"We got out-bid every time we tried," Gross said. "Sometimes we didn't even put bids in, because we knew it would be nuts."
Then a friend of a friend wanted to sell his house in Bethesda and the couple had a chance to bid without facing competition. There wasn't much time to decide, though. Before the open house, they agreed with the owners on a price.
Shelley and Severin Sorensen stand with thier family in front of their house they bought in Potomac, Md. from left, Hayden, 11, Britton and Bryce, both 10, front, Skylar, 4, and an exchange student from China, Sabrina Liu. At first Shelley was convinced they had made a mistake buying a house half the size of their previous one, but now she is getting used to it.
(Cathy Kapulka - The Washington Post)
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"You're forced into making an enormous decision in a very short time frame that has enormous consequences on your life," Gross said. "It's so grueling."
Because time was so tight, there were important things about the house and its suburban location that he wasn't able to research. "Access to the bus is much more difficult than we expected," Gross said. "The bus doesn't run all the time. I have to drive everyone everywhere."
The move to the suburbs was for the good of his family, but it was still a big compromise for him and his wife. "It doesn't feel that good, even if in your heart you know you did the right thing," he said.
He frets now that they bought at the peak of the market, because activity seems to have slowed in his neighborhood since the frenzied days of spring. He worries, too, about the obligations of homeownership.
"I'm scared that I won't be able to handle the responsibility, that I'll miss something that I should've taken care of," he said.
Being an Agent Isn't Easy
Even real estate agents can feel seller's remorse.
When Shelly Sorensen sold her Potomac house, she got hit with a double dose: She felt that she could have made more money, and on top of that, she missed her house desperately when it was gone.
Sorensen, an agent with Long & Foster Real Estate Inc. in Potomac, first put her seven-bedroom, eight-bath home on the market two years ago. It sat unsold for six months, sparking no interest, not even a second phone call.
This spring, she tried again, listing the house at $1.699 million, $100,000 more than two years previously. On the first day, she received a full-price offer.
"So when the buyer's agent came to me and said, 'Do us a favor, don't consider any other contracts,' I said, 'Okay, fine,' " she said. "I really didn't think that in the $1.7 million range, there would be a bidding war."
Within days, however, there were two other competing bidders, one offering $35,000 more than the list price, and another offering $50,000 to buy the original buyer out, Sorensen said.
"We could have gotten $85,000 to $100,000 more for the house," she said. "I was bummed. There's a lot we could have done with the extra $100,000."
Agent Kris Feldman from Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Bethesda, who represented the winning buyer in the transaction, said she was "trying to get the best deal I could for my client."
Sorensen said her decision not to look at other contracts was influenced by what had happened two years earlier. A real estate market can change from year to year, even from month to month, she said.
