House hunting in Hamilton is cut throat! You need to be on your A-game, available, and ready to make quick decisions. Houses are getting snatched in days without home inspections and no conditions.
What does this mean?
When you buy a house, typically, you can ask for a few conditions before finalizing the purchase.
Traditionally, these are some common conditions:
- financing condition
- conditional on sale of existing home
- conditional on inspection
These conditions let you get affairs in order before investing a ton of money on the property. From my experience, people in Hamilton are buying without conditions. Meaning, the buyer is increasing their risk and vulnerability. Essentially, a buyer is more attractive if the sale can be done faster than the other offers and with the least amount of hassle.
Anyways, when I was house hunting, I was outbid on two houses. That means I wasn’t the most competitive offer. One strategy to be a successful candidate is to overbid and reduce your conditions. So that’s what I did. House hunting is exhausting. You get your hopes up after dedicating time and energy walking through houses and doing research. After losing out on houses, and running out of patience, I offered around $40,000 more than the asking price, and only had 1 condition. Thus, I became a bully. The goal was to cut out the competition, and it worked.
Overpaying by 40K still stings sometimes but I don’t regret the decision. I love living downtown, my house fits my lifestyle and I have a place to call my own.
Good luck house hunters! Stay fierce.
