10 Secrets: The Preface

This is the preface post in a new blog series I'm calling "10 Secrets for Successful Home Buying and Selling". Taken together, this series will be a guide to help you navigate the complex and often emotionally charged process of buying, selling or renting real estate. Feel comfortable leaving comments, asking questions and engaging with other readers when it strikes you.  Simply leave a comment in the section below.

Until recently, the longest my family lived in one place was five years, and our usual limit was two years. We've changed homes, transformed rooms to accommodate new uses, rented, bought, and sold homes, refinanced them, leveraged them, and invested in them.

We've moved to save money, to seek or accept new employment, to find better schools, to move to a different location, or to "start over".  Growing up, my dad's work required him to travel, and many times to foreign places far from what we'd ever think to call "home".  Most of our moves, now that I look back on them, were wonderfully happy moves.  A few were definitely losers.  But each one represented an opportunity to lay new foundations, connect with new people and experience new things. 

Housing is also my business. As a real estate consultant, I've helped consult, negotiate, organize and oversee the purchase, sale and rental of thousands of houses, apartments and condominiums. As investors, my brothers and I have rescued, renovated, restored, and remodeled houses.  We've transformed houses into homes for hundreds of friends, families and clients.

And more recently, my passion has me researching the social and psychological ties we have to housing and examining the differences homeownership makes to people who are able to achieve it. Not surprisingly, my findings empirically support the prevailing wisdom surrounding homeownership as a personal and an American ideal.

Increasingly during the past decade, financial research has more frequently crossed the line into the social and behavioral sciences. In turn, the social and behavioral sciences grapple with questions about personal financial literacy and financial management. At the heart of this emerging body of research is the home.

Perhaps nowhere else can we learn more about ourselves and one another as when we consider our values, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and customs in the context of the financial realities, constraints, opportunities, and investment potential of our homes. Nothing else motivates us to learn how to handle money better than the prospect of owning or investing in our homes. Yet, partially due to the complexity of the times in which we live, and partially due to credit availability and increasingly creative advertising, we have fallen behind the “personal financial knowledge curve” we need to master. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I’ve learned from my research, teaching, and the people I’ve helped to house—from college students to older retirees seeking assisted living arrangements—that our decisions about homes can be financially and personally enhancing or exactly the opposite, depending upon the mindset, willingness to learn, and emotional baggage we bring to the transactions.

Housing emotions can derail us financially. They can be so powerful that during recent presentations with distressed home owners, I’ve seen grown men and women cry over home-connected memories and feelings of deep loss emerge when faced with tough decisions in this new economy. One man who was about 50 years old, a strong candidate to short sale his home to avoid foreclosure, suddenly began weeping uncontrollably and had to leave the room. He later told me he had not allowed himself to grieve over the loss of his mother almost ten years earlier.  Our conversations had loosened memories he suppressed “far too long,” he said.

The experience of home can be so intimate that I’ve witnessed people in moments of complete despair as they're confronted with the reality of losing their home to foreclosure. And as I sit here starting this new series of posts my hope is to simplify what can be a complicated, intimidating, and emotionally draining experience for many. By introducing you to your own “housing psychology,” better negotiating and decision skills will be more accessible to you as a homebuyer, seller, renter, and housing investor. 10 Secrets to Successful Home Buying and Selling is not just a how-to guide, but an introduction to a whole new strategy that can transform the way you approach housing decisions— and maybe other financial decisions as well.