Psychology And Housing

Psychology and Housing  

“Solving problems using rationality is like playing golf with only one club.” 

– Rory Sutherland

Psychology and money are interrelated when it comes to investment in housing or anything. The mindset of every human differs from each other. However, a common ground where each other meets is money if it comes to buying or selling the property.

Our customer experienced that when his family and he were looking to buy their first home, initially they tried to do so without the use of a realtor. They had done the research on google, neighborhoods, and price points wanted to look at. All of the houses are online so they could do virtual tours to figure out which places they wanted to see in person.

Unfortunately, they began calling the selling agents. There are a few that gave some pushback. When told they aren’t using a realtor some didn’t So finally picked the first nice realtor who helped us cross the finish line.

When I sold that home 10 or 11 years later, that process was even more stressful. You have to fix things up, keep your house spotless and constantly put stuff away for scheduled showings. It was a huge pain in the ass and sold our home in just 4 days. I can’t imagine how painful the process must be when it takes weeks or months to find a buyer.

And simply finding a buyer doesn’t mean the process is over. You have to agree upon a price, which rarely happens on day one. Then once you come to an agreement there’s more back and forth following the inspection which typically means the haggling over the selling price.

The home-buying and home-selling process can be stressful, takes up a lot of your time and energy, and is not something I would like to go through very often. Despite the lack of efficiency in the space, housing remains one of the few enormous markets left almost completely untouched by technology.

As these psychological moonshots pertain to the real estate business, it doesn’t necessarily have to come from technology firms. There will be enterprising realtors with a deep understanding of their clients and geography who innovate in this space. Reducing the frictions and stress involved in the home selling process is an area that’s ripe for disruption. It may take some time but someone is going to figure this out and it’s going to become an enormous success that will look obvious in hindsight.

By:

Dr Bimal Acharya

Business Development Executive

Nepal Real Estate Solution