Daily Archives: December 4, 2007

To Follow Your Dreams Or To Follow Money, That Is The Question, Long Beach

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It was never a question for me, following my dreams was a priority, money always follow.

As I get to Coach more and more people, I realize it isn’t always the case for everyone, of course. Some people want to work on money first and let their dreams appear after. I think either ways are good but only as long as you are aware of it. There is nothing worse than to follow money or your dream without understanding why you are doing it, or for the wrong reasons.

As I mentioned yesterday, when we were expats in Kyoto, Japan, money flowed freely, pursuing our simple dreams was the focus. We essentially had no problems because we were focused on ourselves, focused on feeling together as a group of expats. Concentrating on yourself has one added benefit, it frees you from worries about abundance and lack of. Once that is out of the way, money poured in, literally. However, that only works for a certain type of people.

I chanced upon a blog that corroborate this here. Justin Lukasavige showed the result of a study of graduate school students completed between 1960 and 1980 by Srully Blotnick based on a 20 year period with 1,500 people grouped them into two categories.

“Category A people said they wanted to make money first so they could do what they really wanted to do later – after they had taken care of their financial concerns.

Category B people pursued their true interests first; sure that money would eventually follow.”

Not too strange to find that category A consisted of 93% while B, the risk takers made up 17%. What was interesting was that after 20 years, 101 millionaires came from category A, 100 came from category B.

Somehow this didn’t surprise me too much, you know why?
Ultimately, we need to do what is right for us and the best way to do this is to understand how we function. Some people need to concentrate on making money first, then their dreams. Others go about it the other way. It just doesn’t matter how you go about it, what truly matter is understanding what works best for you.

Contact me if you would like to work on how best you function.

Bank of America Realtor Monthly Survey, Long Beach

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Here is the monthly Bank of America Realtor survey.

The numbers are slightly better but I suspect it is because Realtors expect less. In a nutshell:

- Our traffic index improved to 20 in November from 18 in October, but remains depressed.
- Price index inches back down, with limited talk of interest at lower prices. The price index was flat at 17.1 in November, down from 18.2 in October. Agents noted price declines in every market surveyed. However, what was interesting is that few agents noted any positive buyer response to the lower prices, primarily as buyers remained concerned about buying before the bottom.

This was probably the best news of this survey. Buyers are starting to sense prices have droped and are going out there again. This is the best time to be seen, be known as a great agent.

- Inventory still rising and will likely pressure prices. Rising inventory trends – November typically would bring a 2% decline in inventory, but the lack of demand has led trends to buck the seasonal norm. Our time to sell index measured 13.2, essentially unchanged from 12.4 in October. We suspect that we will see a decline in inventory in December based on seasonality, but expect this to creep up again in the Spring.

Wishful thinking or could it really pan out this way. It looks it could.

- Tighter mortgage lending standards and appraisals are hurting sales.

As you can see, nothing much new and very predictable. However, the traffic going up is a sure sign buyers are out there again. The next piece of news to watch for will be lending related. When lenders come back to real estate, we can expect things to pick up.

In the meantime, hang on out there.