Housing like it's 1999
I'm taking a vacation week. Enjoy a golden oldie. This ran on Halloween, 1999, under the headline “Loss is part of home buying.” Considering the heat of the housing market right now, its even more relevant.
HERE'S a story of passion and horror for Halloween, involving love, hate, relationships, commitment, rejection and the heartbreak of home buying:
You find your dream home. You're smitten — and you're nigh impossible to please. (Cue happy music, say, Copland's “Rodeo,” because you're ridin' high).
Your heart soars. Your toes barely touch the ground. (Fade to romantic music: Ravel's “Bolero”) .
Then you learn, as you carry out the real estate equivalent of showing up at her front door with flowers and a box of candy (you make an offer), that she just left with some other guy. Someone else has bought your dream house! (Hard cut to scary, suspenseful music, because you're angry, hurt, confused and on your own again: “Night on Bald Mountain,” by Mussorgsky).
The female equivalent would be something like this: You've had a date for weeks to fix him a home-cooked meal — no mean feat since you don't even cook for yourself most nights — and the cur shows up picking his teeth, with fast food on his breath.
(Cue up a sad country song. “Did I Shave My Legs for This?” by Deana Carter will do.)
It happens: People who've worn themselves out looking for the perfect little cottage on Happy As A Clam Circle, or the big mansion on Big Bucks Boulevard, fall in love, and someone beats them to it.
And not everybody in the real estate business is prepared to help people deal with lost love. It's no wonder. Real estate agents, to stretch the simile, are simply matchmakers, after all — and they see it happen all the time.
There's plenty said about “buyer's remorse” — that rock in the pit of your stomach, the cold sweats that come in the wee hours after you've signed your life away for that perfect home, especially a first one. “Buyer's remorse” is even in the index of real estate textbooks and consumer pamphlets.
The other thing — call it “buyer's rejection” — isn't quite a trade secret, but it
isn't talked about much. And with homes selling like they are in the Oklahoma City area right now, that means hearts are being quietly broken all over the metro every day.
For most people, it happens just a few times. For first-timers, as with puppy love lost, when the deal goes sour it makes you feel like a dog.
Crests can fall several ways, not just when someone outbids you for a house, said Victoria Caldwell, an agent (now with RE/MAX Preferred, 9520 N May Ave., Suite 110).
Another buyer can outbid you on your dream house. Or a seller can accept an offer before you can get yours made — and it's especially painful if yours was the better offer.
And there are three other spots in the home-buying process where even the smartest, most confident buyer can be spurned — and left feeling as dejected as the class nerd on prom night:
• The lender sends all your paperwork back with a big fat, impersonal, unemotional “No.”
• The inspector discovers the place is haunted (it is Halloween).
• There is no clear title.
That last possibility, which can stem from an unmentioned death or divorce or unexpected tax lien, is usually the least thought about, Caldwell said, so can hurt the worst.
Most people trying to buy a house know these possibilities exist, Caldwell said. It's just that they get so focused on their own situation and their own needs and desires that they forget there are others out there looking just as hard — and falling in love with the same places.
The best attitude? Que sera, sera. Live and let live. Let go and let ... the real estate agent show you another house, if you lose out once or twice.
Caldwell said good agents keep buyers' emotions in mind and remind them that a deal's not a deal until the deal is done.