You’re buying a home, not dating it, so it’s important that logic rather than emotion influences your decision.
Annamarie doesn’t understand it, she recently bought a new home and although she ‘absolutely adored the place’ when she viewed it, it only took a few weeks for love to turn to hate.
“I wasn’t classified as a serious buyer by the agent’s I worked with, mainly because I made it very clear that I wasn’t in a rush and would only buy something if it spoke to me in the right tones. I must have visited 20 homes and spent a couple of weekends visiting the odd show house and nothing piqued my interest. I wasn’t particularly bothered by any of this, like I said, I wasn’t in a rush to buy and found the whole house hunting process very interesting. I like to think of myself as an extremely sensible person, someone who weighs up all the aspects of any situation before diving in, so I never considered the fact that I might let my heart rule my head, but that’s exactly what happened.
“I love bay windows and cottage pane window frames and got very excited when I realised the home I was viewing had both. If I’m honest with myself, I’d basically made up my mind that I had to have this house before I walked through the door, but it was the furnishings that really clinched the deal. I just knew that this was the one, which given the fact that the home wasn’t being sold fully furnished was probably my first, but not my only, mistake. I signed an offer an hour later and was literally walking on air when I heard the owner had accepted.
“Things started to go awry on the day I moved in. Opening the door and seeing the empty shell of the home was a real eye opener. The kitchen was smaller than I remembered and the bathrooms were minute, but that wasn’t my biggest concern, what worried me the most was that I simply didn’t like the house. I initially put things down to stress and sheer exhaustion, but two weeks later, I finally came to the realisation that I’d made a mammoth mistake.”
We all experience buyer’s remorse at some point in our lives, but buying a house isn’t the same as buying a pair of shoes…you can’t return the item and ask for your money back.
A struggle between the heart and head is common among homebuyers. The challenge is to find something that’s the perfect balance between what’s a passing fad and an enduring feature. Don’t get us wrong, emotion is and always will play some role in the home-buying process, but a buying decision shouldn’t be made on emotion alone, any more than it should solely be based on logic.
Indeed, balance is key when buying a home. Choosing a home using a combination of both emotion and logic generally ends well. According to experts, the pros of emotional buying include:
- Creating memories. This is a biggie. Most of us harbour good memories about our childhood home and it’s understandable that we want to recreate the same for our own families. Emotion allows us to picture ourselves living in the home and sharing special moments with family and friends. For this reason, it’s important to find something that feels right mainly because those who are happy in a home will usually live in it for a longer period.
- Practicality. While it’s strange to think that emotional buyers can exercise logic, there are aspects of an emotional buyer that are extremely practical. Emotional buyers tend to imagine themselves living in the home and are therefore practical when it comes to the layout and overall design of the property. Interestingly, too much logic can undermine this factor because too much attention is given to the minor details of the home, which could undermine the positives of the home.
The cons of being an emotional buyer include:
Impulsive buys. The biggest downside to being an emotional buyer is the tendency to make impulsive decisions. Hearing things like there are multiple offers pending or just the fact that there is a great deal of interest in the property will often cause panic and push an emotional buyer into making a decision. In these instances, there’s a real danger that a buyer who only works with emotion will make a higher offer before they have logically ascertained that the home is actually what they want or need.
Sweating the small stuff. Overlooking a home simply because you don’t like the colour it’s painted or the style of the kitchen cabinets is generally going to mean that you are going to be house hunting for a very long time. Very few, if any, properties are going to be the perfect match. Learn to overlook the things you can change and focus on things you won’t be able to rectify without spending a large sum of money.
Remember, there’s a big difference between emotions and instinct. Going with your instincts means that the property ‘feels’ right, is well priced and overall is exactly what you and your family need. Basing a buying decision purely on emotion means that you’re probably more taken with how the house looks and in Annemarie’s case, the windows and furnishings than you are about the practicalities of the home, which could backfire.
As with all things property, a rational, cool approach is going to win the day so put your emotions on the back burner and allow the logical side of your brain to take over most of the thinking.
