How to Control the Emotions of Home Buying

How to Control the Emotions of Home Buying

Buying a home is almost always an emotion-based process. Once you find a home you like, you become emotionally attached to it. Emotional attachment can cause you to make unwise decisions when making an offer, handling negotiations, and so forth. Once you’ve fallen in love with a house and visualized it being your home, you’ll start to do WHATEVER it takes to make sure it becomes your home.

This is about the worst possible way to buy a home, but also may be the best possible home for you. You do want to fall in love with your new home, but you also want to be careful.

You can literally cost yourself thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands of dollars, by being too emotionally attached. Instead of letting emotions rule the game, try to include some common sense in the buying process. Real estate investors have a saying that goes, “Don’t fall in love with the house, fall in love with the deal.” This is easier for an investor as he won’t live there, but you should be aware of this, and use your head.

Having said that, I realize that you will always have some emotional attachment to your house. You need to like it. Your goal is to strike a balance between liking the house and using common sense to tell you whether you are sacrificing too much to try to get the house. If you find you have to make lots and lots of compromises to get a house, stop yourself and ask, “Is this really worth it?”

Remember to strike a balance between emotions and common sense in your home buying process. It will help you enjoy your home that much more once you actually move in.

Do You Really Want to Miss This?

You are probably thinking, “Why the heck do I keep bringing up this recession and how it can impact you succeeding in real estate?” Well it does, and I’m not sure when the market will recover; but what I am sure about is that if you’re ready to make more money and you want to do it fast, you need to understand how to profit in a flat or declining market.

My good friend, Kris Kirschner, will be on a webinar with me tonight (Thursday, April 22) to discuss the current real estate recession we are in now and exactly what you can do to make money, part-time – even if you live in a declining market, have no experience and very little money or credit.

This is a one-time only webinar with critical information that you will not want to miss. You already know that if you work for a living or own your own business it doesn’t get easier, it gets harder. The real question you need to ask yourself is, “What will I do if unemployment hits 15% and more and more businesses continue to go under?”

Listen, I am not trying to scare you but there is so much you should be aware of to protect yourself and your family during this economic recession. Join the webinar tonight and listen very closely for 55 minutes because Kris will be teaching you 3 strategies and exactly how to profit for the next 36 months!

The webinar is free – you will not want to miss it. To register go to:
www2.gotomeeting.com/register/557972963


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Thursday, April 22, 2010
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4 Location Factors to consider when purchasing a Rent-to-Own

As they say in real estate, the three most important things to consider when buying a home is location, location, location. Once you have established what you need and want in a home, you need to decide where to look for a home.

1. School District: There are some important components to location when making this decision. If you have children, one of the big ones is the school district. If your children are already in school, you need to decide if you want to stay in the same school district so they don’t have to change. If they aren’t yet in school, you want to consider what school district you prefer, and specifically what schools in the district you want them to attend. Historically, homes in good school districts appreciate better and hold their value better than equivalent homes with poorer quality schools. This makes school selection not just an important investment in your children, but also an important investment in your home.
2. Work: Another important location factor to consider is proximity to work. Given the uncertainty of the cost of gasoline, commuting costs are definitely worth factoring in. It’s also important to factor in the amount of time your commute takes. If you live an hour away from where you work, not only are the gas costs going to be enormous, but that means two hours per day of driving, which is a lot of extra time away from home.
3. Lifestyle: Amenities are also important when deciding on location. How close do you want to be to the grocery store, your favorite restaurants and your favorite entertainment locations? Long travel times to get to these locations is not just inconvenient, but adds to gas costs too. In some cases, if you are trying to cut down on dining out to save money, you might want to move just a bit farther away from your favorite restaurants so you are less likely to frequent them.
4. Safety: The last location factor to take into account is crime. For the sake of the safety of you and your family, the lower the crime rates, the better. It will also affect the long-term value of your home. If you live in a high crime area, appreciation rates will be slower and in a down market, your home will decline in value faster. Larger cities tend to have higher crime rates than small towns, so you can’t compare the crime rate in San Francisco, California to Cheboygan, Michigan. However, many cities have good and bad neighborhoods. As a general rule, the better the neighborhood, the better off you are.

In summary, you want a house that is in the best school district, a five minute or less commute to work, close to all of the best amenities and in a zero crime neighborhood. If you find one, let me know because I’m not sure they really exist. Obviously, when you add all of these factors together, selecting the location for your home is a series of compromises. You want good schools, but you don’t want that to put you an hour away from work. You want to be close to amenities that are important to you, but not too close if it means you have to settle for a high crime neighborhood, and so on.

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5 Questions to ask yourself when purchasing a New Home

5 Questions to ask yourself when purchasing a New Home
While you are looking at homes and once you make an offer on a home, there are some questions you should be asking yourself to help keep common sense involved in the decision making process:
Here are four IMPORTANT questions to ask yourself:
1. Does the home work for you and does it meet your NEEDS?
Remember the difference between wants and needs?
2. Do the numbers work for you?
Can you really afford this home?
3. What sacrifices are you making to get this home?
It helps to think specifically about what you might be giving up for this particular home.
4. Will the home meet your needs for the near future?
Will your family be growing? Are the kids going away to college?
Will you still want to mow that big back yard in a few years?

If you know that you are the type of person who easily becomes emotional in your decision making process, it might be a good idea to carry a note card with these four questions on it to remind you while you are looking!
Remember to strike a balance between emotions and common sense in your home buying process. It will help you enjoy your home that much more once you actually move in.

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