more on the "Buyer's Market"

We came into this house-hunting thing because we were apartment hunting. And so many friends and co-workers and family members stepped in to say, "you really ought to look at buying. It is a buyer's market right now."

I guess we've come to learn a bit about what that means.

First of all, it's certainly not a renter's market right now. The cost of renting apartments has gone up significantly since we signed our contract on this one.

There are a LOT of homes on the market right now looking to sell.

A lot of these homes are bank-owned foreclosures. (Which I find a little frightening--what if we buy now thinking things will surely get better and then face foreclosure ourselves in a few years?)

I suppose the question is, though, how many buyers are there really?

We put in our very first formal offer on a house last week. A very modest, cute little house. We sweated over it and felt like it was such a monumental decision. Then our offer was declined. Apparently, they had several other offers that looked more appealing.

This has left me scratching my head. It's not like we were low-balling them on this one. We stayed pretty close to the list price.

The most reasonable explanation I could come up with for this is that they had listed a price below what they were willing to accept in order to attract more attention. Which makes sense when you have sites like Zillow.com where you can search homes with a variety of parameters, including price range. A lower listing price is likely to show up on more peoples' lists. It also plays into the "buyer's market" theory that there are more homes than buyers and so craftier means of getting attention might be needed.

But then who are these buyers offering above listing price? Aren't they throwing off the curve for the rest of us? Or are they just more experienced? I guess we still have a lot to learn!