Buyer’s are doing a lot of research online these days, and there are many free online resources to do a tremendous amount of research on homes and land, but there is a huge trap for the unwary. This real estate blog with almost 1,800 articles, the free online tools (including mobile devices), the books, the great links, and the affiliate sites for buyers that are all linked from this blog, give buyers more resources than any other broker on the entire Olympic Peninsula. But there’s a huge caution that I want to share today that you need to know about.
This is how you can throw away all your months of research in just a few minutes. It doesn’t happen to very many buyers, but I believe it happens periodically, and it’s a tragedy. Here it is.
You spend months online looking at various properties on a host of sites, and you do numerous Google searches on specific subjects to learn more about what you want. You might even use many of the links on this blog to examine a specific property, boundaries, maps, topography, restrictions, and so on. And to further your research before you arrive in Sequim (or Port Angeles or Port Townsend), you talk to someone on the ground, a broker, and you gather more information and insight. And then after months of research you throw it all away in a few moments by talking to someone who tells you something that is either not true, a misrepresentation, or even a lie. And you believe it. And you cancel all your research, do a 180 degree turn, and decide to go a completely different direction based on one person’s misrepresentation about a property or about an area. What a shame!
Research Wasted
Why would someone tell you on the phone or in an email something that is not true? I’m not a psychologist, but let’s face it, we are part of a human race that is dysfunctional. I like to say, “we are all dysfunctional, it’s just a matter of degree.” Here’s a word of wisdom for you. If you spend weeks or months doing research, and a single person tells you something that completely obviates your work on a particular property or an area, you owe it to yourself to find out the truth. Do not let one dysfunctional person steer you into a completely different direction. I like to say that data is important, but your interpretation of that data is just as important.
Last Updated on September 28, 2019 by Chuck Marunde
