After watching four homes go to competing bidders over the course of seven frustrating months, Shubham Nath and Ankur Srivastava finally nabbed a four-bedroom house in Warren, N.J., last June. The couple pounced on the property when it hit the market. “We saw the home on a Saturday, looked at it a second time that Sunday and made an offer Sunday night,” says Nath. And this time they were prepared to best the seven other bidders: They offered about $60,000 above the home’s $849,000 list price, plus a 2.5-month closing period so that the seller would have plenty of time to pack up and move. And when the property appraised for $7,000 below the price they had agreed upon in the purchase contract, the couple paid for the appraisal gap. “We jumped through a lot of hoops,” Nath says. 

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