We did it with the sale of our home, and still were fortunate enough to have a bidding war with escalation clauses! Our best offer gave us 45 days to find a house. We already had one in mind, and usually that's the case for those putting a house on the market. We didn't have any other requirements for our buyers, and were able to offer on our dream home once we had ours under contract. Everything worked out and we moved to clarksburg 1 month ago.

Yeah, we wouldn't put our house on the market without one. As a buyer, you're not really in a position to argue.

They were common in our market last year. Not sure about this year though. I'd imagine they still are given that inventory isn't any better.

I don't know how common it is now but with limited houses on the market, I would guess it's becoming more common. We did this because we found a certain house we wanted and couldn't find another we liked enough to make us move. If we hadn't gotten the house we likely would have backed out on our sale contract. We had 30 days to find our home of choice. Everything went very smoothly though as we did get the house of our choice, and we weren't PIA about anything else.

I was just looking online at some homes for sale. I found one in the school district I want. The floor plan would work well for us, though it does not have a finished basement (this is in a planned community/suburb where finished basements are very common) and the lot it's on has a terrible view. Considering this, I thought their asking price was very high (by about 15%) and noticed that it said "subject to owner finding home of choice."

How long does the owner have to find a "home of choice" before the buyer can back out? The buyer can't be expected to wait indefinitely, right? To me, a contingency like this gives the impression that the seller will be a PITA about everything--wanting it all on THEIR terms, etc.. Is that generally true?