Buyer’s remorse is the sinking feeling that you paid way too much for your new home. This feeling begins once you sign the purchase contract. Buyer’s remorse can be compounded by many other anxieties — that you’re getting the world’s worst mortgage, that the bottom will fall out of property values in the years after you buy a home, that you’ll lose your job and that your health will fail.
These anxieties are absolutely normal reactions to the uncertainties most of us initially experience. They will go away. If it makes you feel any better, nearly all homebuyers are traumatized by the same concerns while purchasing a home. The first step in your recovery program is to see buyer’s remorse for what it is — plain, unadulterated fear. Facts defeat fear. The faster you get the facts you need, the less you’ll suffer. By scrutinizing these hidden fears in the bright light of day, you can counter them with facts. After you’ve signed the contract to buy your dream home, you do one or more of the following:
Read ads in the real estate section of your local newspaper even more intently than you did before you signed the contract. You want to be searching for similar or nicer houses with lower asking prices.
Spend Saturday and Sunday touring open houses. Touring property is the best way to determine if your fears are valid or groundless. Reading ads isn’t enough. Pound the pavement; look for better buys than you got. After all, seeing is believing. (Speaking of seeing, you may see the remorseful sellers making the rounds of the same houses that you’re looking at, trying to find less-nice properties with bigger asking prices.)
After going through these exercises prior to closing and for a couple of months after the purchase (until you’re emotionally and physically exhausted), you’ll probably discover that your fears are groundless. There’s nothing wrong or unusual about your concerns. What is wrong is letting these fears gnaw away at you secretly instead of openly confronting them.
In conclusion, don’t beat yourself up with asking prices. A home can have more than one correct price. Pricing and negotiation are arts, not precise sciences. You can sleep soundly if the price you paid as a buyer is in line with the sale prices of comparable properties. Before you write your offer our professional real estate agents will provide you with the most current information available on comparable property values so you can feel good about your decision and get on with your life.