Yeah it's brutal out there, and then at least for the past few months during peak buying season (supposed to quiet down now that school has started so families with kids are less likely to be looking) the places that were listed around 800k were selling for over $1M because people got crazed about it. Or in some cases the homes should have been priced that high to begin with but realtors priced them lower on purpose to get more people looking at it and add to the frenzy.
And yeah, it's mostly the intangible stuff that makes us want to own, although I know it does come with headaches too. Just knowing it's "ours," having at least a small yard, the feeling of permanence knowing that's where we'll be for a while. And we've been in our lovely little dump a long time now, would like to think about starting a family in the next few years at the latest but would NOT want a baby in our current place... but since we've stuck it out this long we don't want to move unless it's into "our home" rather than just a nicer apartment.
We're rooting for a bust too! It's already cooling down a bit, homes are staying on the market for a week or two rather than a day or two, and selling much closer to asking price. (The place we bid on a few months back, we bid 10k under list price, their counter offer was 25k OVER the price they listed at!! the nerve... but that really was what was happening in that neighborhood at the time so I'm not surprised they were hoping for it. Was a bit out of our comfort zone to begin with so we were more than happy to walk away.) I think whenever interest rates rise more it will help cool off the frenzy even more, although who knows for sure.
And yeah we do think about school districts to some extent, even though there are no kids yet so school is a bare minimum of 5-6 years out. I will say though a friend of mine just left her job as a teacher at a high school with a rating of 8 on the greatschools, and she had some things to say about the quality of the administration/teaching staff there... she'd been happier at a less highly rated school in LA because the teachers genuinely cared about reaching out to each and every student. And some of the top schools are now having parents pull their kids out because they are way too intense and cut-throat with students stepping on each-other and cheating to get to the top, and the stress levels are killing the kids. (My high school is one of the worst offenders, although thankfully it wasn't that bad when I was there). So, scores aren't the whole story!
