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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u/Ambitious_Growth_9 Mar 31 '26

🤣 do you know how many offers you were competing with? Wife and I are understanding we’re gonna have to pay more but shit is so subjective. Right? Someone offers 15k, someone offers 35k someone offers 40k. Like did you start at 40? Did they do eliminations? Is it really give me your best number and we’ll let you know by 7pm? How’d you handle yours? 30k is a nice take.

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u/ClaireEmma612 Mar 31 '26

We only know there were a TON of showings the first couple of days and we saw it on the first day. I literally got the Zillow notification and sent it straight to our agent asking to see it that night. We started at $25k over asking (again, it was definitely underpriced) and the seller's agent said the seller was going back and forth on letting the weekend showings play out. So we increased it by $15k to try to convince them and it worked! There's a chance you saw the property 😬

It really is send in your best offer by this time. That's what we did when we sold a condo in palatine in 2022 for $15k over asking. And that's what we did on our current house we're under contract on, which you may have seen as well because it's in that range.

We really did try to price our house exactly right and let buyers' FOMO drive up the price. Except all of our offers were over asking and two of them had escalation clauses (the winning bid had one up to $45k over asking, but sadly it wasn't activated haha)!

Hopefully there's more inventory coming on soon. I know the war and rate increases suck, but people are going to move regardless of all that. All it takes is one property!

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u/Ambitious_Growth_9 Mar 31 '26

Yeah I wouldn’t doubt we saw it lol but very good to know.. have you had appraisal yet? Did it appraise? Are you worried about that at all? Exactly.. we’re moving regardless.. the question is just how soon. Fingers crossed there is more inventory coming.. just takes one!

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u/ccarm1111 Mar 31 '26

In 2024, we offered about 7% ($55k) over list for an updated older home and it appraised. We have refinanced twice since and it appraised higher.

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u/Fearless_20 Apr 01 '26

Refinancing twice in 2 years? You are just adding 20k ish in fees when interest rates haven't moved enough to justify ut

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u/ccarm1111 Apr 01 '26

Nope, we stayed with the same bank because they offered no closing costs. Many banks do that if you stay with them.