Something Similar To Dot-Coms

“Buy it. Sell it. Repeat it. Get rich.” This was AOL’s personal finance pitch, posted on its opening page last Sunday, alternating with pictures of Easter bunnies and news about the Terri Schiavo case. The expanded story promised to tell readers “how buying and quickly selling is proving profitable.” Any good contrarian would take this advice to mean: Stay away from real estate.Indeed, Robert J. Shiller, the Yale economist who correctly called the dot-com debacle, has added a chapter that bursts the housing bubble in a new addition of his 2000 best seller “Irrational Exuberance” (Princeton University Press). “We’re going through something very similar in real estate to what we did with stock,” Mr. Schiller predicted recently.Last week, interest rates on a 30-year fixed mortgage edged over 6% for the first time since July. The Federal Reserve warned that inflation was stirring in the wings. But so far, home buyers are ignoring these trends. New home sales jumped 9.4% in February while existing home sales slipped but remained higher than those the previous year.Should we be taking Mr. Shiller to heart – and sell our homes? Take the money and rent? Certainly, any investor who held on to WorldCom, Global Crossing, or any of the myriad of now no-name telecom stocks is going to be especially sensitive to the Yale Cassandra’s dour outlook for real estate.But a home is not just a house. It may become worth more on paper, just like a stock. But selling a home is a lot more complicated than putting in the sell order, even for the most rational market mavens.“Studies show that in terms of stressful life events, moving comes in as second, after the loss of a loved one,” explains a New York psychiatrist and author, Anna Fels. “People are usually intensely connected to their homes – they reflect who they are and their life. It’s a place where they feel safe,” she adds.Few home sales are the result of reasoned financial calculations. Most sales are prompted by a life event such as divorce, death, job relocation, or a decision to upsize or downsize depending on whether there is a growing brood or an empty nest. In these cases, selling the family home is especially unsettling.But Americans are a notoriously mobile lot, from the push for manifest destiny to those seeking to bask in the sunbelt. Even so, we tend to slow down as we get older. Almost one-third of those between 20 and 29 years of age moved from 1998 to 1999 (the last year reported by the Census Bureau), while less than 10% of those aged 45 to 54 relocated during the same period.Sometimes, however, the siren song of pure profit can prove irresistible. Consider the case of one client cited by a vice president in the real estate brokerage firm Corcoran Group Brooklyn, Ellen Newman. This client had made the decision to sell her home for what seemed, at the time, a great price. She was thrilled with her financial acumen. The contract was signed in the early fall, but the seller wanted to wait until the warmer weather to move.By the time spring had sprung, the market had really taken off. Meantime, the client, with plenty of time to brood, calculated the sweat equity, not to mention memories, invested in the house. She developed a serious case of seller’s remorse.The day of the closing, the buyers were late. The seller got so uptight waiting that once she signed the documents to sell her house, she fled the meeting in a rage without taking the check.“I ran out after her and blocked the elevator, but she took off down 26 stairs and got in a cab,” remembers Ms. Newman. The nimble real-estate lawyer grabbed the paperwork and took another elevator and was able to jump into the cab before the seller took off. The closing was completed on the way to the bank.The moral of this story is that, in this housing market, think before you sell. Think twice before you buy.Ms. Bailey is a family therapist and writer in New York City. She can be reached at ebailey@nysun.com.

Something Similar To Dot-Coms

Something Similar To Dot-Coms

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