Is there really a Crystal Ball in Real Estate?

Last night Laurie Manny and I had a great discussion about a post that Caleb Mardini put out the other day - Why Buy?  She started me thinking, I got up early this morning to reread that post because it was on my mind.  In it David Podgursky made an excellent point the cost of not buying a home and his advice was "If you're buying a home - buy a house you LOVE.  If you have this many regrets causing you to keep from purchasing then maybe you just don't LOVE the house.  Don't, though, let a good deal or the right house slip away from you because you're betting on the market.  Know what is controllable and what isn't.  The right house could disappear as quickly as it came on the market and you could miss out on the right property while trying to figure out the right time to make your move".   

Awhile back I wrote Help - My Crystal Ball is Cloudy in it I wrote " There are many factors that affect us all across the country - Baby Boomers, Generation X, the economy, insurance, taxes and disasters to name a few.  How they will affect us will be dependent on many local things.  But there are things that point out that now is the time to buy.   Mortgage rates, lifestyle decisions, and the like play into the decision as importantly as are we heading for an upswing in prices.  You may purchase in the downswing while prices go a bit lower, but you run the risk of higher interest rates later on.  If you are planning on keeping the property for long term, this setback is temporary.   If you are too slow you could miss out on that perceived "better opportunity" only paying more and with a higher interest rate.  Because that is also a possibility!"

As Realtors we are here to assist buyers and sellers obtain a dream.  That might be to relocate to a new location, which means selling their current property, helping them find another qualified agent in the new area.  Buyers we have to be part Banker, part Parent, in addition to helping them find a home.  We have to wade through the massive amount of information that is now available to the consumer.  With Web 2.0 that information has expanded tenfold.  No wonder the consumer is sitting on the fence.  It was a lot of information to process when you were looking at two or three neighborhoods.  Now people are exposed to a lot of extra information, information that may not be relevant to the buyer or seller.  They get stuck in analysis paralysis.

A perfect example of the information over-load and how things can get lost is Allison Stewart's post What to do when cloudy ball buyers demands fall of deaf ears the day after the one I posted.  In it she talks about affordable housing, or the lack thereof.   She brought up an important point.  When I commented on it, the word passion was there for me to pass the human test.  It started me thinking, as Realtors we need to be passionate about our areas, we need to be promoting it and sharing our knowledge of the area.  We need to create the reason for being in these communities! 

If all that is out there is the negative why would someone want to purchase?  I am not saying that we should lie about these communities, but let us focus on the good.  The media seems to do well enough on the negative.  Remember that is what gets ratings and newspapers sold.  It makes great headlines, remember corrections and retractions are usually buried somewhere in the paper.  The media forgets that Realtors advertise with them, and what they are doing is hurting us.  It is no wonder that Blogging and self publication has taken off.  We are  now empowered to do something.

For example here on Marco Island, I happen to believe that one of the best values of Beachfront condos is The Gulfview.  So from time to time I write a market update and I share something about this condo, be it photographs, interesting information or the makeup of the area.  The different floor plans, the difference of being on the North or South side of the building -- pros and cons.  Things that consumers need to make a decision if they want to live in The Gulfview.  That is the power of Localism, start using it to your advantage.  Stop worrying about how it might change in the future, use it now and learn from it.

Mark Eibner wrote a great post about Crystal Balls his advice in the market if for the Colorado area, but he probably says it best for the whole country "For those of us that have been in this business long enough, we know that there is no such thing as a crystal ball.  The only thing that is certain for sure is change.  Change will be the biggest news item for the next five years. The Crystal ball says get ready to CHANGE."  Those of us here at Active Rain are masters at change. 

Perhaps all those changes that the creators of Active Rain and Localism are making are an added bonus to our ability to adapt rapidly.  So what does that mean for us and our clients?  Well I believe that we need to be able to change our direction a lot faster.  If things are not working as we think that they should, do something different.  Like Donald Trump said "Part of being a winner is knowing when enough is enough. Sometimes you have to give up the fight and walk away, and move on to something that's more productive." and "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate. "

So how are you going to react to the changes in your market?  What changes in your plan are you going to make?  What tasks have not been productive?  What ones have?  How are you going to implement new technology into your plan?  How are you going to be one of the winners?