Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Buying a home has always been considered fairly stressful, but with the added pressures of rising home prices and very limited inventories of existing-homes leading to bidding wars, some markets are more stressful than ever.
Indeed, some 39% of first-time buyers say the stress of buying a home made them feel physically ill.
That’s according to a recent study by HouseFresh, which is a website that’s dedicated to helping people spruce up or renovate their homes.
Using social media, HouseFresh analyzed thousand of posts from would-be home buyers to try and get an idea of where the most stressful cities are to buy a house in the United States. The analysis identified Bangor in Maine as the most traumatic place to buy a home, based on people’s complaints. There, like many other U.S. cities, home prices have surged tremendously over the past 18 months. At the same time, very few listings exist, meaning bidding wars have become commonplace.
“It looks to me almost like desperation, where they have to get into a house and they’ll pay anything to get into the house until they are paying above that list value,” NextHome Experience broker Lisa Caron told HouseFresh. “Winterport and Stockton Springs - we’ve had some that were sight unseen a lot. And Bangor too - sight unseen.”
For buyers who can’t handle that level of stress, they may fare better in the following cities which HouseFresh said are the least mentally agonizing places to find and bid on a home:
HouseFresh offered a few ideas to combat the stress of purchasing a home: Buyers should know exactly what they can afford, including factoring in renovations, decorating, maintenance, and more beyond the initial purchase costs; find the right real estate agent to help them; accept that no home is perfect; and ask the right questions and do their own research about the area, bills and taxes, and issues with the home.
