My wife and I bought a home on December 30, 2025 and sold our condo in mid-April, 2026. In 2016, we sold her San Diego condo and bought our LA condo in December of that year, but this time felt different. With two kids and less margin for error (in 2016, we lived with my wife’s parents while house hunting), this experience felt like the first time I truly experienced the full home buying experience, and stress.

The points that follow were originally much more elaborate when drafting the post. I made the mistake of using a Microsoft product to draft it. Word crashed and I had not saved my 800 words – my fault -, losing everything. I don’t have the spirit to rewrite that detail, so the following post sketches my thoughts.

1. Always use a sales contingency. We bought the new house without a sales contingency, to make our offer as strong as possible, but that meant we chose to carry 2 mortgages while we sold our condo. Since we were not competing with other offers, we should have used a sales contingency to limit our carrying costs while we sold our place. Ultimately, between the 4 months it took to sell our condo and 2 extra months we had to wait to recast the mortgage, this decision cost us about $35,000. If you think we could have bought our new house with a sales contingency, then this was a very costly mistake, like a new roof’s worth of a mistake.

2. The asymmetry of price changes, or: why did prices not decline more and faster? The increase in house prices during the first 18 months of COVID made sense since mortgage rates were below 3%. Their plateau as rates first went to 4, then 5, and then, when we were buying, about 6.25, made no sense. With interest rates twice what they were, homes should have, at a minimum, returned to their February 2020 prices instead of staying at their 2022 ones. It is only logic. Instead, my wife and I watched prices stay elevated, if not increase a bit. Seeing homes we loved only at the top of our price range, we therefore decided we should buy if we found something we liked. The house we ended up in we ultimately bought for 5% under asking, which itself felt like a victory. Six months later, with the Iran war dragging on and mortgage rates continuing to rise, it feels like the market continues to soften. It is not obvious we were wrong, but it is also not obvious that we bought 2 years too early.

3. What is the value of a real estate agent? At the start of our quest, I was skeptical about the utility of real estate agents. After, determined not to use one again. Our particular agent was very nice, super available, got our seller down to our price and our buyer almost up, I would recommend him to someone who insists on using an agent, and I am not sure what a “better” agent would have gotten us. Yet I do not think I will use one for our next transition. Before the rise of online MLS listings, agents had a monopoly on listing knowledge. Now, every consumer knows what is available, the price, comps, and so on. An agent is likely to know less about neighborhoods than the buyer, and certainly the seller, since agents transact across a city. An agent’s expertise is therefore in evaluating a house and reading an offer. The former is accomplished with a home inspection and the latter with AI. The agents retain interpersonal value, but I don’t find that value worth 2%, much less 3%, of the transaction price. Yet at a 1% commission, an agent would need much higher volume, and no one has figured out to make that commission rate work. (We tried a flat rate brokerage and were disappointed.) Agents do not engage in genuine discussion because they want to please you to get the commission, so you never know if their response – it is almost always a response – is genuine or calculated. Ultimately, the selling commission bought us time because agents have their handypeople who perform repairs, photographers who photograph, and stagers who stage. If the sales commission is worth your time, pay it. With two young kids and a 1.5% commission, it was for us. If your time is less valuable than the commission, do not hire a selling agent. For buying, an agents’ only residual value is their network and ability to get you off-market deals or into a listing before others can bid on. It is impossible to evaluate an agent on those grounds, so I would not.

4. Do not listen to Boomers for real estate advice. A Boomer will tell you you three things. First, a house is the best investment you can make. Second, you marry a house but date the rate. Third, a home means freedom because no one can tell you what to do. Psh. A house is a great investment if you can buy one after a supply surge, such as 1945-1973, makes them cheap before a supply restriction, such as 1973-now, makes them scarce. A home is wood, metal, and oil in various forms: commodities. Commodities do not increase in value. Homes do, which has to mean their increase is artificial. Too many Americans under 40 pay too much for homes or cannot afford homes. When a commodity its expensive, its price ultimately decreases. The rise of the YIMBY movement, 10 years young and growing in strength, means homes will slowly become more abundant. (Homes refer to anything you can buy with a mortgage, such as a condo, co-op, or townhome.) Rate dating works when rates go down, which is the story of 1982-2022. (It should have been the story of 1982-1992, but Alan Greenspan got in the way.) Mortgage rates response to 10 year (the average duration of a mortgage) Treasury rates, not the federal funds overnight rate, the “Fed” rate. America has gluttoned its way to structural deficits and the bond market is responding, which is why mortgage rates have not decreased in 4 years and will not for the foreseeable future. At some point, long-term dating becomes marriage. If you cannot afford a house at current mortgage rates, do not buy a house. Finally, a home rarely means freedom. Any home that has an HOA places strong restrictions on ownership. A Boomer will just tell you to buy a home in an HOA you like, but that’s like saying purchase an airplane seat with the exact legroom and width you like: perfect in theory but shatters in real life. A renter cannot change their kitchen or bathrooms, but renovations are so expensive that only the richest homeowners can. Every homeowner, even Boomers, will tell you how much of a money pit they are. Pits are traps. Traps, by definition, negate freedom.

I do not regret our choices. I had an inkling of, or knew, these lessons before starting the home molting process. I also felt misled at every step of the process.