@Sugarcubesea I can completely understand your frustration with all of this. The market is definitely pretty volatile right now.
My recent experience with selling my Washington home may provide thoughts on things.
As you have, as a homeowner, I put the money and labor into fixing up my house to make it all it could be, and to make it market-ready. I've bought and sold enough houses in my life, and my Mom sold real estate for years, so I've learned what kind of things needed to be done to get the most bang for the buck when selling. I didn't want a nickel-dime list of fixes a prospective buyer would want. I wanted the house to speak for itself, and be as-is, where-is, and have that be something very nice, and worth owning. By the time it hit the market, the house was absolutely ready.
When I finally listed my house for sale the first week of July, the market in my town was very, very tight. We listed for $25K above what our agents felt was an historically good price, based on what things had been selling for. But I saw it as something greater than that - there was a real shortage of good homes for sale in my bracket (3br, 2.5ba, 2 car garage, single family home, on a great lot, in a great neighborhood.) City-wide, there were only a few homes like that for sale at that time. Looking at sales prices, and condition of those properties, I felt we could get more, if we pushed the numbers a little. My suggested list price of $25K higher than the agent suggested was met with a raised eyebrow, but I said we'd find out quickly if we were too high. We weren't.
We knew there would be a lot of interest, but we didn't understand how much interest there would be. Because of Covid-19, everything about buying and selling was different. Sales prices were higher than they'd ever been in our area. Good houses were selling very fast. There was no such thing as an Open House. It was a matter of making the most with a first impression through the listing info, and stepping back to let the people in. That's exactly what happened.
As I've posted elsewhere, we had nine showings the very first day on the market. Over that night we received five offers to buy - two at list price, and three at above list price. We had a time constraint, and needed to sell quickly, so didn't want to waste time trying to create a bidding war. We felt we were already asking above the market comps, but those comps were sales during the height of the Covid-19 lockdown, so the sales numbers were all over the place.
We got with our agent and laid out the five offers side by side, and compared them. One at list price was an FHA loan, and wanted us to pay their closing costs. We set that one aside right away. The other at list price would have been good enough in normal times, (minimum down payment, conventional loan, no contingencies to sell another house), but the other three offers quickly outweighed that one, too.
Of the three above-asking, all were the same initial amount, ($5K over our asking price) so they were essentially equal. Two were pretty much the same, and followed the usual financial numbers. The clear winner was the one where the buyer said they were willing to go as high as $25K over our asking, in $3K increments, to be competitive with any other offer. My agent explained that their initial offer was the $5K over asking, but if that wasn't high enough, they'd go $3K over that number, and then another $3K, and then another $3K, until they were the high bidder, up to the $25K over asking. That was obviously a pretty strong offer.
What made it the clear winner was the buyers themselves. Not only were they willing to pay more to get the house, they were putting 80% down, and they had no contingencies. That was the offer we accepted. The way the numbers settled out, they only paid $3K above their initial offer, which put them above the other offers. Because of their strength financially, we felt trying to get the other two offers to come up to beat them would only end up with the other buyers pulling out. So we asked for the first $3K bump, and accepted their offer, which ended at $8K over our asking price. This proved to be a smart choice as the escrow flew through things, and there were no surprises. We're comfortable we made the right choice.
Two of the offers contained letters to us, basically saying how hard the buyers had been trying to find a house to buy, and why we should sell to them. One of them said they'd been trying to buy for over six months, and how they had lost out on a number of homes. Those letters were with the two lower offers. While I understood the reasons for the letters, the buyers didn't have the financial strength of the other offers, so it wouldn't have made good sense to accept either of those offers. The offer we accepted made the most sense from a business perspective.
I hope I'm not oversharing, but I'm offering this information to give you some food for thought about what a Seller in this market thinks about. For us it wasn't so much about the final selling price as it was the strength of the Buyer, and their offer. We accepted the offer from the Buyer we felt was the strongest, and who had the best chance of completing an escrow. It also happened to be the highest number. The ending number was only $3K above two other offers, but it was enough. If all the offers had been at list price, that Buyer is still the one we'd have chosen.
I wish I had an answer for you about how to successfully bid on a home. Maybe it would be enough to do as our successful Buyer did, and writing the offer to automatically outbid other offers, up to a number you're willing to spend. If you pick a maximum number you're willing to spend on that home, and write the offer accordingly, it may be enough. Not sure, but it's something to consider.
A comment upthread was made about homes selling for more that they might appraise for. In our case, the Buyer had agreed that if the sales price was above the appraised amount for the home, they'd pay the difference directly. That way we were guaranteed to receive the asking/sales price, even if it was above appraised value. That was a nice thing to have in our back pocket, even though we didn't need it, and another reason why we chose that Buyer. The house appraised for the agreed sales amount, so it wasn't needed to go that route.
Wishing you good luck going forward. I hope you can find a home that suits you. I think the suggestion to rent something for now, and buy later may be a good way to go. As
@slip says, there is an advantage to liquidity.
Dave
