Do you believe in real estate karma?

There's always another house. It'll be better in some ways, and worse in others.

I've told people that a million times over the last 10 years. Not many are interested in listening of course. Buyers get emotionally hooked, which as a seller makes you ecstatic.

No one commented? Busy with other things. We lost a house but we voluntarily backed out at the urging of others over cost to fix it. It ended up selling at about the same price. I am not sour, but realize it was our only chance for a while as now we are locked into another lease. But rates were high then, have come back down and who knows about the future with this "financial mess.'

I lost a house in a bidding competition after my deal was accepted but not signed off on. I found another, better one a week later. The person who bought the first house was a RE person who immediately turned around to sell it. It stayed on the market for almost 3 years (empty) - just recently I noticed that someone is living there. Karma - yes.

I 100% believe in real estate karma. As with other life-altering decisions, I firmly believe that "what is meant to be, will be"..... things happen for a reason. I know it sounds a bit naive, but I do believe it is true. It has definitely worked out that way for me, as I embark on my third real estate purchase in six years. I've been outbid, lost an under-agreement and it has always turned out for the better.

Why do people think they 'lost' a house they never really had? They wanted it and for some reason couldn't get it. You can't have a loss on something you never had. It is so odd when you hear people treat buying a house like a race. There is no finish line, no winner or loser.

Just take the whole 'win/lose' mentality out of it and you have a choice to buy instead of a compuslion to 'win' or fear of loss. none of which have anything to do with real estate. There are always other houses. If it doesn't work out then move on. but don't let the fact that you couldn't get one house color your view of buying as a game.

For once I'll actually agree with the eternal pessimist Charles. It is completely irrational and a huge mistake to get emotionally attached to a house during the buying process. The minute you let yourself start thinking about a house as something other than 4 walls and a roof on a piece of property, that's when you start making decisions based on emotion. That includes spending more than you intended to spend, overlooking serious flaws and/or shortcomings in the property, and bidding against yourself.

Once you've signed everything and have keys in hand, then you can start getting all weepy about it. But until you close the deal, the most important thing you can do is divorce yourself from your emotions to whatever extent possible and look at everything objectively. It's not easy, but the more often you do it, the easier it becomes.

We got outbid on a house we really liked in Westford 4 years ago. The price went over what we felt was justified and we let it go. We bought another house that we liked somewhat less, but at a much better price. We were then able to turn around and sell that house within 15 months at a profit in a declining market when my job moved.

THAT is how you know whether you made the right decision. Can you get at least what you paid for the house if you turned around and sold it the next day? What would the reasonable buyer be willing to pay for the property?

Mixing buying and emotion is probably the absolute worst possible thing you can do and it would be the absolute last thing I would advise a homebuyer to do. As Charles said, there are a million houses on the market - and keep in mind that the "cool, unique" features that make you fall in love with one particular house a) may not appeal to a future buyer and b) may actually be a hinderance when you turn around and try to sell it.

I bought 3 houses at various times (good times bad times and ugly times). I never participaded in bidding wars, always avoided them. Every time I got a house sitting on market for awhile and I got pretty good concessions from the seller.
Every time it worked out great and I enjoyed living in them tremendously. EVERY TIME I had to compromise.
In real-estate don't go with your heart, go with your mind.

Of course, this all involves treating property as a house, or a condo, rather than a "home". Do people ever wonder why the words all got conflated like that?

JP - believe it or not, I'm actually not a pessimist. From 1996 to 2005 I'd tell everyone I'd meet just about to buy real estate in Boston, as it was too cheap, and was told, ironically, that I was an incurable optimist.

In truth, I'm an incurable realist. I seem to have a better ability than most to keep my emotions out of my analysis. Emotionally, I love real estate. If I were Bill Gates, I'd probably own 100s of houses. And if the real estate market came back, I could go back to being a developer making very good profits.

But I never let what I want to happen interfere with what I actually think will happen, based on the data.

And yes, my friends have called me Mr. Spock on more than one occasion because of my data fixation. That's alright - friends and family are good to be emotional about. Money, not so much.