Real estate is local.

Real estate is local. 

What’s happening to real estate in another part of the country or another part of the world has very little impact on what’s happening locally. 

Even within the same city, house prices rise and fall at different rates in different neighborhoods. 

Rule #8: Statistics lie. Newspapers love to report on statistics. Read between the lines. Make sure the sample size is large enough to have meaning. Make sure the statistic itself has meaning. Statistics rarely tell the whole story. Sales volume may be down. Prices might be up. Last month might be good. Last year might be bad. Comparing this month to last month or this month to this month last year is not useful. If house prices rose by 30% over the previous month, what does this mean? Nothing. Averages are a terrible metric to measure house prices. The type of home that is sold in a given month strongly influences the outcome. For instance, if a lot of luxury homes are sold one month, then the average price of homes will go up, even if the number of homes sold was down. Look to long-term trends.
 

Rule #9: Appliances cost about the same today as they did in the 1950’s. In real terms, that means they cost about a ? of what they did when your parents bought their first home. Appliances typically come with the property. If they are “negotiable” the buyer thinks they are in and the seller thinks they are out. Problems will ensue. Negotiations could break down over appliances valued less than $2,000.
 

Rule #10: Unless your home is in a one-industry town (and the industry shuts down) or unless your home gets hit by a nuclear bomb, the price always goes up. In fact, even if you are in a one-industry town and get hit by a nuclear bomb, the price eventually goes up. In the short run though, home prices can decrease.
 

Rule #11: Maximum exposure for your home is what you are getting when it’s listed on MLS. The MLS (Multiple Listing Service) is the most powerful and comprehensive database of properties for sale. It is the Google of the real estate business.
 

Rule #12: Buyers tell little white lies. We never truly know what buyers are thinking. (They might not know themselves). Buyers only tell us what they think we need to know or what they think we want to hear.
 

Rule #13: Sellers are storytellers. They have selective (faulty) memories with the facts. The windows that were replaces a couple of years ago were really done almost a decade ago. There was never a flood in the basement. That was their other house.
Rule #14: The Brokerage owns the listings, not the Realtor. The Realtor works for the Brokerage and the Brokerage works for you.
 

Rule #15: The houses you see for sale in real estate magazines are often already sold. At least the good ones are. Those magazines are all about marketing the Realtors, not the properties. Real estate is a marketing business. Realtors advertise themselves and their listings. Often when Realtors advertise listings they are really advertising themselves. If Realtors were really trying to sell the listing, wouldn’t they give more complete information?
 

Rule #16: The houses you see advertised on Realtors’ websites and in newspapers and in magazines are not necessarily the Realtors’ listings. Realtors often allow other Realtors to advertise their listings (see Rule #14).
 

Rule #17: The best place to start looking for a home is on the Internet. Most people start here. But you can’t buy a home on the Internet. You can do a lot of research on the Internet but eventually you have to visit the neighbourhood and the house. The Internet is also great for finding information about mortgages, researching real estate lawyers, schools, crime statistics, home inspectors and Realtors.
 

Rule #18: It’s easier to buy than to sell. Buyers have the power. There are a lot of homes to look at. Buyers can buy this one or that one. It’s all good. Sellers have to wait for the right buyer to come along.

Rule #19: The market is fluid. People and houses are always entering and leaving the market. The inventory of available homes is always changing. Be patient. The house you’re going to buy probably isn’t even on the market yet.


Rule #20: You can’t wait until you know everything. You have to trust your intuition. You have to make a decision. When you’re buying or selling a house, you’ll never know if it is the best time, if interests rates will go up, if the economy will get bad, if you’ll live there for five or fifteen years. You’ll never know a lot of things, but you will still have to decide.