Emotional Real Estate

I haven't always been in real estate. I may have always LIKED it - we've moved two dozen times. I just like houses.

Four years ago, I had an "aha" moment while I was working for the county. I'd worked for the court system for a dozen years, then switched to a technology office and had been there four years. Anyway, after the first year with technology it stopped being fun. By the fourth year, I was miserable. In the middle of that misery, a lightbulb went on when I thought about what I liked - instead of what I didn't like. The next thing I knew, I was a retired county employee and a full time realtor.

The first year in real estate was great fun - there was (and is) so much to learn. It is a joy when a seller finds a buyer or a buyer finds just the right house - and both buyer and seller get what they want. A win-win.

The second year in real estate was more productive. People were still selling and buyers were still buying. There was some tension, not desperation exactly, but the win-win wasn't quite as equal maybe as it had been.

Year three, prices dropped like a stone. The sellers who wanted to sell were faced with the cold reality that they couldn't do what they wanted to do with the result they wanted to have. Buyers bought, many of them for the first time. Lots of what they bought were foreclosures. And they bought at prices far far lower than they'd have paid even a year before.

And now year four. Almost all my business is short sales - when the seller sells for less than is owed on the house. For sellers, this is hard. Painful. Sad. Embarrassing. Within the past month, I have had conversations with sellers who have had to move to another state because the jobs they'd had - good jobs - either cut their hours or they were laid off. To get work, they had to move out of Arizona. Other sellers have had business reversals - the businesses they'd built up stopped being profitable and they couldn't pay their bills, including their house payments. Others have expensive medical issues. Losses in the stock market. Trouble with the IRS. Divorces. It's a long list, and emotionally-charged. The best I can do is my best - in preparing a short seller for next steps and taking as much uncertainty out of the process as is possible.

I still love the real estate business. I like houses. I REALLY like people - I think my clients are among the finest people anywhere, and I mean that from my heart. Right now, I'm still smiling when I'm working with buyers. And I am optimistic that one of these days - maybe really really soon - the pain suffered by sellers will be a long, forgotten memory. Better days are ahead.