The Power of Knowing Your Real Estate Mindset

By Pat Kilner

It’s not uncommon to hear people characterize the market of the past three years as “crazy.” 

They point to the price of homes increasing by 25% or even 50% and the bidding wars that they’ve heard about and chalk it up to something strange or even irrational going on. 

But in truth, markets are often far more sane and predictable than the people who make them up. If you are human, you are never too far from making less-than-rational decisions when the stress of buying or selling a home is suddenly injected into your psyche. 

Ticklish Scenarios  

You may be tempted to think that you are not susceptible to such mortal anxieties. I know I thought that about myself – after all, I do this for a living. Surely if anyone wasn’t going to get swept away, it would be me. But let me invite you to contemplate some of the circumstantial curve-balls that everyone – you and me, your family and mine, and even our neighbors – can encounter. 

Newlywed Tension: 

If you listen carefully, you can still hear their wedding bells. He’s the oldest son of an entrepreneur with an MBA and a few investment properties. She’s an artist who grew up with a paintbrush in her hand and pulls eclectic beauty from the most everyday surroundings. They know it would be wise to buy a home, but their motivations around why to buy seem incompatible. As they save their pennies and begin visiting open houses, new tensions are brewing with every conversation.  

Commuter Purgatory: 

Their commutes to work and the kids’ new schools are driving them both nuts. During the pandemic, they loved their 4-year-old home further away from the city. No one was on the road, gas prices were low, and they could be home for dinner in under 25 minutes. But with gas prices teetering around $5.00/gallon, traffic on I-66 back to a standstill, and after-school activities ramped back up, they are wondering if they need to move. She mourns possibly leaving a community of friends who have been there through rough patches. He suddenly wants to retreat to the home office, where he feels more in control.   

Option Roulette:  

There was a time when all they needed to do to connect with friends was to step out their front door. But as families and incomes have grown, their peers moved out to bigger homes in more expensive areas with better school rankings. This year, they both got promotions, and that came with salary increases and bonuses. Is now really the time to buy, or are they just trying to keep up with their peers? He thinks a vacation property that they could cash-flow when not personally using it would work better for their family’s long-term financial goals. She’s thinking that a larger home where they can host friends fits their quality of life goals. A trusted friend says they should just stay put and consider private schools. 

Clearly, tensions don’t just come from justifying decisions with a loved one. Maybe you are wading through the mixed emotions and myriad data points of renting versus selling your first home, how to decide if a vacation rental is something worth taking on, or how much to invest into your home today to make it accommodating to the specific needs of your social life, work, or hobbies. 

As you might imagine, we’ve helped clients navigate the stress of separation, divorce, and job loss and make hard decisions through illness, death, and even natural disasters. The scenarios are as many as there are people. And the tension is very real.  

The Power of Mindset 

Elements like these can make almost any situation involving real estate seem insurmountable and likely to lead to further heartache. But the mindset you have when it comes to buying, selling, or investing in real estate is very much within your control. In most real estate deals, our mindsets often play a larger role than the factors we can’t remedy or influence. 

The trouble is that we are poor at recognizing how to leverage our mindsets to impact our approach and outcomes positively. The right approach shows us how to use the strength of our mindsets as well as how to identify the blind spots that our mindsets can cause.  

Sizing You Up 

If you came of age any time in the last 50 years, you likely know your Meyers-Briggs personality type. But do you know your real estate mindset? The situations laid out above can cause individuals and families to squander savings, strain relationships, and miss out on wealth-building opportunities.  

We’ve found that self-awareness around your own motivations is key to making superb real estate and life decisions. But despite the seemingly pervasive influence of personality tests, there’s never been a way to gain this self-awareness when it comes to real estate – and put it to work. We decided to change that and set out on a two-year journey to discover what really motivates our decisions when it comes to real estate. To our mind, there’s simply too much on the line to leave this to chance.  

We identified six major mindsets that, to varying degrees, we each utilize when it comes to making important decisions about the home we live in. Each mindset has clear strengths as well as weaknesses and even blind spots when it comes to decisions that will impact the single largest financial decision most of us will ever make.  

Well-Being And Wealth

Discovering which mindsets influence your thinking can offer not only peace of mind but an anchor when disaster strikes. Knowing in advance that you prioritize an investment/wealth mindset or that you’re torn between a commuter/location mindset, and a social/connection outlook might profoundly impact whether you “love it or leave it.”  Grasping the nuances of an aesthetic/environment perspective in your spouse that seems at odds with your natural growth/formation approach can be the difference between buying a home that you have to sell in five years or a home you pass on to your kids someday. Isn’t it time you understood your mindsets – before it’s time to put them to work for you? 

If you are curious about what your top two mindsets are, their positive and negative attributes, and how these play into a larger strategy for success and wealth through real estate, we’ve created the only assessment that helps you do just that. It’s totally free and available at kilnerkirk.com/blueprint.