The Glen Burnie rancher, as it happens, was a short sale. The Northeast Baltimore house, a foreclosure. And the Cape Cod owner was hoping her lender would approve a price that's almost $100,000 less than what she paid for the Dundalk house three years ago.
The morning that Landers was looking, more than 20 percent of the under-$200,000 listings in the city and Baltimore County were short sales or foreclosures. In Howard County, it was 44 percent.
Still, there were options for buyers determined to spend no more than $200,000 - more than 5,000 options. Four years earlier, there were about 1,350, including uninhabitable shells.
"If you've got a secure job and you don't have a house to sell, you're in an incredible bargaining position," Landers said.
First-time buyers who can comfortably afford more than $200,000 are finding more homes falling into their price range, too. What used to be $300,000 is now in the low- to mid- $200s, said Lucido, the Howard County Realtor. What used to be $400,000 is now $300,000 to $325,000, he said.
Vickie Walsh, who just bought her first home, said all the houses that interested her were more than $400,000 when she started looking online last year. The Severn house she moved into this month cost her $340,000. The seller covered her closing costs, and on top of that paid for discount points on her mortgage so she ended up with a super-low 4 percent rate. Her monthly payment is $1,800, the same as her rent had been in Burtonsville.
"Everything fell in line," said Walsh, who works for the Pentagon and expects her job will be moving to Fort Meade next year. "There's so many houses out there now, you really have your pick."
