Just Look at The Mess That We're In

So, here's the thing: there are thousands and thousands of people out there right now trying to sell their homes. On some streets, there may be several sellers competing for the same buyers. Sellers are stressed, and they become frantic as they watch the market slide lower and lower. In some markets, the slide is gradual, but in some places, sellers are on that big slide from The Banana Splits Show (fast forward to :55 if you don't want to watch the whole thing). At any rate, people are scared. Sellers are scared that they won't be able to sell; buyers are afraid to buy as they wait for the market to hit bottom. People are doing desperate and frightening things because of foreclosures and other financial problems. My Uncle Ray, who was a young man during the Great Depression and who remembers being told to walk on the extreme street-side of the sidewalks in New York to keep out of the way of falling bodies--seriously--says he's never seen anything like it and didn't believe he would live to see this. Where is the calm voice of reason in this storm?

Friends, I humbly present myself, as unlikely as that may seem to those who know me, as that voice of calm and reason. I recently navigated the shark-infested waters of the Central Florida housing market, deftly steering our sales course between the burst bubble Scylla and the sub-prime loan Charybdis with relative ease, if I do say so myself. And what did I have that others didn't? Not real estate know-how. Not business savvy. Certainly not deeeeep pockets. What I did have was the absolute knowledge that we would sell our house quickly, no matter what was going on around us. I didn't get the knowledge from a book, or a website or even my Realtor (although she was awesome). I knew we would sell quickly because that was our intention, and that intention was underscored by and reinforced with every action we took to sell our house.