The Bittersweet Road to Home Sweet Home
The New York Times, October 11, 1998

THE real estate broker glanced nervously at her watch. ''Remember, you've only got until 5,'' she said.

In just 45 minutes, the 73-year-old house we were seeing for the first time would be on the Multiple Listing Service, an electronic bulletin board for realty agents. That meant it would soon be swarming with house hunters; to avoid a bidding war, we'd have to make an offer on the spot.

Days earlier in the same town, Millburn, N.J., we had signed a contract to buy another colonial -- a small, turn-of-the-century house we had seen for maybe 15 minutes before bidding the full asking price.

So after 10 months of intensive house-hunting, David and I faced another split-second decision: Should we scuttle one deal, which we could still legally do, on the chance we could make another?

It sounds like an irresponsible way to make the biggest purchase of our lives. But in our defense, we were in one of the hottest real estate markets in memory -- a market without logic.

For nearly a year, we had lost bidding wars and seen homes snatched up before they were even on the market. I no longer thought of a house as just a place to live or as an investment. For me -- and, I suspect, for many other goal-oriented types -- buying a house had become a test of my abilities. And I was failing. I grew determined to outsmart, outrun and outbid everyone.

Our day of decision came in March -- a month when home resales would hit an annual rate of 4.89 million, the highest since the National Association of Realtors began compiling the data in 1968. (The pace has slackened slightly, to a rate of 4.73 million rate in August.)

When we began our hunt, we used the conventional methods, answering ads and relying on a local broker to screen the Multiple Listing Service. So for months, all we saw were houses that no one else wanted or that already had offers.

Big mistake. The listing service, which in this case serves 10 counties in New Jersey, requires that agents enter most new listings into the system within 48 hours of receiving them. But with inventory at an all-time low, agencies find that two days are often enough to sell their own listings to their own clients, thus doubling their commissions.

While our broker was hard-working, relatively few sellers in town listed directly with her agency, so we rarely saw houses before they were on the service. After five months of getting nowhere, we decided to tap the underground housing market.

We started by calling two brokers whose names appeared most often on Millburn listings. They didn't show us a single house.

So we took out a house-wanted ad in the local paper. A longtime resident called, and although her house was out of our price range (up to $400,000), she recommended a broker at one of the biggest agencies in town. This broker agreed to represent us only if we agreed not to use any other agency. I gave the bad news to our old broker.

By the next month, though, we still hadn't see a worthwhile house. Desperate to gain some advantage, I called my brother, who had recently bought a house in Los Angeles after looking for only a few weeks.

Although he and his companion had found their house through a broker, he was convinced they had sealed the deal by writing a letter to the owners telling them how much they loved the house.

So on Feb. 14, David and I went to our favorite Millburn street and dropped ''we-love-your-house'' Valentines in every mailbox. The phone soon rang, but not with leads. One woman wouldn't let me in her house unless I peeked in the windows when she wasn't home and was sure I'd offer at least $350,000.

After nine months, we had managed to bid on nine houses. But either a bidding war would erupt or the owners wouldn't negotiate; though desperate, we weren't yet willing to grossly overpay or be walked upon. That changed in March, after Millburn's high school was ranked best in the nation in one book. Sellers seemed to become even cockier.

Panicked, we jumped at those two houses at once -- and ended up with the 73-year-old colonial at $14,000 less than the asking price. My husband was ecstatic; I felt defeated.

But we weren't done. The owners made a host of demands. When they suddenly terminated our contract because, we heard, they thought our lawyer was taking too long to return calls, we begged them to reconsider. Then they insisted that we deliver a deposit check to our broker's office the next day -- a Saturday -- for their ''viewing.'' Never mind that the original check would be in our lawyer's office in Monday's mail.

We hadn't found our dream house; we were simply too tired to hunt anymore. But one night, soon after we moved in, I realized I had spent so much time trying to ''win'' that I had forgotten what I was seeking: a home. Now, sitting on our porch, listening to the cicadas and feeling the breeze of the ceiling fan, I knew we had found it.