8 Remedies for Real Estate Remorse
Ever heard of buyer's remorse? Well, many first-time (and second-time) homebuyers can experience a big case of this after making such a big purchase. And yes, many times even the seller experiences some sort of remorse (Could we have gotten more?) Here's 8 tips from Trulia.com on how to cope and manage "Real Estate Remorse."
With
a transaction as large in dollar amount and life-changing impact as the
purchase or sale of a home, experiencing some level of remorse -
second-guessing your decision, or even wishing you hadn’t made it - is
par for the course.
Contrary to popular belief, real estate remorse is
not strictly the province of buyers. Experience has taught me that on
bed the night the contract is signed, the buyer lies awake thinking they
could have gotten the place for less - while the seller does the same
exact thing across town, thinking they could have gotten more. (Both
tend to ring up their agents; that’s how I know this is true!)
But
there’s a deeper flavor of real estate remorse that doesn’t go away. It
can even haunt a buyer or seller years down the road as they wake up
every single day for years on end, regretting their choice of home or
mortgage - or the choice to sell or walk away. Whether you’re already
suffering from it, or you’re still in active buying or selling mode and
want to avoid falling victim, here are my eight cures for real estate
remorse.
1. Before you get started, write out your vision of the life you want to live after you close the deal.
It’s easy to get distracted once you’re in the weeds of the actual
transaction, losing sight of what’s really important to you - what
motivated you to start the process in the first place. So, before you
get started, put pen to paper and write out exactly what sort of
lifestyle you are trying to create - financially and otherwise - by
taking this path.
Make sure you include your wants, needs, deal-makers and deal-breakers.
Then,
take that notebook or printout with you into meetings with agents and
mortgage pros, and even return to it throughout the process to
course-correct your decisions, if necessary. For example, buyers should
revisit their vision document and compare it against the home they are
in contract to buy before removing contingencies. This is the easiest
way to avoid buying a home you could have predicted would not fulfill
your needs.
2. Ask yourself: how does this decision make you feel?
We tend to approach real estate decisions from a place of reason and
logic, but sometimes that means we can reason our way right into
agreeing to something because it’s easier than sorting out our
differences with our mate, or because we’ve been underwater for so long
that walking away seems like the only option we still have. The
neuroscientists say that the cells in our bodies - and especially our
gut - might actually be ‘smarter’ than those in our brains when it comes
to making good decisions, as they haven’t been reading the paper or
influenced by that guy that shouts all the time on the cable business
channels.
So,
before you make a decision, weigh your alternatives and see how they
make you feel. Does the idea of living in this home, even though it’s a
fixer beyond anything you expected to buy, make you feel peaceful,
expansive or secure? Does the idea of living in the gated community of
your wife’s dreams make you feel constricted, anxious or burdened? Does
the prospect of short selling vs. staying put and getting a second job
make you feel excited and free or on edge? Often, your intuition and
physical senses provide the best clues to the right decision - the
decision that will not result in remorse after the fact.
3. Manage your own mindset.
Don’t fall into the trap of constant discontent. You might have absolutely
hated everything about renting, from your landlord to your neighbors,
and used that as motivation to save up to buy your own home. But if you
did, and now every single thing about owning (lenders, lawnmowers and
such) makes you crazy, you might just be falling into that too-common
fallacy of always thinking the grass is greener on the other side.
So
cut it out. If you truly want to change the way you feel, stop bonding
with others over your collective, perceived miseries and, instead,
practice feeling gratitude for 10 things a day. I’m trying to list 10
things I’m grateful for every day for a full month without repeating a
single thing! When you practice gratitude intensively, it is much more
difficult to dwell in regret and discontent.
4. Recognize hypotheticals as hallucinations. Hypotheticals,
by definition, are the opposite of what is real. So living in a
hypothetical world of how much you probably could have gotten the place
for, or how much more you might have been able to squeeze out of the
buyer if you’d bargained harder after the deal has been done is nothing
but fantasy and crazy-making, all wrapped up in an efficient little
depressing package.
Even
more crazy-making: wondering what you could have offered for that house
that would have beaten the other 20 offers. If you are a buyer who has
repeatedly been outbid, the wiser practice is to ask your agent to go
back and pull the actual
sale prices of the homes you lost after they close escrow, to give
yourself a good reality check and leverage the experience to help you
have a smarter, more successful house hunt going forward.
5. Be open and willing to have difficult conversations during the deal. Real
estate transactions make some milquetoast types morph into
wheeler-dealers, but more often they turn gregarious people pleasers
into anxiety-ridden, fear-driven eggshell steppers. Some people who are
happy to overshare about virtually anything on Facebook will do
everything possible to avoid confrontation - especially when it comes to
money matters.
If
you’re the type that finds negotiating excruciating and will do
anything to avoid having a conversation about money, do yourself and
your household finances a huge favor and just suspend that during this
deal. If something doesn’t look right on your contract or you don’t
understand something in the loan paperwork, ask and keep asking until
it is fixed or you do understand. If you agree to buy a place as-is and
as-disclosed (with contingencies, of course), but the inspections and
repair bids are overwhelming and you’re afraid you might be getting in
over your head, don’t let the fear of losing the place stop you from
discussing potential compromises with the seller or even talk with your
agent or co-buyer about the possibility of backing out of the deal.
6. Sit still before you start the demolition. One
of the most common forms of remorse I’ve seen is the remorse homeowners
have when they start remodeling a place too soon. The best practice is
to live in a place for a few months first, observing patterns in the
natural light, traffic, noise and even how your family uses the various
areas of space in the home before you start tearing walls down and
turning windows into french doors.
7. Do your own numbers first.
Homeowners who have remorse about getting in over their heads,
financially, often end up in that spot because they took someone else’s
word about what they could afford, rather than running their own
household financials first, then telling their professionals what their
maximum spend would be, monthly and otherwise. Make sure you go into
the home buying process clear on what is a sustainable range of monthly
housing costs for you and your family based on the total picture of your
income and expenses (including your future plans and expenses banks
don’t consider, like private school tuition, travel, etc.), rather than
expecting someone else to figure this out for you.
8. Get systematic about your options for resolving the remorse.
If you find yourself in a position where you’re experiencing deep
remorse for having bought a particular home, it’s time to stop wallowing
and start acting to improve your experience in the home. Systematically
list the things that make you crazy about the place. I’ve seen the most
long-term buyer’s remorse result from (a) unexpected neighborhood
nuisances like noise levels and being located on a street that is busier
than the buyer originally thought, and (b) a home with features and
condition problems that are worse or more costly to repair than the
buyer expected, like the flights of stairs are too numerous or the
windows too drafty.
So,
make a list of the things that are causing you remorse, then get clear
on all your options - and don’t limit your thinking about what those
options might be. Maybe you need to plan out the fixes you need, and
budget for them, for the next few years out, and start tackling one
every month. I love my home and my neighborhood, but was driven to
distraction for months by the fact that I could hear the subway at
night. I’d already installed dual paned windows! My sanity and sleep
have been saved by the investment of $10 every couple of months in - you
guessed it - earplugs from the drug store.
On
the other end of the spectrum, I knew a woman who insisted she could afford
to neither sell nor fix her home, she was so upside down, and so stayed
remorsefully put in her leaky, fixer-upper home for years before she
finally talked with an agent, who was able to get the bank to green
light a short sale lickety split.
Agents: They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. How do you help buyers and sellers prevent remorse?
Buyers/Sellers/Owners: Have you had any experiences with remorse - or narrowly avoiding it? We’d love to hear your story.
"Emcee Arah - "the REALTOR with Architectural Dimension" – is both a
Certified Distress Property Expert (CDPE) and a Certified Investor Agent
Specialist (CIAS). He is uniquely equipped to assist you in navigating
today's residential real estate market and selling your home. Contact us
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