We all tend to rely so heavily, especially in the Bay Area, on data in real estate: prices, inventory, price per square foot, percentage over list, days on market.
Et cetera.
I spend my days going from transaction to transaction and client to client. Each transaction is a delicate dance not only between seller and buyer, but also between buyer’s agent, seller’s agent and even lender. My relationship with each these stakeholders is unique and heavily nuanced.
A big part of my job is teasing out what each stakeholder really wants, the relationships between each of them, and then negotiating hard to get my clients what they want while still leaving the other side feeling like they’ve won.
I also spend a significant amount of time sleuthing out properties that my buyers may not have noticed – either they’re off market or they were overlooked for some other reason…
And finally, I am the Queen of delicately guiding sellers to a compromise between what they’re willing to do to prep a home for market and what I see as the best path to the highest price. This is a far more complicated process than you would think.
The answer is rarely just to do what I think is best and usually a compromise that fits into the seller’s priorities, resources, and lifestyle.
During this entire journey, I, my clients, and the other side invariably rely heavily on data available to support our positions. As we should.
But – and there’s a big but here – emotionalism plays a much bigger part in the trajectory of a transaction than anyone wants to admit. (This is why staging is so effective: it plays subtly on buyer psychology. By de-personalizing a space, we allow buyers to envision themselves in someone else’s home.)
The bottom line? As a buyer or a seller, leave space for the fact that your reactions and positions may be more biased by emotionalism than you understand – your subconscious feelings about home and hearth; feelings about your past experiences with real estate and realtors, maybe in another state and another time; and your attitudes about wealth and money in general.
