Top SF Realtor POV: Boogie-Boarding Home

Writings about residential real estate and all things home, by Cynthia Cummins of Kindred SF Homes.

Reading time: 2 minutes

During our initial interview, my client Sandra handed me a spreadsheet. It specified all the features her new home should have, arranged in descending order of importance. Here are the top 10.

1. Fireplace

2. Parking

3. Single family home

4. Not on a busy street

5. View of some water

6. 3 bedrooms or 2 + den

7. 2 bathrooms

8. Walk to coffee

9. In-unit laundry.

10. East of Arguello and north of Fell

We conducted an exhaustive search, touring and/or considering several dozen properties over a dozen weeks.

Guess how many of those top-10 features her eventual home included? Two. The property was on a quiet block and had its own washer and dryer.

This incongruity between aspiration and actuality happens because our dream of home can’t be translated neatly into a checklist. There are too many intangibles. This is the derivation of the Realtor idiom "Buyers are liars." Meaning that -- until they begin their search -- buyers don't fully know what they want and so their wish list is likely to be "untrue."

In Sandra’s case, she knew her future home (a condo, not a single family home) was “the place” as soon as we entered the front door. And I guessed it from the hesitant excitement I read in her sideways glance towards me.

“Property sells itself” is one of my favorite real-estate adages. By that I mean there’s nothing anyone can say to “sell” someone on the desirability of a home. The buyer either feels it, or they don’t feel it.

It’s like boogie-boarding. You belly onto the wave as soon as you enter a property, but you sense almost instantly whether or not you’ll ride the board into shore.

It’s kismet. It’s chemistry. It’s love, not real estate.

Photo credit: Michael Henry