Emotions Home Buyers & Sellers Experience & What to Do

Hey, it’s Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates. And today we are going to discuss the emotions that home buyers and sellers experience.

As some of you know, I am currently buying a house and also going to be selling my house, and I just forgot you do. I forgot the emotions that are attached to buying a house and also to selling a house. And as a professional, my job is to be neutral, to be even keel, to be the professional, right? But my clients are experiencing a lot of different emotions as buyers, and they’re experiencing some very similar emotions and also some different ones as sellers. And what I’ve experienced here these past few weeks has really been like a big shot of empathy and empathy shop for me to really see and experience, again, taste, and see what it is that people feel as they’re making a move. And for me, I have four kids. I’ve made memories in my house, and we’re excited about a move, but also sad.

And I think in this video, I wanna share some of those emotions. First of all, just to say it’s okay, right? These are legitimate emotions and there’s no problem feeling emotions as you go through the home-buying process and the selling process. And there are a few that I have some thoughts about where maybe things that might help, may maybe mitigate the negative side of those emotions, or to cope with those emotions as well. So let’s talk about buying first. So one of the things that I’ve experienced here is excitement. We’re excited about the home purchase. We’re thinking about, you know, all the new furniture we’re going to get and where the kids’ rooms are gonna be. And we’ve got a swimming pool at the new house. So we’re excited, right? We’re, we’re starting to see ourselves living in the house. And I think we’re also anticipating that, right?

That’s a second emotion. There’s an anticipation like, are we there yet? Are we there yet? All the kids keep asking are, when are we gonna get to move into the house? We’re like, it’s this weekend. It’s okay, it’s coming up, but there’s this excitement that’s building up. We’ve wanted to go see the house, right? Walk through it a couple different times. Um, and I forgot how exciting it is just to walk through your house that you’re purchasing now. At the same time though, the process of looking can wear on you. It can wear on you. It doesn’t always happen super fast. And in our case, we’ve been thinking about and looking at different houses for multiple years. It’s taken us a while to make a move. And I think if you’re buying your first house, some of those feelings of excitement, oh, we’re, we’re going to buy a new house.

This is so awesome. I can’t wait to find out which one is gonna be our house. When there’s competition, sometimes it can wear on you, sometimes it can be frustrating. If it takes a long time, it can also start to maybe be disappointing. Oh, we missed out on a house that we thought we were going to get, and we didn’t get it. Our offer didn’t get accepted again. Again, what, again, are we really gonna make another offer? And I think that can be a, it, it could just wear you down. I remember when we bought our current house that we made five or six offers on houses. And believe me, I know how to make great offers. But at the same time, everybody has a walkaway point. And I always talk about this with buyers, and sometimes somebody either has more cash or is willing to pay more than you to make a purchase.

And well, I mean, hats off to them. And we experienced that same situation. We’re like, are we ever gonna be able to, to buy this house? And we’re super grateful that we ended up in the house we did, of all the houses we offered on this was the one we liked the best anyway. And to be able to look back and see that this experience was way different than the first one. We already had the security of the house. And I think for some, they don’t have that security. So there might be some stress or anxiety. Maybe your lease is coming up and all of a sudden you gotta make it happen quicker, or you’re relocating to the area and you have a tight timeline, right? So as a buyer, there can be fear and anxiety around that. Or maybe it’s the money. It’s the first time you’ve ever bought a house and this is a huge purchase.

Or even if it’s not your first purchase, and maybe it’s your second or third purchase, but all of a sudden you’re buying a bigger house and you have a bigger mortgage. Interest rates are pretty high right now. They may go down, but it’s a higher interest rate environment. Those mortgage payments are a little bit bigger. My mortgage payment’s gonna be bigger. So I think you think through some of those different anxiety-causing things. And, and for, for me, I tell every client you want to be as even keel as possible throughout the home buying process. And I am guilty as charged of not being even keeled about my own purchase. It’s easier to do that as a professional, but it’s something my dad’s always told me, son, you don’t wanna get too excited or too down. You wanna stay even keel. And it’s okay to get a little excited or a little bit down.

But he always talked about managing my emotions, and I think I just wanna live life and experience them all right? The full range. And I think that’s appropriate that we should all be experiencing emotions deeply. Uh, but at the same time, when you’re going through the process of buying a house, I would encourage you not to get too emotionally attached to a house, especially until you’re under contract, right? If you’re not under contract on a house, it’s hard to get your excitement up. You want to stay as even keel as possible. But once you’re under contract, boom, now you can be excited. Now you can be hopeful. You can start planning for the future. I think another emotion that people when their offer’s accepted is just relief. Oh, okay, I got my offer accepted. And especially if you’ve gone through this multiple times, you’ve made multiple offers, there is an experience and a feeling of relief, but it’s also sometimes a feeling of surprise.

That’s another emotion that you might feel. I’ve had people be like, woo-hoo. Oh my gosh, I can’t even believe it. I got my offer accepted. Right? Even after you’ve put in the work, you’ve seen the houses, you made a great offer. Maybe you’ve done it a few times. That surprise is real. It’s, it’s literally, it’s, it’s a really cool experience as the agent, because I get to see it over and over again as people respond in those moments. But I also get to hear the disappointment, right? And I get to sit in those frustrations with people, hopefully not frustrations with me, right? Setting expectations is huge for me as we talk about managing emotions. And it’s not about not experiencing emotions, but it’s how do we respond in an appropriate way? And for me, I always wanna set expectations with clients. And I’m even doing that.

Now, for you to help you have a framework, we have to expect that it might take a little bit of time. It might take 2, 3, 4 months to buy a house and get under contract. It might take multiple offers. It might, there might be bumps in the process, right? You might experience an imperfect buying process. Maybe there’s issues on the inspection report and you’re just thinking, oh, it’s gonna be great. Now my job’s to help point out all those things and set those expectations, and then at the same time, communicate about things, right? Communication is also huge. If you communicate about those expectations and talk through the frustrations or the disappointments, some of that ah, ah, feeling is minimized. You can eliminate or at least mitigate most of those situations where maybe you’d get extremely frustrated, maybe you just accept it. That’s how it is. It’s going to be a little bit of a process.

If you, if you go on an airplane flight, it’s nice when it’s smooth and the landing’s nice, but there’s turbulence on most of the airplane flights I’ve ever been on. And the pilots, I gotta say, uh, you’d think they’d be able to land a little smoother, but you know, it’s kind of tough sometimes, even when it’s sunny to land smoothly. And that’s just part of the process. So sometimes there’s bumps along the way, and it’s normal. It’s okay. The last emotion we’ll talk about today is just satisfaction. I did it. Woohoo, right? And I’ve filmed countless videos with clients in those moments that are captured, uh, here on YouTube and, and elsewhere. And I’ve experienced way more than are ever captured on video. But this feeling of accomplishment, it’s, it’s a mixture of a lot of other emotions as well. But there’s this just finality, this satisfaction that this is done, I did it.

And these welcome home videos are my favorite videos because they capture that moment and all of those different emotions all at the same time. And I think, you know, for buyers, that’s the pinnacle, right? You got your keys, you got into the house, but then real life sets in. You have a mortgage, you actually have to live in the house. There are repairs and all sorts of stuff like that. But going through the process, that getting the keys, there’s that simultaneous relief, but also the excitement. Now let’s shift to talking about sellers, because sellers have emotions too, and they’re different. So for sellers, man, there is excitement, right? We talked about that on the buyer’s side. You’ve got excitement, you’re thinking about the future, and in most cases, the future is woo-hoo, right? But there are also negatives. Maybe, maybe it’s, maybe it’s a different emotion.

Maybe you’re not just excited about where you’re headed, but maybe, maybe there’s grief. Maybe there’s a divorce or a death, or maybe you really love your neighborhood. That’s what we’re experiencing right now. We really love our neighbors and our neighborhood, and there’s a lot of sadness about what’s happening. And for us, a few ways that we’ve coped with that. Number one, we just talked about, it just sat and talked about it. My wife and I have talked about it. We’ve talked about it with our neighbors because our neighbors are experiencing these same things too, and our kids are experiencing them. So just talking through the grief that we’re experiencing and being honest about it, there are things we’re going to miss about our house. So we’ve talked about it. That’s maybe a great tip. But another tip would be maybe, maybe record a video or take some pictures or write some things down, some memories down to help, um, remember.

And I think that goes in, in line with maybe a, another emotion that people experience. And that’s nostalgia, right? There’s grief is different than nostalgia. And I think some of the application of maybe taking some video or, or pictures to help remember, that can apply in both situations. But it’s natural to feel some nostalgia if you’ve lived in a house for any period of time. I know every time we’ve ever moved, we’ve experienced those feelings. And you think about the things that you’re going to miss and the things that you loved. And yeah, there are always things that you didn’t like, but it’s way, I think it’s better personally to not try to demonize the old house or think of all the reasons why you don’t like it and you’re moving, which is true. There’s a reason you’re moving, but to have the positive memories, and maybe you are moving because it didn’t really work out and you don’t wanna remember it, right?

Sometimes sellers have those emotions as well, and maybe if you’re going through a, a tougher situation, you’re, you’re just kind of glad to be done. That would be another emotion, right? There’s, there’s an optimism, a hope that it’s gonna be better, uh, when you, when you move on from the property. And I think a lot of buyers, whether it’s negative or have some type of hope afterwards, some optimism about what the future looks like. I think the stress and the anxiety and the fear, we talked about that for buyers. Sellers have those same emotions, but they’re experiencing in them differently. As sellers wanting to get offers on their house, they want their house to sell quickly, they wanna get as much money as possible for their house. And then they start to think if they don’t, right away get offers. Well, what’s wrong with my house?

Did I not do the right prep work? Is my house overpriced? Is my agent not doing good? I mean, you just start thinking through those things. And I think expectations, again, are huge for managing that anxiety and that stress. You can’t eliminate it. All right? We’re all human. We feel emotions. But to be able to have an expectation for how things go helps determine how we respond in those situations. And to be able to say, okay, well, you know, average sales taking three to four weeks, and some are selling in a week, but some are selling longer. If you price it higher, you’re going, your house might sit for a little bit, but that’s okay if that’s the way we’re gonna go. But if we price it a little bit lower, it’s gonna sell quickly. But you might not get the peak amount for the house.

So you start to think through those different expectations. But I still think you can’t avoid it all. We talked about frustration on the buyer side. Sellers can feel the same way. Maybe the buyer wants to negotiate some repairs. I know on our purchase we’re, we’re buying a house from somebody else. The previous buyer, they had another buyer. The previous buyer tried to get them to do a bunch of stuff and give them money. And this house doesn’t need any work, <laugh>. And they were just trying to get some extra money outta the deal, and that’s why the other buyer didn’t get the house. It fell through and then it ended up where we were interested in it. We weren’t even looking at it before that. But sometimes sellers get frustrated. And in that situation, the seller’s like, I’m not, I don’t want to continue on with this buyer. I don’t wanna keep working with them, which worked out for us. But sellers get frustrated too. Maybe. Maybe the buyer just backs out at the end. Maybe the financing falls through. It happens. Sometimes buyers can’t complete the purchase. That’s frustrating. Or it’s at least upsetting, right? And we talked about disappointment. That can be disappointing. Maybe you didn’t get as much for your house as you were hoping to get as a seller. But at the end of the day, when a seller sells their house, it’s all done. There is a sense of relief. There’s a burden that’s removed, whether it’s a positive or a negative experience. When you’re selling your house, you’re trying to move on from it. So the fact that you get to move on from it is a relief. And usually, unless you’re in a terrible housing market, usually there’s a check at the end of the day.

There’s some money to be able to move on. Hopefully, it’s more than what you put into the house. And in a lot of cases in the Seattle area, it is. But I think hopefully some of these, uh, tactics were helpful. I think at the same time, my hope is that in hearing this, you realize that everybody else feels these same emotions too. And you’re not the only one feeling these emotions. And I think I forget. And it’s easy to forget when you do it all the time, what people are going through and how they’re feeling. And I think empathy is a really important part of my job in feeling those emotions too. So I’m grateful for the dose of empathy I’ve been given as I’ve gone through this process. And I hope that this video is helpful for you and understanding what some of those emotions are as you’re going through the process, but also giving you permission to experience them as well. Thanks so much for watching this video, and I, I hope it brought some value to your life and some perspective maybe to the home buying and selling process on a deeper level, if you have questions about buying or selling real estate in the Seattle area, I’d be honored to have a conversation with you.