When Tommy Ufland and Tori Olsen were trying to buy a single-family home in Santa Rosa two years ago, they kept losing out — usually to all-cash offers — even though they had offered way over asking price.
Ufland, 33, and Olsen, 30, noticed that the only people their age touring open houses were with their parents. So in July 2023, they stopped looking and bought a condo owned by Olsen’s mother and aunt.
The sisters had been renting it out to pay for their mother’s health care. But she died in 2020 and they agreed to sell the condo at market value for $400,000. That was about half what the couple had been planning to spend, though the condo needed substantial updating. Olsen’s mom chipped in $16,000 toward the purchase, “which allowed us to use what we’d saved for the remodel,” Ufland said…