Steering the River, Boxing Rings and other Metaphors

Reading time: 3 minutes

Don’t turn your home purchase or sale into your personal boxing ring. 

When you’re feeling upset or challenged, try to zoom out for a less personalized viewpoint. Try not to blame “the other side” or the other side’s agent or your agent or your loved ones or the darn market. Express your distress, but don’t start beating up on everybody around you.

My ex-husband (and friend) likes to remind me that every single person we meet is quite eccentric and flawed – once we get to know them. They have all sorts of personality quirks and hang-ups, even if their “presentation” initially fools us into thinking they have their proverbial s*&t together. 

They don’t. I don’t. My ex-husband doesn’t. You don’t. And the purchase or sale of a home is an absolutely perfect Petrie dish for the flare-up of latent psychological traits that can harm or help. (Usually the former.) 

First, there’s the focus on security in the form of a home. “Home” has all sorts of wonderful, wild and wicked associations, depending on one’s upbringing and background. So, the principals in any transaction are going to be coming to the table with their own signature blend of childhood baggage. As a Realtor, I am never surprised when somebody loses it and acts badly.

Second, there are the principals’ particular modes of relating to others. Each person’s psychology will affect the way they behave with their partners, loved ones and representatives. As an agent, I am continually learning by observing my clients’ ways of being. I hope that makes me a better Realtor (as well as a better person), yet I’m keenly aware that I am a Realtor and not a licensed therapist.

Third, there are the high stakes of big money. In every transaction, this creates a hot-steaming witches brew that’ll bring out people’s best and/or worst and/or everything in between. As an agent, I know it’s not a matter of whether or not someone or something is going to blow; it’s a matter of when all hell is going to break loose.

When you throw human beings, lots of money and everybody’s ideas about home into a big pot and stir, you’d best be ready to exercise caution, restraint and curiosity. Or – to use a different metaphor – when you throw human beings into the home-buying-selling ring, the gloves have a tendency to come off quickly. There’s no hiding in the corner or waiting for the bell. 

The longtime secret affair comes to light when a wife tearfully questions her husband’s hesitation at buying. “All we have to do is sign this offer. It’s only $5,000 more. Why are you stalling?” 

One partner’s contempt for the other is voiced loudly and repeatedly: “I’m doing all the real work to get the house ready for sale; all he/she is doing is talking with the CPA.” 

A sister dismisses her brother as forever uncaring: “Mother was right. He was never willing to show up when it mattered.” 

A newly betrothed couple avoids talking about their unhappiness by focusing on the placement of the kitchen range: “We’re going over to the house again to meet with the contractor and look at the stove.” 

A son quietly seethes as his hoarding father shouts all the reasons he can’t part with the wine collection (most of it gone bad), his deceased wife’s Hermes scarves (still in their original packaging), and the Currier and Ives prints (rotting away in the basement). 

And so on. The real estate transaction and move become the locus for working out stuff that has nothing to do with the actual purchase or sale. There’s round after round of passive or active conflict, while the Realtor acts as referee. 

Unless there’s a particularly egregious foul, I attempt to remain outside the ring, observing with compassion. My job is not to choose sides – though it can be very tempting.

My job is to care for my clients (even when they’re behaving like jerks toward me or toward others), and to be patient and focused. I watch them flail and paddle and sink and swim and float and fight the current, wishing I could rescue them. But all I can do is stand by at the ready. I can’t steer the river.

Author and RealEstateTherapy curator Cynthia Cummins has been devoted to homeowners and homebuyers for three decades and counting. Visit KindredSFhomes.com for more information on San Francisco real estate.

Photo Credit: Dave