The good ole days were always that good...

“How easy it is to think that the good old days were only good.” (Herb Chilstrom), from the Jack’s Winning Word blog.


Herb had a good point. We hear a lot about the good ole days in real estate and we tend to think about and mention only the fond memories; however, all was not always good in the old days. Those who have been in the business for longer than the last 8-10 years can tell stories that will make you cringe at the thought of going through what they went through in some of those old days, especially the days of hyper-inflation when mortgage rates were well above 10%.

I’m not sure that I can point back to good ole days, since I‘ve only been doing real estate for 10 years. It seems to me that I’ve been in what has consistently been described as a buyers market for all of that time, although certainly not as bad as it has been for the last few years. I’ve heard stories about the days when there were sellers markets and how frenetic the pace was back then, with bidding wars for almost every house. The Realtors who lived through that era don’t make it sound all that good either.

I suppose the best that one can hope for, in terms of perhaps a rational market, would be a “normal” market, whatever that it. I’ve seen differing definitions of what a “normal” market might look like, usually expressed in terms of inventory levels, days on market levels, mortgage rate levels, a balance between buyers and sellers and other factors. It must be a rather elusive mix because I haven’t seen it in 10 years. Perhaps the balanced market is like Bigfoot, often talked about but seldom, if ever, seen.

I suspect that people describing the “normal market” are actually reminiscing about some time in their personal lives that they remember as happy times and they associate those times with the real estate market. You really can’t turn back the clock, so longing for the good ole days is really a waste of time. Better that you should put that energy into figuring out how to deal with the days that are in front of you – for some, these are the “good ole days” that we’ll all tell our grandchildren about some day.