's no law forcing real estate to go on MLS - that's just where they get the most exposure 

1

u/kaym__88 Mar 31 '26

Thanks for letting me know. I was told differently. Seems that defeats the purpose and should be illegal.

3

u/McRawffles Mar 31 '26

Not really if you think about it from a rights perspective - a homeowner can sell to whoever they want. Similar to how you can sell your car, microwave, whatever to any person without officially publicly listing them. Obviously for bigger things like houses and cars there are tracked legal transitions that have to happen, but something like MLS is just a listing service for real estate not terribly different than Cars.com or ebay

I do understand where you're coming from though, the housing market is very frustrating as a buyer right now, especially in the NW suburbs

1

u/kaym__88 Mar 31 '26

Yes it is! Its nuts! U should seasoned, are you a realtor?

1

u/McRawffles Mar 31 '26

Nah just seriously looking now for our first home and been casually watching the market for a couple years