 |
Email to Friend |
 |
Print |
|
by Wallace J. Conway
Homebuyers are an interesting study. Watching people make their home buying
decisions has brought me to the conclusion that every decision that every one of
us makes is based in emotion. You heard me, it's all about the emotion. Before
you deny what I am describing to you, let me begin with me.
Painful as the revelation is for me, even I as a Naval Academy graduate,
retired Navy pilot, and home inspector extraordinaire, make decisions based on
emotion. It took some bridging for me to get there, but I am there.
Have you ever had a feeling in your gut about a decision? A hunch? That's
emotion. We make decisions that reflect how we feel about the event or expect to
feel when the outcome is completed. People, especially those that are highly
educated and technically trained, rarely realize and usually never concede that
their decisions are based in emotion.
Before discussing the particulars of the emotional responses, I will admit
that logic does play a role. What ends up happening is, after the near immediate
emotional response and decision, the backfilling of logic begins. Logic is used
to make the emotion seem reasonable.
Emotional responses as I see them fall into two broad categories. The first
is the desire for pleasure and the second is the avoidance of pain. When we are
contemplating a decision, we weigh the balance of the desire for and probability
of a pleasurable outcome with the fear of and distain for pain.
What real estate agents are faced with is responding to issues presented as
logic that are truly emotions. It takes a tremendous talent to listen to the
logic, but hear the emotion. What are people really saying? That is the
challenge.
Find and understand the emotional issue and you can keep any deal together.
This thought applies no matter if your role is buyer, seller, agent, or
inspector. Ultimately, you must seek to understand why people feel as they feel
in order to fully comprehend what they really mean in what they are saying.
Not long ago, I inspected a home for an electrical engineer, a very bright
and successful individual. The home had a beautiful swimming pool in the
backyard. Our intrepid engineer had out his digital tape measure and was
measuring the distance between each electrical receptacle along the rear
exterior of the home. He would measure, then ponder, measure more, and then
ponder more.
Finally, he approached the real estate agent and me announcing that there was
an unsafe condition relating to the unequal distance between the electrical
outlets. He then spouted large quantities of electrical engineer babble and
finished with, "I'd be shocked if this were not a code violation". I
wanted to respond with "No sir, the code is intended to prevent you from
being shocked", but decided that "hmmmm" was a better response.
After much debate and some real listening, the man's issue had nothing to do
with electrical engineering or the National Electric Code. In his mind, he had
the perfect place for his lounge chair, but there was not a receptacle adjacent
to that location for him to plug his radio into! He was laying logic, however
flawed, on us in order to justify his demand that a new receptacle be added.
Listen to the logic, hear the emotion!
| 
