How Long Does it Take to Buy a Home in the Iowa City Area?

How long does it take to buy a home in  Iowa City? There is a common misconception that buying a home is a long drawn out process. It isn’t, or at least it doesn’t have to be. In reality buying a home in the Iowa City area is faster than most buyers think. A common scenario is for closing to take place 45 – 60 days after the buyers and sellers have come to an agreement and there’s an accepted offer on the table. Sometimes in the Springtime sellers will accept an offer with a 90 day closing period. This may be because buyers are in a lease, or because the buyers are relocating from out of state for the UI or UI Hospitals and don’t need the house or condo until the summer. Occasionally it happens that the time between accepted offer and closing is more than 90 days, but it’s not exactly a common scenario.

When to Start Looking at Homes

That’s looking at the average time it takes from the time you have an accepted offer to the time of closing when you buy a house in Iowa City. What about the time before that? When should you start looking at homes? That’s not an easy question to answer, because it depends how quickly you find the right house. What doesn’t make sense is that you go out looking at homes too early. What would be the point in finding the “perfect” house if you’re not in a position to make an offer on it if you’re not able to close until 6 months down the road? In all likelihood that house will get an offer and close before you’re in a position to do anything about it, which I’m sure you’d agree is a pretty disappointing scenario. Every house you look at after that will fall short and you’ll always be comparing the houses you look at to the “one that got away.”

Since I do work with a lot of buyers I can tell you what the general consensus has been in the past. As a rule of thumb, 3 to 4 months is long enough not to be under pressure to find the right home and long enough to look at enough homes to feel comfortable about making an offer. This of course is assuming there is an inventory of homes on the market meeting your criteria. In a tight market as we have now in the Iowa City area, you might find it will take longer to find the right home. This is where you’ll find a buyer’s agent will be a handy helper. They can keep an eye on things and make sure you don’t miss out on that perfect house or condo when it does come on the market.

If you’re buyer new to the market and want to know more about the home buying process, you might like to read my series: 7 Steps to Buying a Home in Iowa City. Naturally if you have any specific questions you should feel free to contact me via email or one of the contact forms on the site. You can be sure of a speedy response!