Anna-Marie - "The Right Move!"

To Buy Or Not To Buy

To Buy or Not to Buy, That is the Question!

Almost everyone has had the experience of adding up fictitious losses suffered by not acting on a potential investment when the opportunity presented itself. How many times have you heard, "If only I had bought that property last year." Or "It was only $36,000 in 1987. I just can't justify paying $195,000 in 1997." Now let's look ahead to the year 2007; you can bet people will be scratching their heads with the same hindsight: "$400,000 ... Why didn't I buy in 1997 for only $195,000?" Or in 2000 for $300,000."

What you have to remember in real estate is that prices are relative to the economy of the time. True, the sooner you invest, the more profit you will realize, but remember the profit ladder continues to rise and it's never too late to climb on. You can get on the ladder at the first step and there will still be an infinite number of rungs to that ladder above you. What hurts is not getting on at all.

To demonstrate the point to be made, the following poem was published in the Farm and Land Realtor Magazine in the year 1917. It could have been written in 1987, 1997 or 2007. Erase those thoughts that yesterday was the last day that I could have bought and made a profit, as tomorrow may be just as good.

PROCRASTINATE

I hesitate to make a list
Of all the countless deals I've missed;
Bonanzas that were in my grip -
I wanted through my fingers slip:
The windfalls which I should have bought
Were lost because I over thought;
I thought of this, I thought of that,
I could have sworn I smelled a rate,
And while I thought things over twice
Another grabbed them at the price.
It seems I always hesitate,
Then make up my mind much too late.
A very cautious man am I
And that is why I never buy.

How Nassau and how Suffolk grew!
North Jersey! Staten Island, too!
When others culled those sprawling farms
And welcomed deals with open arms -

A corner here, ten acres there,
Compounding values year by year,
I chose to think and as I thought,
They bought the deals I should have bought.

The golden chances I had then
Are lost and will not come again.
Today I cannot be enticed
For everything's so overpriced.
The deals of yesterday are dead:
The market's soft - and so's my head,
Last night I had a fearful dream
I know I wakened with a scream;
Some Indians approached my bed -
For trinkets on the barrel head
(In dollar bills worth twenty-four)
They'd sell Manhattan isle to me,
The most I'd go was twenty-three,
The redmen scowled: "Not on a bet!"
And sold to Peter Minuit.

At times a teardrop drowns my eye
For deals I had and did not buy;
And now life's saddest words I pen -
"If only I'd invested then !"

FARM AND LAND REALTOR MAGAZINE
OCTOBER 1917