How much pain can you endure? - The down side of sitting on the fence.
I wish I had bought gold a few years ago.
I should have sold those shares of Citibank back in 2000.
If I had bought that home we lived in when we first moved to California…
We all know the pain of missing out on an opportunity. How many times has this pain occurred in your life? Now think back, what was the one thing holding you back. When I look back on my life, FEAR has always been my greatest obstacle. It is human nature to want to be safe and unharmed. Maybe even to a fault.
This fear that we experience causes us to believe we are safe. If I do not take action, I will not be harmed. But this is not the case; not taking advantage of a current situation can harm you. That harm may not be so obvious at first, but let’s look back. I’m sure we can find some examples real the real estate chronicles.
Remember the rise in home values in the 70’s and the 80’s? Prices rose quickly and those that owned homes gained equity in their property. Those that did not own were not harmed at first. But the rising home values soon lead to increased rents in apartments and homes. Now the non-owner was paying more for someone else’s mortgage. Ouch! Now I feel the pain.
A similar situation happened again in the late 90’s to 2006; remember the pain of not owning a home? All the times that you wished that you had bought but were paying rent instead. But real estate runs in cycles, each of the large increases in home prices has been followed by a drastic decrease. Ironically, there has not been an equal relief in rents during these periods.
So today, we have an excellent opportunity to step into home ownership; prices are down, interest rates are at incredibly low rates. Once again you are on the fence, trying to decide whether or not to buy a home. In some areas of the country, the cost to buy a home is less than it is to rent one; yet we are still trying to make a decision. How much pain do you want to endure?
Maybe you are okay with not owning your own home, nothing wrong with that. Maybe you don’t qualify; you can work on getting qualified. Do you want to look back to today 5, 10, 20 years from now and say, “I wish we had bought that home in 2011”? That would be painful.
There is a song lyric by the group Rush that goes…
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
What will your choice be today?
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