It is safe to say, there is no place for hindsight in real estate. Rather, one must trust that life works as it does for a reason—particularly because nobody is able to press the rewind button in order to rearrange past events.
It is natural to reminisce on situations that did not go our way, wishing they had turned out differently. But here are a couple examples where a person wished things were different just after they ended gracefully.
Once I represented a buyer client who had decided upon an offering price for a home. He felt that his offer was fair and expected the seller to counter offer at a higher price. When the seller accepted the offer right away, the buyer was happy … at first. Then he began thinking that he perhaps wrote too high an offer, and thought that he should have offered a lower price. In the end, things worked out just fine. But this is a perfect example where using hindsight became the obstacle to seeing the good in life.
Similar situations occur for sellers. Let’s say a seller invests money and effort into selling her home. She repairs the home completely, services and cleans all of the mechanical units, touches up paint and enhances other cosmetic items, and then lists the home at a competitive price for the local market. Within two days, a full price offer arrives at her doorstep and she puts the house under contract. A week later, after things calm down, the seller becomes fixated on the thought that she should have placed her home on the market at a higher price.
The truth of the matter is that there is no guarantee things would have turned out any better if the buyer would have offered less, or if the seller would have asked for more. The whole chain of events would have likely changed. And in the end, wouldn’t the buyer or seller still use hindsight to review the past, wishing something had ended up differently?
Making wise choices and sticking with them is a principle of healthy living. Within a real estate transaction or any other life situation, second guessing and assessing matters through hindsight are unnecessary blockades to a person’s innate sense of faith and trust in life.
