The Best Possible Housing Deal (Newsletter #259)

I’m a pyro. Always have been. Guilty as charged.

Bonfires are my jam. Growing up on a lake, bonfires were an occurrence multiple times per week throughout spring and summer.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a love for fire means the 4th of July was a favorite holiday as a kid. I wanted as much “cool shit” as possible. Every year, I’d gather as much money as I could—usually $50 or $100—and convince my mother to drive me to the Indian reservation, about 45 minutes away. The goal was to get the most bang for my buck. I would survey every fireworks vendor in the area asking what what my $100 would get me. Then I’d circle back to the one or two vendors that made a good impression and use up every dollar of my budget as I finally got those fireworks in my hands.

What if someone I trusted had just told me where to find the best deal at my price point, and then actually facilitated it for me?

That’s the Holy Grail for a teenage boy: more fireworks for less work.

It was hard for teenage me to part with my hard-earned money after laboring over the many options, wondering if I got the best deal. Homeowners have it worse because the stakes are a lot higher: Housing is a must have. Even with all the proptech advances in lending, visualizations, home showings, and multi-location search, buyers are tasked with an enormous amount of work just to end up parting with all of their money. That’s perhaps most evidenced by survey results from 1000watt that show 44% of buyers are most worried about paying too much.