Updated February 15th, 2024
How did you choose your house? You may say, well we needed to be a certain school district, or close a job, near family, far from family or in this market, it was the only one available…. We all have logical reasons to why we chose the house we chose, but in many ways, our home chooses us. The longer I’m in real estate the more I’m fascinated by the Art & Science (or in this case Emotion & Logic) of how buyers decide. Ask any agent that’s been around a few years, and they will tell you stories of buyers that thought Every house was overpriced until they found the one that felt like home to them. Then, they didn’t want to lose it. You may say, well it was probably the nicest house, made the most sense. Not always. As with most things, people are willing to overlook deficiencies for something they really like (even love?).
When I was taking my broker’s course an instructor said “buyers buy on emotion and justify it with logic.” For example, if they walk into a house that feels like home, they will then tell
themselves, it makes sense to buy this house, because it’s close to the school, long-term the
money is worth it because we won’t be renting and we’ll spend more time here, it’s the right
number of bedrooms, etc. And all of a sudden that “required” second bath could “easily be
added later.”
Are those all logical reasons to buy a house, yes of course! And they could have also been
applied to the previous 10 houses they looked at. But those other houses just didn’t feel right. They didn’t have the “it” factor of Home.
Trust Your Instinct
And I am not saying they are making unwise decisions. Quite the opposite. Emotion and how you feel in a place matters. I could argue that it matters the most. We say the one thing you can’t change about a house is the location, but that maybe the second thing you can’t change. How you feel in a place that is meant to be your sanctuary from the world is incredibly important. You can’t change it, either it feels right or it doesn’t.
No house is a perfect fit. Well, actually, the perfect fit is the one that feels like home.
Perfect is Ever Changing
Ask anyone who has had the opportunity to build their house just as they want it. I speak from experience when I say, there will always be things that you question even when you choose all of it. If the kitchen wasn’t so big, we could fit more people in the living room, if it wasn’t quite such an open concept I’d have more wall space for pictures…. But ultimately, my house will never be perfect in every season, because our needs change through different phases of life (as kids grow and become teenagers and then college students) or in a pandemic when we are working from home more. But the thing that doesn’t change is my house still feels like home. It’s my sanctuary from life and I hope yours is too.
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