Come Join the Family at Pearce Real Estate

Thanksgiving

Despite the woes of the real estate market, there are many things to be grateful for this season, as always.  For those of us who are healthy, most people would rate that as enough to be happy, all by itself.  For those who have family with them, especially at the holidays, ditto.  For those who have enough to eat, a place to live, a job, and friends, that's enough for most of the world.

Could the real estate market be better?  Of course.  Could transactions be easier?  Of course.  Would it be nice for us to be a little higher up on the food chain?  Undoubtedly.  But, every once in a while, and more often for some, we get to feel good, when we help a family, a business, or an individual find the perfect space, especially when they take the time to tell us.  And we get calls from loyal clients and friends who think of us for their real estate needs and those of their colleagues and relatives, and that's nice as well.  Bottom line:  we're in a helping profession, and we're glad to be of assistance.

So Happy Holidays to all of our clients and friends, and may the coming season be full of joy, good cheer, and closings!

Get off the Sidelines

If you've been waiting for the economy to straighten itself out, and for the real estate market to be clearly on the way up, you're waiting too long. History has shown over and over again that those who act before there is certainty are the ones who make the most money. Since most purchases and sales are, in reality, driven by family issues and not by national ones, that's not so hard to prove.

We bought a condo in 1981, when the economy was bad. We got a great price on it, and we moved in. We were getting ready to have kids, and there were no children allowed, so we put it on the market and bought a house. As soon as we moved into the house (the day we closed, in fact), we found out I was pregnant, and we'd bought a one-bedroom house. Although we planned to renovate, another, bigger one came on the market up the street, so we bought that too. What were we thinking? Anyway, the two houses were both bought in 1983, and the first was sold that year, as well as the condo. We made money on the condo, since we'd been the first to move in. We made no money on the little house. The value of the second house doubled in the the first couple of years, as the market went wild in the mid-80s.

What's the lesson here? You could reasonably say that it is to think ahead before you buy, but that's not my point today. My point is that we made almost all the appreciation on the house that we owned when the market started to rise. We also made money on the condo on that theory. The little house we only owned for a few months, and we would have made money there if we had been willing to own three homes for longer. It's a version of timing is everything, but it requires buying early in a cycle. People who waited until later in the 80s got caught in a declining market after 1988, and weren't able to get out for what they had paid.

The parallel to today's market is: If you wait until everything is rosy, the money will have already been made by those who bought sooner. Buy now.