Many years ago, I went away on what in College Sports they call a "trip". Meaning the school flys you in and puts you up to check out the school and hopefully sign a letter of intent to attend the University.
I tripped to a School in Northen California and met up with one of the players named Terry. Turned out Terry was a High School foe who I played against. . On his desk, in his dorm room was a book that changed my life. It was called Clam Plate Orgy. It started me on a journey of studying other than conscious communication.
It was a study on the subliminal use of symbols that are used in corporate advertising, Government and Religion to influence our behaviors.
I only mention this because I am noticing something going on in local news that is important for your success. Now, to be fair, you and I benefitted from this manipulation. However now it seems the negative underbelly of the market is what sells papers.
The market is clearly shifting. What I would call normalizing, many are labeling with Armegedon like names.Headlines say things like Forclosures are up x%. What does that mean? They are x% compared to what? Over yesterday, last week, last month, last year, last decade?
Case in point is the following headline I got in one of my email subscriptions:
Existing-Home Sales Hit 2 1/2 Year Low
Goodness gracious. In the context of all the other bad news, this must be pretty bad. Do you feel the Fear and Doom?
Except, 2 1/2 years ago the market was cranking wasn't it?
My point is that we have heard that this real estate market was going to come to a dreadful crash. And if we want to read into this headline it really ain't so bad. I know that was not their intent. But I will choose to be positive.
The fact is that the market is normalizing.
My old friend has been telling me for a year that this market is going to hell. He just had the best month ever in his 20 year career.
Bad news is like a drug. It takes on a life of its own. I only mention this to say be careful as to what you accept into your mind as fact. It ruined my real estate career while I saw many of my colleagues grow to begin new companies that flourish to this day.
So even though I could make it a valid argument that the early 90's was a REALLY bad market. There is a long list of success stories that I personally know, and know of, that invalidate my statement.
And the secret of their success was to not listen to silly stories and headlines. They were too busy finding new buyers and sellers.
I know your buyers and sellers think they are modern day econiomists. The sellers because they have all this new found equity think they are the next Greenspan, while the buyers are hoilding off because they delude themselves that the market will drop.
Somehow they harken back to 1990 when prices did tank. However, the part they are missing is that in most parts of the country unemployment was approaching catastrophic numbers.
In contrast, unemployment today is lower than ever before in our history.
Will you let them buy into that crap? Then they will lose out. And it will be your fault. Because you bought into the Clam Plate Orgy.
