Preview the book: Chapter Six

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CHAPTER SIX BUYERS It’s a Good Buy or It’s Goodbye Buyers.  You gotta love ‘em.  They know everything.  They know exactly what they want to buy and exactly what they want to spend.  The only problem is, they speak a language called buyerese that is a variation of liarese. Liarese is the language of liars, a group of people who at times distort or twist the truth, usually for their own benefit.  Buyerese, however, differs significantly from liarese, in as much as buyers are really trying to tell the truth.  For some reason, though, when people begin looking for a house, the truthful needs and impulses swimming around in their vast neurological ocean somehow don’t flow over their vocal cords.  To the untrained observer, it would seem that these people are liars.  But they’re not really liars—at least, not on purpose.  They’re simply buyers. I have some dear friends who returned to our hometown of Nashville after having lived in another city for several years.  He’s a lawyer and she’s an architect.  It might seem that they wouldn’t require a real estate agent because, between the two of them, they should know everything.  Nevertheless, they couldn’t find the house they wanted, so they asked me to assist them in their search. At our first meeting, they laid out their criteria.  They had a young child, so they didn’t want to be on a busy street.  As a gauge, they ruled out any property on a street with a double yellow No Passing line.  She had designed a number of homes and was partial to frame construction, although brick would be considered.  They did not want stone.  They refused to live on a corner lot.  They wanted all the living area on one floor and they did not want to spend over $125.000. It was obvious to a person schooled in buyerese why they had been unable to find their dream home.  They were speaking buyerese and didn’t know it. Where are they now?  They are happily settled in their new home.  It is a beautiful one-and-a-half-story stone house with a basement (three floors)—comfortably situated on a corner lot bounded by a street with a double yellow line.  And they paid $126,000 for it. If you’re the Buyer Once they get past the language barrier, sellers find that buyers really are good people.  And some buyers actually do, in fact, know what they want.  Many buyers think they know what they want, but really haven’t approached enough houses from a buyer’s perspective to be able to contract and compare the multitude of possibilities. As a buyer, you may initially feel intimidated.  You are swimming in uncharted waters, armed only with horror stories from friends and bits and pieces of information garnered from newspaper articles, late-night television promotions, and a how-to book (not this one!).  You may get so distracted by all this “advice” that you may find yourself unable to differentiate between a well-built, nicely designed, functional, but messy home and a clean, shiny, meticulously organized, structurally nonfunctional dwelling.  You may worry more about roof color than roof condition.  A common settlement cracks will scare you to death.  At first.  But you need to hit the streets and get the hang of looking at other people’s houses, with an eye toward making one of them yours. Hints to Buyer Begin your hunt with an open mind.  Cull as you go.  Unless you’re a veteran house hunter, allow yourself to be schooled by a trustworthy agent and the realities of the marketplace. Try to remember why you want the things you do.  The reasons may be trivial. Explain to your agent why you don’t like a particular house you visit.  Be specific, so that the agent can rethink your needs and wants.  On the flipside, if there is something about a house you absolutely love, speak up. There’s no reason to be embarrassed about changing your mind.  After seeing several homes, many people realize that they were completely wrong about what they wanted.  Change is good.  You are going to have to live in your house.  You’re going to have to write the checks.  Tell your agent. Never lie or speak buyerese.  If you can’t stand a particular home, tell your agent (even if she is the one listing it). Don’t be afraid to find the house you want.  When you find it, buy it—even if it’s the first house you see.  Now, this advice may fly in the face of what first-time buyers are frequently told:  don’t buy the first house you see.  But if you truly love the first house you see, and it’s priced right for you, then go for it.  If you’re more cautious, go ahead and look at more houses after that, but be aware that the first one—especially if it’s a great buy—may vanish quicker than you can say, “Let’s drive back there and look at it one more time”.  I’ve worked with many a client who loved the first house she saw; all the properties she saw afterward paled in comparison.  In some cases, that first house is still waiting for the buyer after she feels she’s seen enough listings.  But often it’s gone, and the disappointed buyer can’t shake the feeling that she’s settling for whatever she winds up with (even if it’s a fantastic house).  Nothing is ever as good as the one that got away. Chapter Six continued > >

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Published by Fireside Books, Simon & Schuster, New York NY
Copyright (C) 2005, 2006 by Richard Courtney