Recession, depression, recovery? Who cares; it hurts.

The beauty of a business built on helping friends of past clients, and friends, is that I continually get to work with smart people who come to me with a high level of trust. In this economy, maintaining that trust depends on my willingness to say what I mean and mean what I say…without saying it mean. Every person who chooses to work with me wants to know what I think is real and what’s fiction about the real estate economy.


A few decades ago then presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan said, “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job.” He added for a laugh, “Recovery is when the President loses his.”( I don’t bring that up as a statement against the current administration; I contributed my part to this humanitarian crisis.) The quote makes the point that the difference between depression and recession is relative to how close the pain hits home.

Do we care if this situation is called depression, recession, or recovery? I don’t. It’s a humanitarian crisis and whether Dane County fairs better or worse than the rest of the country is of no significance. Losing a job, security, savings, home, peace of mind is painful. Some say the economy is improving and it may be. But if this is early stages of recovery, I doubt people are looking around and saying, “Wow! That sucked. Let’s go buy a house.” The sentiment, the emotional attitude, of people is transforming and it’s an evolution process. Two, or three generations emerged from the Great Depression with conservative attitudes. That huge population had an aversion to high risk, and their attitude carried the day for over 50 years. In the last 20 years of the 20th Century and into the 21st, elevated levels of risk were assumed by an unprecedented percentage of the American public. If history is an indicator, we are going to see people living with less and saving more for a long time. Risk taking and excessive spending are likely to be uncommon in all purchase decisions.

But what about selling decisions? Regardless of when a person wants to sell, the best information will always be for time that just passed. I can't tell you today if tomorrow will be a better time to sell than today. We don't know tomorrow, we barely know today. We can depend on what we know of yesterday...until next month when the government revises their last month figures by adjusting down. Isn't it better to look at what is available, consider what we know about our own situation, and make a decision that works best for ourselves in the present? Sometimes we will win, sometimes lose. But at least we make decisions based on what we can control and we aren't at the mercy of uncontrolled forces. Know your neighborhood. Be honest about your property. And be smart about your expectations.

A decision to sell always considers your alternatives and alternatives are not always best determined by dollars and cents. People who put their emotional and physical health and well being first typically find out that everything else takes care of itself.