My Real Estate Blog

Panic reactions and short-term thinking can be expensive in times of change. By over-reacting to declining property values, rising costs or slower selling times in the short term, some owners can make decisions that increase losses in the long term—the double dip. It’s like selling otherwise-solid stocks when the stock market experiences a downward correction, and, thereby, compounding losses.

Regardless of national forecasts, it’s what happens locally that matters to you and your real estate. It’s at street level, that the value of one property is established over its neighbours. The local economic impact on income and cost of living are felt directly in your pocket.

Today everything is electronically-interrelated in ways that are just becoming evident, like the domino-effect of the economic meltdown. However, your reaction to these times, and those of local governments and citizens, make the real difference to you and your situation. Your words, actions and inaction dictate whether you’ll give up and be conquered, or rise up and conquer.

Waiting for things to go back to the way they were, and other "caught in the headlights" reactions, waste time and use up valuable resources. These "victim" strategies can make financial matters worse, as you lose more ground than you can gain back in good times. Are you prepared for the possibility that when prosperity returns—and it will—it may not look anything like the "more is more" pre-recession world?

What’s happening in your neighbourhood usually has more direct impact on your bottom line than what pundits predict on global scales. How you make the personal decisions that change the path of your life can make a greater contribution to security and financial well-being than whether you save by skipping lattes or go "green."

For instance, one of the most common reactions to financial stress is the flight to cheaper locations. Like all good ideas, this once can have negative repercussions if all aspects of relevant change are not considered. That’s the potential for double-dip.

Real estate is the investment you can live in. This double opportunity can be used to weather economic storms and achieve financial goals if you don’t let short-term thinking overshadow long-term gain. Look beyond immediate solutions, and consider possible long-range positive and negative effects of today’s choices to avoid the double dip.

"Act in haste, repent in leisure" is not an effective real estate strategy.