Buyers bust budgets as housing cools off
They still spend in buyer-friendly market
A nationwide housing shortage has eased somewhat. Home price gains have moderated. And bidding wars are no longer commonplace.
Yet buyers are still blowing through their budgets by ever-higher amounts to lasso their dream homes, according to a recent survey by Owners.com, a real estate brokerage.
The finding shows that even in a more buyer-friendly market with more choices, many shoppers still struggle to land the house that meets their needs.
“Finding the right house is still very challenging,” says Dario Cardile, vice president of growth at Owners.com. “To get quality, they need to go up.”
Thirty-eight percent of home buyers topped their spending limits, up from 32% a year ago. And they busted their budgets by an average $20,000, up from $16,510 in the early 2018 survey.
According to the March survey by Owners.com of 1,800 home buyers who made a purchase within the past four years
merchandise as “eco-friendly,” “ecoconscious” or “sustainable.” The FTC said it’s highly unlikely that companies making those claims can substantiate them.
“You have to have a reasonable basis for whatever claim the advertiser is making,” Frisby said.
The Diamond Producers Association, whose members include De Beers, said in a statement that it “welcomes the FTC’s warning to synthetic diamond manufacturers against misleading consumers with their marketing tactics. This warning is an important step toward transparency and consumer protection.”
Michael Lewyn didn’t think to ask about what kind of diamonds he was looking at when he went shopping for an engagement ring in the winter. “Mined” had no meaning to the 55year-old Manhattanite. “All I knew was she said, ‘Get a diamond,’ and I get a diamond.”
Lewyn checked out a couple of national jewelry store chains whose ads he vaguely recalled and then walked through New York City’s famous Diamond District. He snapped photos as he went, which he sent to his fiancée, Helen Teitelbaum. He then looked up the stores that sold some of the rings she liked on Yelp to check their online reviews. The end result was a $2,000 solitaire ring, a bit less than one carat, that Lewyn presented to her in front of the New York Public Library.
“With today’s technology, it’s really become somewhat of a problem for the industry and consumers.” Leon Adams Owner of Cellini Jewelers in New York City
To Leon Adams, owner of Cellini Jewelers in Midtown Manhattan, stories about precious-stone cons are upsetting. He occasionally sees them first-hand when someone brings in a piece of jewelry purchased elsewhere to examine, such as the woman who paid more than $30,000 for a pair of ruby earrings only to have him inform her that they were synthetic gems.
“It obviously gives the entire industry a bad reputation,” he said. “With today’s technology, it’s really become somewhat of a problem for the industry and consumers.”
That diamonds are such large-ticket items makes the scams all the more upsetting to victims. Adams advises buying only from jewelers who’ve been in business for a while and who have a return policy, paying with a credit card in case you have a dispute and avoiding making purchases online where you can’t physically examine it.
“You would have to have some training in gemology to loupe the stone to see the internal structure to determine if it’s naturally occurring,” he said, explaining how a scam is uncovered. “In the best-case scenario, we’re talking thousands of dollars at a minimum.”