My husband and I are trying to buy a home in Seattle and we just failed on yet another attempt to buy a home (third time). This time was particularly difficult... it was just barely above our price range, but for a variety of reasons (too many to list), we felt that it might be worth it to try to work something out to bridge the gap. It was a tortured decision, though, because not only did we have to ask our parents for a little cash to make it work (which we didn't want to do), but we had to decide whether this home would be worth postponing our plans to start TTC later this year for an additional year. In the end, we decided that this home would be such a great place (and neighborhood) to raise our future children that the wait would be worth it -- we did it for "them." So, we made an offer and after some back-and-forth and some very hard work by our agent, it was accepted! We were so ecstatic! We shared the news with our families (who had also become very emotionally involved, as they helped us to make the decision and come up with additional money to make the offer), while our agent revised our original offer to reflect the terms that we had agreed to with the seller. In that one-hour window, another buyer came along and put down a better offer, and the seller accepted it -- EVEN THOUGH THEY HAD ALREADY ACCEPTED OURS! No, it hadn't been signed yet, but literally they had the paperwork in hand and had already agreed to it when they received this other offer. They called us and said that "out of respect for us" they were letting us know that they had received a higher offer, I guess to see if we could match/better it. We had already put forth our best and final offer, so that wasn't an option. And there would have been no guarantee that they would not have turned around and given the other buyer the same opportunity. But really, if they had actually respected us, wouldn't they have honored the deal we agreed to? There are no words to describe how devastated and infuriated we are right now. We knew this was going to be a difficult journey, but I never expected something like this to happen.

Has anyone else experienced the frustration of the current real estate market?