How to Control the Emotions of Home Buying

Buying a home is almost always an emotion-based process. Once you find a home you like, you become emotionally attached to it. Emotional attachment can cause you to make unwise decisions when making an offer, handling negotiations, and so forth. Once you’ve fallen in love with a house and visualized it being your home, you’ll start to do WHATEVER it takes to make sure it becomes your home.

This is about the worst possible way to buy a home, but also may be the best possible home for you.  You do want to fall in love with your new home, but you also want to be careful.

You can literally cost yourself thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands of dollars, by being too emotionally attached. Instead of letting emotions rule the game, try to include some common sense in the buying process. Real estate investors have a saying that goes, “Don’t fall in love with the house, fall in love with the deal.” This is easier for an investor as he won’t live there, but you should be aware of this, and use your head.

Having said that, I realize that you will always have some emotional attachment to your house. You need to like it. Your goal is to strike a balance between liking the house and using common sense to tell you whether you are sacrificing too much to try to get the house. If you find you have to make lots and lots of compromises to get a house, stop yourself and ask, “Is this really worth it?”

Remember to strike a balance between emotions and common sense in your home buying process. It will help you enjoy your home that much more once you actually move in.

The Top 3 Ways to find Lease Option Tenants and Buyers in Soft Markets

As you know, I’ve been doing Lease Options for many years now. I’ve seen down markets, up markets and everything in between. Having survived all kinds of markets I can tell you I LOVE doing Lease Options in down markets.  Why is that?  Because there are SO MANY deals just waiting for me. In a down market the motivated sellers are plentiful.  The common misconception when the media is screaming about how bad the market is, is that there are no buyers out there. That is true. There are fewer buyers in a soft market. Does that mean it’s impossible to find them? Not at all.

Let’s take a look at some ways to find Lease Option tenants and buyers in soft markets:

1)         First, is the asking price.  If your asking price, either the sale asking price or monthly rent asking price, is too high for your Lease Option, you’ll scare away most buyers.  Yes, it’s common that on a Lease Option the rent and purchase price are marked up due to the flexibility you are offering the buyer.  However, if the market is soft you’ll find these marked up margins shrink.  This especially applies to the monthly rent.  If you are asking too much for rent you will have a VERY hard time finding tenants.  If you want to place a quality tenant quickly make sure the rent is competitive, maybe even slightly less than the competition

2)         Second, think long term.  If you have structured a longer term Lease Option deal with the seller, like 3 to 5 years, consider just renting the house initially.  Rent the house out for the first couple of years before you try to place a Lease Option buyer.  This will give you time to weather the soft market and start moving towards rebound.  If you get stuck with the mindset of only looking for Lease Option buyers you’ll be following the herd, trying to sell in a down market.  Just rent the house in the down market and try to sell it when the market picks back up.

3)         Third, cover your cash flow.  If you put together a great Lease Option deal and have it start right away, who covers the monthly rent until you find a tenant?  News flash:

You Do!

What just happened?  You became a motivated seller!  You are much more likely to make a bad decision in Lease Optioning that house than if you didn’t have to pay the monthly payment.  You are also reducing your profit margin for every month the house sits vacant.  Instead, structure the deal to give yourself some time (a few months at least) to find the buyer or tenant.  You could even have the Lease Option begin only once you have found a tenant.  Be fair to the owner and let them continue to try to sell their home on their own during this time.

Taking all of this into account I think you’ll see why I LOVE to find Lease Options tenants and buyers in soft markets. If you put together the Lease Option deals when the market is soft you’ll find it easy to get the kinds of deals you really want.  Then if you structure the deal with strong terms and use the selling techniques I talk about, you’ll be selling when the market has improved and find it a whole lot easier to move your properties and make handsome profits.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the comment section.  I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.  Also, Share this with others by clicking the retweet button above. Thanks!