I like to brag about certain things. For instance, I have a black SuperJet and there’s very little chance that you do as well. I have one, you don’t. It’s not that I’m better than you, but my SuperJet is better than yours, because you don’t even have one, which is embarrassing. For you, not for me, because my SuperJet is black and it’s custom, because it has an Uff Da sticker on it, which is something that only makes sense if your grandmother spoke some gibberish that she insisted was Norwegian. See, I’m bragging now, and there’s very little you can do about it. Ah, but you say that it’s October and what good does a SuperJet do a Wisconsin boy in October? Even that statement proves your SuperJet inferiority, because October is to SuperJetting what April is to showers. See? Bragging.
But I don’t intend to brag when I speak of my past personal real estate dealings. I don’t brag about profit or of market beating performance, though it has dawned on me that some of my anecdotal housing stories might be construed as less than humble tales. If you went to a foot doctor because you had something wrong with your foot, would you prefer the doctor tell you about what he learned in books, or would you prefer he tell you that last week he handled this same condition and fixed it? In fact, he saw the same condition three months ago and three years ago and he fixed those, too. Personal experience should lend some credibility to the expected outcome.
Back to those personal dealings of mine, they all have one common theme. No matter the house, no matter the price, no matter my personal confidence of lack thereof in the housing market, I have always left the closing table feeling as though I sold for too little. Buyers regret is a common affliction, in fact I also suffer from that each time I buy something, but that’s not specific to housing- I feel regret when I buy anything, including when I order a chicken wrap and everyone knows I should have ordered the brisket. But seller regret is just as real, and I’ve felt it each and every time I’ve been the one signing the deed. I left money on the table, I sold too cheap, I blew it. That’s how I feel after every personal sale. Deflated, poor, taken.
The thing is, each personal deal I’ve closed is just a distant memory. They mean nothing to my life today. I look back at the progression of housing, to the first purchase and to the last one, and I think of how I caved in one way or another. I caved on the buy, and then I caved on the sale, I’m a professional caver, the farthest thing from shrewd, a sucker, really. But that’s how people who like to over think real estate might feel, that’s not how I feel. Because today I’m not holding any house that I no longer wish to own. I’m not stuck with a property that doesn’t serve a purpose in my life. I’m not beholden to something that erodes my personal finances just because I was unwilling to give in to a buyer’s last minute demands of a $1000 credit. I’m not stuck at my station because I couldn’t get that last 3% that I desperately wanted out of the buyer. I’m here now because I let the 3% go, because I know that moving forward is far more valuable than getting stuck.
Stop getting stuck. If you’re a seller, and a buyer won’t pay your “bottom” number, don’t be so stubborn. Meet the bid and move on. Often times a seller here is selling because she’s buying more house, or he’s buying less house, but he’s not removing himself from the market entirely. It’s just movement, up or down, but still here. And so owners buyer something new, hanging on to what they already own, because they don’t need to sell it. I can hold this forever, they say. Never mind the financial bleed of an unnecessary, uninterested carry, consider instead the emotional drain that accompanies this sort of prolonged ownership. When you wake up, do you think only about your new house and your job and your spouse and your children and that achy left hip, or do you think also of that house that you used to live in that you still own? It’s there, decaying, eating away at your finances and your mental-health. It’s there with you at all times, serving no purpose, stuck in your thoughts.
This is why there is regret in real estate. Regret on the buy side, regret on the sale side. Did you sell your last home for too little? Did you end up taking the first offer and later beat yourself up for selling too quickly, for too little? Good, because I probably did the same, but here we both are, worrying about today and thinking about tomorrow, forgetting about yesterday and the houses we used to own.