Get over it...

“Sometimes you’ve got to say to someone, ‘Get over it.’”(Anon) from the Jack’s Winning Words blog.

I’ve blogged in the past about Anon, the world’s most prolific author. The words of Anon seem particularly appropriate in today’s real estate market.

I spent the weekend basically telling potential seller’s to get over it as it concerns the lost value of their homes. Sometime you will hit a fairly realistic homeowner – one who has watched what is gong on in the world and does not believe that somehow there was a miracle and his house was spared the ravages of the current market. However, more often I hit the older couples who just can’t come to grips with the fact that between 1/3 and ½ of their nest egg of home equity is now gone. Moreover, many of them are holding on to the false hope that the dust on the horizon is the cavalry riding to their rescue with an immediate return of value, rather than just more Indians joining the battle to pick over the remains of their equity.

I use lots and lots of facts and comps and charts and other data driven stuff to support the “news” that I have to break to them; however, I continue to get the push-back that , “my house is different, it’s better, it certainly hasn’t lost that much value.” It has. Get over it!

Now, obviously, I’m seldom that blunt or insensitive to the pain that my market pricing analysis brings into the discussion about selling and moving on. In fact, I’ve cried with recent divorcees who have to sell and move their children as part of a settlement and prayed with recent widows who found out that their deceased husbands didn’t provide well enough for an untimely death. I’ve had long, empathetic discussions with husbands whose losses of jobs have forced them to the brink of bankruptcy and into feelings of failure and inadequacy. Even in all of those circumstances one eventually comes to the point of having to say; OK, we’ve had our cry; now, get over it and let’s move on.

So, I’m off to present yet another market analysis to yet another underwater pair of sellers who recently retired. I’ve got my hankies ready. We’ll get over it. That’s how real life works.