Don’t Wait to Buy Real Estate. Buy Real Estate and Wait. — Will Rogers

I came across this quote the other day and found it quite inspirational. Most of us “average joes” are by nature procrastinators, which means we want to play safe, and we want to stand put and observe. It is the human nature of “risk aversion.” But what we may not know is, by doing that we are losing out on the opportunity cost, meaning how we miss out on opportunities that were being presented to us. Often times people do not take that into consideration.

Why Wait

When analyzing the first sentence, “Don’t Wait to Buy Real Estate,” you ought to ask why do people want to wait to begin with? It is true that real estate is not at the same scale as a piece of candy, so deciding to buy real estate is not a simple call. It is completely reasonable and rational to be cautious before signing on the contract, but at the same time we cannot use that as the excuse to keep waiting. At some point, after all the due diligence has been completed, we need to make the decision – and we cannot always pick the “no go” side, because that could mean we are too “gun shy” to do anything in life.

Buy and Wait

When analyzing the second sentence, “Buy Real Estate and Wait,” I came to realize that: If waiting is unavoidable, what we can do is to put a different spin at it. Instead of keep waiting and never execute, we can choose to execute first, and then we will have all the time in the world to wait.

Waiting is not about the motion of waiting, but in the real estate world, waiting means giving it time to do its magic. Real estate appreciates in value over time, and by simply “waiting” you are “nurturing” your investment, giving it time to grow to its future value.

What’s Next

Next time when you come across a real estate opportunity, you need to ask yourself, “Do I want to wait for the next opportunity, or do I want to execute on this opportunity and then wait?”