Thanks, the real estate busi­ness is good.

“This has been a busy month.”
Skep­ti­cal looks are what I get when I answer the ques­tion: How’s the real estate business?

How could that be?

The first answer is: life goes on.
Babies are born and fam­i­lies get big­ger, cou­ples get mar­ried and some get divorced, peo­ple lose jobs and find jobs, they get demoted, pro­moted and trans­ferred, some peo­ple lose their invest­ment and oth­ers gain by inheritance.

Two years ago, when busi­ness was still boom­ing, when credit was easy, when homes were sold and bought in a mat­ter of days, when mul­ti­ple offers were the rule I didn’t do as well. Now noth­ing is easy.

And that’s the sec­ond answer: now it takes an expert who makes his or her liv­ing in the busi­ness of real estate, some­body whose exper­tise is in demand and who will work hard.

So this was the month when I had lit­tle time to post a blog because I was busy with my clients — and enjoy­ing every minute of it. I was delighted to help a young cou­ple – let’s call them Jacob and Jane -  to find their first home. We had been look­ing off and on since spring and we were in no hurry. Tak­ing their time enabled Jacob and Jane to decide against an area they had first con­sid­ered desir­able. Tak­ing their time made them more aware of what was really impor­tant in a first home and neigh­bor­hood. Mak­ing an offer that was rejected was part of the learn­ing experience.

Through­out, stay­ing com­fort­ably within their means remained impor­tant to Jacob and Jane. Even­tu­ally we did find the right home in the right neigh­bor­hood at the right price. We are clos­ing today, a day after the Dow Jones aver­age dropped 777 points. Life goes on.

Change: the only constant

The Greek philoso­pher Her­a­cli­tus pro­claimed “panta rei” which means lit­er­ally “every­thing flows.” An expanded ver­sion trans­lates into “Noth­ing endures but change.”

Today, the Dow Jones aver­age was up 485 points and tomor­row a fam­ily of six will get the keys to a house that may be home until all four or more chil­dren have left for col­lege. Four years ago, with only one child in tow, the Jenk­ins moved to Seat­tle from the Mid­west for a new job. We found a nice brick Tudor that reminded them of Chicago. They did not buy it with the idea “to cash in” later but with the desire to make it THEIR home.

The Jenk­ins fam­ily grew to six and even raised chick­ens in the back­yard. They improved the home sen­si­bly — for greater util­ity and their own com­fort. Reap­ing the reward for it at the even­tual sale of the home was con­sid­ered a wel­come out­come but not the pri­mary motivation.

The new home, built in 1942, is much larger, has “good bones” but is in need of improve­ments. It was listed as being eclec­tic. We agreed, but given the deferred main­te­nance we dubbed it “The Neglec­tic.” In good time it will be a won­der­ful home.

So, busi­ness is good. Thanks to the peo­ple who have trusted me to help them with the inevitable: Change.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Buyers Corner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.