This is interesting. Makes you stop and think!!
Have you ever been guilty of looking at others your own age and thinking, surely I Can't look that old?
Here is a little story about that:
My name is Alice Smith and I was sitting in the waiting room for my first appointment with a new Dentist. I noticed his DDS diploma, which bore his full name. Suddenly, I remembered a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy with the same name in my High School class some 30 years ago. Could he be the same guy that I had a secret crush on, way back then?
Upon seeing him, however, I quickly discarded any such thought. This balding, gray- haired man with the deeply lined face was way too old to have been my classmate.
After he examined my teeth, I asked him if he had attended Morgan Park High School. "Yes, I did. I'm a Mustang," he gleamed with pride. "When did you graduate?" I asked. He answered 1960. "Why do you ask?" "You were in my class!" I exclaimed.
He looked at me closely.
Then that ugly, bald, wrinkled, fat, decrepit old man asked,
"What did you teach?"'
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
What we've Learned from the Housing Bubble Bust
The pop heard ’round the world when the housing bubble burst brought a lot of bad news — from plummeting home prices to mounting foreclosures.
Depressed home prices and low interest rates may have you wondering if the real-estate market has reached its bottom. Even if the worst is behind us, it makes sense to take in the lessons of the past few years so we can avoid making the same mistakes again.
Lesson No. 1:
Adjust your expectations. Years ago, people purchased a home, lived in it all or most of their lives, passed it down to their children and enjoyed a gradual increase in wealth as the home gained value. But in the last decade, people bought a house expecting it to increase in value about 5 or 10 percent in a couple of years, and they’d move on to something bigger.
If the housing-bubble nightmare has shown us anything, it’s that you can’t count on a home to be worth more than you paid for it when you’re ready to sell. It’s back to basics. You have to be in it for the long haul and you can’t be looking at your home value every month to see how much it’s gone up.
Lesson No. 2:
You can’t time the market. When home prices were skyrocketing, many people bought homes they could barely afford — or couldn’t afford — thinking they’d ride the wave of rising equity since the market was on the upswing. Likewise, today, many potential homebuyers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the market to reach its ultimate low.
You will never sell at the all-time high and you’ll never buy at the all-time low by planning it. The market will time you. You will sell, and on occasion you may happen to hit the all-time high or happen to hit the all-time low, but to study it and plan it and figure out and actually do it — it doesn’t happen.
Instead, take a long-term approach to real estate and look for a home that enhances your life and will increase in value over time.
Depressed home prices and low interest rates may have you wondering if the real-estate market has reached its bottom. Even if the worst is behind us, it makes sense to take in the lessons of the past few years so we can avoid making the same mistakes again.
Lesson No. 1:
Adjust your expectations. Years ago, people purchased a home, lived in it all or most of their lives, passed it down to their children and enjoyed a gradual increase in wealth as the home gained value. But in the last decade, people bought a house expecting it to increase in value about 5 or 10 percent in a couple of years, and they’d move on to something bigger.
If the housing-bubble nightmare has shown us anything, it’s that you can’t count on a home to be worth more than you paid for it when you’re ready to sell. It’s back to basics. You have to be in it for the long haul and you can’t be looking at your home value every month to see how much it’s gone up.
Lesson No. 2:
You can’t time the market. When home prices were skyrocketing, many people bought homes they could barely afford — or couldn’t afford — thinking they’d ride the wave of rising equity since the market was on the upswing. Likewise, today, many potential homebuyers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the market to reach its ultimate low.
You will never sell at the all-time high and you’ll never buy at the all-time low by planning it. The market will time you. You will sell, and on occasion you may happen to hit the all-time high or happen to hit the all-time low, but to study it and plan it and figure out and actually do it — it doesn’t happen.
Instead, take a long-term approach to real estate and look for a home that enhances your life and will increase in value over time.
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