Vet Battles Frustration in Phoenix's Suddenly Tight Homebuying Market (Video)

Phoenix couple Heather and Jeremy Kerr were ready to own a home at the beginning of 2012 as they saw the lease on their apartment about to expire -- or so they thought. After contacting a Realtor and getting pre-qualified for a loan, they were anxious to put down offers and buy. What the Army veteran -- whose service included the action in Mogadishu that inspired the movie "Black Hawk Down" -- and his wife weren't ready for was how challenging it was going to be to find a suitable house.

As they describe it in the video above, it didn't start well: "The very first house we looked at went on the market an hour before we looked at it," Heather Kerr says. "And the hour after we looked at it, it was already off the market." Although Phoenix was one of the hardest-hit housing markets in the economic downturn, by the time the Kerrs (pictured at left) started shopping it already was being picked over by blocs of real estate investors. The Kerrs also had to find a home that was in "100 percent working condition" to meet the requirements of a Veterans Administration loan. The couple discovered that this eliminated a surprising amount of the available inventory in their area.

The Kerrs even reached a point at which they were bidding on homes based solely on the photos their Realtor showed them. View the video to see the creative steps they took that eventually put them in a house that they could fall in love with.

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