The document provides 6 keys to having a zen home buying experience: 1. Understand the process to reduce fear of the unknown. Home buying is complex and mistakes can be costly. 2. Manage expectations by relying on experts like realtors and lenders to understand timelines, costs, and requirements. 3. Avoid urgent deadlines that reduce negotiating power. 4. Expect irritations and glitches despite careful planning rather than feeling like an exception. Rely on professionals for support. 5. Maintain clarity over the process rather than a sense that control was lost. 6. Manage common fears like offer rejection, overpaying, appraisal issues by focusing on the mindset.

1. 6 Keys to Having a Zen Home
Buying Experience

2. If you sat down and tried to call up a mental
picture of a smart home buyer, the person in
your mind’s eye might be sitting in front of the
computer, calculator at hand, running numbers
and weighing out pros and cons before arriving
at a sensible decision. Here’s how to experience
Zen:

3. 1.We fear what we don’t understand. Buying a
computer, a TV, even a car – these things aren’t
super scary, in part, because we
do them repeatedly. But we
buy homes much less frequently,
and the transactions are much
more complex and filled with
jargon that is essentially
unintelligible to all but
those who practice real
estate for a living. On top
of all that, the mistakes we stand to make when
buying a home, from buying a lemon to taking the
wrong mortgage, hold the potential to devastate
our lives and our finances for years to come.

4. 2. Ask - and allow - your experts to manage
your expectations. I’ve found that buyers tend
to experience real estate as an emotional
rollercoaster when they (a) start out with
unrealistic expectations or (b) resist the
expectation management their brokers, bankers
and agents are trying to dole out. There is a lot
of education you can get from books and the
web, but when it comes down to the nuts and
bolts of making your offer on your home, and
anticipating the details of the deal and moving
experience, you should look to your own local
realtor and mortgage sherpa to help you
understand things like:

5. • the range of outcomes that might result from
your offer,
• how long to expect things to take,
• when to expect to bring cash in – and how big
of a cheque you should expect to write, each
time, and
• when you’ll need to take off work to come
sign things in person.

6. 3.Shatter the 8 ball. In any market climate, you
are at a negotiating disadvantage if you have an
urgent deadline for buying and moving.

7. 4.You’re exceptional, but you’re probably not the
exception. Your decision to buy, your work at saving
and sprucing your credit, the hard work of wading
through all those homes and making the hard
decisions about when and where and what to
buy, your brilliant taste in real estate blogs (!) all
these things indicate you are an exceptional
person. But don’t expect to create or to be the
exception, or be immune to the predictable
irritations and glitches of buying a home. Problems
may show up- look for
professional support in your Realtor, lawyer and
broker.

8. 5. Cultivate clarity. One extremely common
cause of emotional chaos during home buying is
the sense that things have spiraled out of your
control. Many buyers express feeling that what
started out as a very personal vision, dream or
aspiration for their lives, their finances and their
families is now 100% controlled by banks who
don’t care about them or professionals who
don’t intimately understand your wants and
needs.

9. 6. Manage your own mindset. The list of freak-
outs that are common in the emotional landscape
of the homebuyer is quite a long one:
• the fear the seller won’t take your offer,
• the fear you’ll pay too much,
• the fear of mortgage glitches,
• the fear that the home of your dreams will turn
out to have a bunch of problems,
• the fear that the appraisal will come in low,
• buyer’s remorse
- and the list goes on.

10. Buyers/Homeowners: What were your personal
home buying freak-out moments? What advice
do you have for other buyers who want to up
the level of Zen they experience during their
transactions?

11. Randy Bett
Investment Realtor/Author/Investor
Real Estate Professionals Inc.
Better Group Real Estate
202-5403 Crowchild Trail NW
Calgary, AB T3B 4Z1
Phone:403-774-7464 Ext:1
Fax:403-208-0082
Toll Free fax:888-711-6801

12. Randy Bett
www.BetterGroupRealEstate.ca