The Silicon Valley real estate market is so overheated in many segments (some areas, some pricepoints) that there’s a lot of exhaustion to be found among consumers, Realtors and others involved (inspectors, title company employees, etc.).  Why is that?

• Home buyers in the San Jose area are finding that most of the time, they have to write a few offers before one can get accepted. The rejection is both disappointing and exhausting, and every successive attempt is stressful since most buyers understand that with multiple offer situations, the odds are against them.
• Home sellers in Santa Clara County are finding it a challenge to work like crazy to make their property as close to ideal as possible, only to find that multiple offers either aren’t ideal (or still seem scary, if they are ideal) or perhaps they don’t come at all. Even in a hot market, not every home sells!  Some home owners work so hard at fixing up their house or condo to sell that they somewhat fall in love with it all over again…and that makes it hard to sell. Their pre-sale exhaustion also can make them prone to feeling overwhelmed.
• Real estate agents or licensees are exhausted because there is so much URGENCY that it’s hard to get any down time (let alone a day off). Most real estate licensees  I know are really burned out – or very close to it – due to working 24/7 for the last 2+ months.  (Buyers are very time consuming and may require many many attempts before being successful in getting into contract. Sellers may have worries and find themselves needing a lot of reassurance – even when it’s not really urgent at all.)

Together with the extra stress of the market which changed so fast are a LOT of emotions (as well as mistakes that might not be made if everyone were calmer and better rested).  Buyers grieve when they lose the house.  Sellers worry that they sold too fast, too low, too easily.  Buyers, when successful, worry that they have overpaid (“buyers remorse“).  Agents are burning the candle at both ends and can find themselves a little frazzled too.  Sometimes when our clients have a bad day, they can make it contagious by yelling at us or otherwise being overly difficult because they are stressed. Even agents dealing with other agents can be a headache if the other one is upset, burned out, sloppy or emotional.

Time out!  What most everyone needs (myself included) is a breather.  Everyone needs a little time, a little down time, to feel a bit more human.  Take a day off. Decide not to answer the phone or email before or after set hours.  As for me, I’m going to work on that.  I hate to see email accumulate in my inbox, I feel like I have to address it right away (as if it were a text message about a house burning down).  But being in reactive mode, no matter who we are, is not so good in the long run. When the going gets tough, it’s more important than ever to get enough sleep, exercise (esp time away from the computer) and diversions.  Too much intensity can make for more friction, and in the long run, that is bad for the transaction, bad for our relatinships and even bad for our own personal health.

So in this overheated, stressful market – let’s all try to step back enough so that we can clear our heads a little and keep a semblance of balance. It will make for better real estate transactions in the long run, no matter whether we are buying, selling, or assisting clients as realty professionals in the South Bay.

More reading:

Qualify The Advice You’ll Accept When Buying or Selling a Home in Silicon Valley

Impulsivity and caution in home buying

Today I showed a newer home in San Jose’s Cambrian Park area to some great first time home buyer clients of mine.  The house has a nice location and fine floor plan.  Some elements of the home were really appealing. But unfortunately, the sellers hadn’t made their home “show ready“.  They cut corners.

As we walked through the property, my clients and I noted places where there was neglect.  The items were generally not big, but unfortunately there were many of them.  Had the owners brought in a painter to do minor cosmetic changes (patch and paint), the home could have looked “like new”.  Instead, it was as if the home were full of red flags. Talk about making a bad impression!

My buyers asked me what I thought, if what we saw would scare me off.  No, I told them, they all seemed relatively minor to me,  but I did understand their concern.  One of them explained that “if we see things like this, we believe that the sellers have not taken good care of their home; what else is wrong that we cannot yet see?”

Confident buyers write offers and tend to write good offers.  Nervous buyers who are concerned that there are hidden defects (and therefore hidden costs) either don’t write contracts at all or they write lower offers.
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Buying and selling homes is stressful no matter who you are or what the occasion may be.  It is even more difficult for those for whom English is not their native language and for whom the US is not their native land.

First there’s a language challenge (depending on English fluency).  Even more, there’s a cultural challenge in terms of how homes are bought and sold. Add the normal stress to the cross-cultural confusion and there’s a recipe for misunderstanding, bafflement, surprises and upset.  One of the biggest areas for clashes is how negotiations are carried out.

I have had the pleasure of traveling to many places around the globe and to live in Italy for the better part of a year while in college (in Florence, and yes, I loved it).  I remember very vividly some of my own cultural frustrations and although I was fairly fluent, missing a whole lot of social cues. I had to work to learn to negotiate for simple things like fruit and sweaters in the open air markets.  And I was just 20, not trying to purchase anything as significant as a house or condo.

My clients today come from all over. Typically, at any given time, more than half of my clients are foreign* (and I love working with them and hearing about their experiences, customs and traditions).  Every once in awhile,  we discover that buying and selling expectations are vastly different from Silicon Valley to wherever they came from. Here are a few:

1. Expecting to negotiate at every turn, starting from the time the seller accepts the buyer’s offer and continuing until close of escrow (not done here: you negotiate at most two times – first when writing and countering offers and second prior to removing contingencies, if something new is learned during the course of the inspections.  If you negotiate at every opportunity, you will have everyone angry at you!)
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