A man was among over 100 people who queued up for an open house in San Diego, California, showing just how competitive house hunting can be in the city.
Mark Seaberg, 32, works for 27/7 Realty and shared a video of the queue of people waiting to get into the house in the suburb of Santee, pointing out that the San Diego housing market is "not slowing down."
He told Newsweek: "I'm a real estate agent and was showing a client of mine. This particular property had huge demand due to being priced under market value as well as offering a 2.75 percent assumable VA loan for qualifying buyers.
"The seller's agent had a one-hour window to see the property on Saturday so there was a lot of urgency to see it."
In the text overlay of the video, Seaberg said that people were "just following each other in circles around the house", something he called "so ridiculous."
While the queue of people might seem frightening to people viewing it on TikTok, Seaberg said that it is not a reflection of the situation in San Diego as a whole. He said: "This listing was definitely crazy but the overall SD market is not like this, buyers are seeing the upper hand at the moment with most inventory sitting longer than expected."
In fact, the average house price in San Diego was down in December 2024 compared to 12 months before. A report by Realtor.com found that the median San Diego house price that month was $964,725, marking a 1.6 percent drop from the same time in 2023.
However, people still took to the comments section of the video, which received more than 2 million views, to share their reactions to the long queue and crowd of people inside the house looking around.
"California is so beautiful but I don't know how young couples starting their lives can't even afford to live there. that same house here in Florida would run about $425,000," said Russ.
Estela shared: "So glad I bought my house 15 years ago. The prices now are crazy."
Mike admitted: "I'm so adverse to competition I'd just walk right out and move to a new area."
"Us poor people don't even have a chance," Rio G said.
Mike T commented: "All I heard was 'it's super tiny' and 'it's like an apartment'. Welcome to San Diego. It's all like that. But hey, that weather! You'll be outside all the time."
"When I see that line after pulling up, I'm out because I know I already lost," said Will.
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