House Hunting in a Very Competitive Seller's Market
Well, my wife and I are making our first trip out with our realtor to look for our next home. The market in the Twin Cities metro area in Minnesota is highly competitive, with most houses receiving multiple offers. Bidding wars are not rare at all.
So, we have an upper limit set, which we will not go over. But, there's a more important way we're taking on this competition:
We're looking for places that have issues that will annoy potential buyers. The first house we will visit today has a distinct 70s vibe to its interior, with wallpaper on some walls and accent wallpaper decorations at the top of some walls. It also has a master bathroom that is painted a shocking coral pink color! It is also a house where smokers lived.
Other than that, it has exactly the layout we're looking for and is priced below the average for such places.
Well, my wife and I smoke, so that's not an issue. The bathroom can be repainted before we move in. In fact, we could have the entire interior repainted before moving in without exceeding our set limit. Or we might leave the bathroom as it is to shock guests. We have strange senses of humor.
Here's the thing: Most people who look at houses get distracted if they encounter something odd or weird about that house. They just move on. We don't care about the interior finishes, as long as we can stay within our budget. All that can be fixed. We are specifically looking for houses like that, in fact. We won't sell our current home until after we have moved into the new one. So, there's no rush.
We're looking at the house's layout and overall condition as our first priority, along with a price that will let us do whatever it is that we want to have done, while staying under our limit. That means that we might not be competing with other buyers, who will look elsewhere for a house that is more to their liking as it is.
We also can pay cash for our new house. The first house we are looking at is completely empty, which means that either the former owner has already moved or it is being sold by an estate. Bottom line is that either situation will make the seller eager to close early and get paid. We can offer that advantage to the seller.
We're just getting started, though. We'll make an offer when we find the right place at the right price. No rush.
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so there's also the possibility of someone moving from the west coast and plunking down a huge amount of cash on a house. We just can't compete with that. It's going to get even uglier when that bubble bursts. 
the radon remediation cost? 
see fixable problems, mostly cosmetic, as special opportunities to get what you want.
You say house, so don't know if you mean detached or an attached unit. This might not work for you, but just to throw another item on the list for anyone, one of my favorite easy-but-BIG fixes is adding or enlarging windows -- if needed and of course if allowed. Or moving or removing badly placed ones. I've added windows to every house we've owned. They changed the entire character of the room or even the whole floor, not just light and bright, but larger and much nicer.
Unless it's masonry construction, it's typically very affordable and a huge bang for the buck. And no more trouble to those whose part is writing checks than a new tile backsplash.
Many homes selling at the low end of the market are taking their biggest hit from window problems, not the old tile counters people are frowning at. Sunshine is so charming that it makes people say I love this, but we'll have to fix whatever's smelling so bad before we move in. 
Cheap and/or poorly designed homes often have too small, too few, and/or badly placed windows. They're gloomy and seem smaller than they are. They feel confining without view to the outdoors (checked by sitting down!) or only of upper stories of neighboring buildings. People don't like these houses but seldom wonder if the yuck is fixable, just leave sure they don't want that one.
Looking forward to a nice post about what you've decided on for your new home.
We’ve only bought 2 houses in our life, but visited a ton each time. In our case — well, neither of us is into DIY, and my husband can’t tolerate disruption. Like you, our old home had been paid off for years.
It’s interesting about smoking residue. I’m not sure if it can ever be completely gotten rid of, but since neither of us is a smoker, we noticed it in houses we looked at. You are lucky in that way.
When we got our current-and-final house, our Realtor (my BIL, who with his wife fearlessly does everything in his own home) told us the house was not up-to-the-minute and that any prospective buyer would gut it and paint all the panelling white. My SIL thought ripping out the kitchen wall to make the LR into a Great Room would be ideal.
I took one look at it and knew it was exactly what I had always wanted. The panelling had been custom-made and was mellow with 30 years of sunlight. Ripping it out or painting it over was the last thing on my mind. The kitchen was thoughtfully designed, but not a trophy kitchen, and within a week of living with it I knew there was going to be no gutting taking place.
We know our own limitations, in any case. Hubby’s brother and wife endlessly work on and improve their home, especially the garden, and chose a real fixer a decade ago: a house that had been a rental its entire existence and still had the original Formica counters and pink tile in the bathrooms. All original, a faded time-capsule. Now that needed gutting, and they did. Likewise the overgrown backyard, from which they removed a couple of dozen “trash trees.” The yard is huge, one of those pieces you sometimes get on a cul-de-sac, where you can see the developers had land left over. It has all been utterly transformed. You would like their vibe.
Good luck house-hunting, MM!
