I’m always surprised how many people watch properties. They don’t look at properties, necessarily, but they watch them. They look at them online, they drive by them in person. They rent a boat and drive by from the water, killing the engine and floating, looking, watching, judging. They do this for a while, and then they might call me or make a mistake and call someone else, and they say “I’ve been keeping an eye on such and such house”. They say an eye, but I know they mean both eyes and most of their thinking capacity, spending days and then months stressing over a particular house for one reason or another. I like to watch properties, and I know you do, too.
Watching a property is a nice way to get your arms around such a purchase. A vacation home purchase can be made on a whim, and if you were following along at home and watching the sale of certain properties this year we would almost have to believe that many of those were indeed purchased on a whim. While some rush and whim it, others lie in the weeds, waiting for the right time. What’s the right time? Well, the buyer is thinking they need to wait for the right time to take advantage of the seller, but in reality the right time is that time when the buyer, the weed sitter, finally comes to terms with the decision he’s about to make. He wants that house, and he’s convinced himself that if he waits just a little longer, it’ll be the right time.
Unfortunately for the buyer, this Property Watch isn’t a solo game, even if he thinks it is. He’s watching, he’s sitting, he’s eating some beef jerky to while away the time. He thinks he’s on the inside track, after all, he’s the one waiting. In another town, or in the same town, down the street a bit and around the corner, there’s another Watcher, and she’s watching the same property as the other guy. They don’t know it, because secretly watching a property is a lonely game, and the Watcher likes the idea that he’s hatched in his own mind: He’s the Watcher, and that property will some day be his. All his.
Except the other Watcher thinks the same, and so they watch, in their different homes in their different towns, and they’re intent on waiting for the right time to pounce. Summer is for suckers, they both think at the same time in different towns, fall is for the shrewd. Let the summer buyers buy, and let them pay prices that they think will be higher than the fall prices, and in broad theory, they’re both right. There will be deals this fall, and they know it. Except they want one particular house, not any old house, they want one house. The house is perfect, it’s without flaw, and they both know it. The timing is just about right, but first this green shoreline must fade and brown, and the blue waters must be free of white woody abutments.
Time passes. More time, too. The longer the property sits unsold, the more emboldened our watchers are. Watching from the computer screen, watching from the boat, watching from the car. Watching, watching, watching. Waiting, too, but mostly the watching is the active part, the waiting is passive, but just as important. Three weeks from Monday, the one watcher thinks. He’ll be ready then. It’s taken a while to come to terms with the purchase, mostly in his own mind, because the house he is considering is not one considered by those without the means to consider it, but come to terms with it he has. He’s ready now, but he’ll be more ready then. He pours his cereal, checks his screen. Still available, he sees, contented by his cunning delay.
She decides it’s time, too. She knows it’s time. There’s no better house for her, no better spot on the lake, no better entry drive, no better pier. And that lakeside porch? None better. Her date is approaching, too. She can feel it approaching, though she senses the momentum she knows not when it’ll boil to the surface. Two weeks, she thinks. She’ll be ready then. She sits back in her chair, content in her patience, and impressed with her own self control.
Two weeks passes and she makes an offer. It’s not a great offer, mind you, but it’s an offer. The negotiations begin, and one week into them, another offer arrives. It’s his. It’s not great, either, but it’s an offer. The seller, forever a non-component of this watching game, is suddenly and firmly in the driver’s seat. The seller negotiates as anyone would, and pushes him and then her, her and then him, before the price arrives at the number the seller is comfortable with. She accepts the seller terms, he loses. He sits at his screen, desperately scanning for the next house that he might watch.
The seller sells, and she buys. She’s thrilled! And we know she should be, because she just bought herself a most glamorous lakefront home on a most glamorous lake. One more jewel in the crown? Sure, but this jewel brings with it a lifestyle enhancement for the entire family and social circle that a simple jewel could never provide. The price she paid was fair, and she’s content. The seller is content, too, knowing he just sold the house in November for the same price he would have been willing to sell it for in August.
The waiting game is fun. It’s boring. It’s exciting! It’s tedious. But it’s also mostly unnecessary. Love a house from afar? Stop crouching in those perfectly coiffed boxwoods. Just come up and see the house, love the house, buy the house. Chances are you’ll buy it now for what you’ll end up buying it for later, and what’s the sense in that?