Happiness Is Not a Math Equation

In a featured post this morning from Jeff Fritzson titled, “Helping Your Buyer Prioritize Their Criteria“ he introduced an empirical tool to help buyer prioritize their want to have list in buying a house.  As a professional marketer, I used Con-Joint analysis to help customers decide what they really wanted, and what were they willing to pay for. I’m on board with using the numbers to tell the story, in most instances.

However, buying a home, the place where we are going to live, is still 90% an emotional decision.  We choose the house where we feel good, not necessarily, where the spreadsheet tells us where the best deal may be.  Buyers may begin their search with the most analytical approach possible, and many do.  After they have had a chance to see what the inventory is in their price range, they inevitably begin to move to a more emotional state of mind, or better said, where are they happiest? Where do they see themselves living? Which home feels right?

In my real estate career, I have had the pleasure to work with a varied background of buyers that included PhDs, economists, researches, CPAs and just about every other analytical profession one can think of.   I have also dealt with artists, musicians and poets.  Despite my belief that these two groups would behave drastically differently in the home buying process, I was dead wrong.  They may approach the process differently, but in the end, emotion ruled the day. They chose the home that they believed would make them the happiest.

My hat is off to Jeff for trying to bring am empirical tool to help buyers sort out their own wants, but his best quote was, “The funny thing is emotions will overrule all”.  Could not have said it better myself.

Images courtesy of jscreationzs, Kittikun Atsawintarangkul, stockimages, / FreeDigitalPhotos.net".