As the Market Turns

Mulling what I wrote the other day about investors selling off their portfolios at the wrong time, it strikes me very odd that investors aren't out there right now going hog wild over a lot of deals that should represent good value compared to 18 months ago. Perhaps the tightened (and yes, I will get to that) credit market is having an effect but I don't see near as much drive in less experience investors who appear paralyzed along with the soccer moms who seem to be buying less Barbie Dolls for Suzie these days.

What this tends to reinforce for me is that, and I'll probably say this a number of times as this Blog goes on, people go to seminars and what have you, pay good money to be taught how to do things, like find and buy investment properties, and the day they walk out they revert to whatever predisposed notion they went in with about the topic. Example- when's the best time to buy investments? When they're down, of course. Yet, people will sit on the sidelines until, yup, you guessed it, things go back up, when they'll buy high and then probably sell again when things go back down. Why is this?

Yes, why is it that fledgling investors are taught to use Realtors to buy AND sell, yet as soon as they want to sell they think they don't need a Realtor anymore? Why do they learn to NOT do it themselves, yet the first thing they do (in the name of saving money) is do things themselves instead of hiring pros? And then they refuse to use a Property Manager because it costs money. And they remove long-proven heating systems to put in VERY VERY expensive to operate crap like electric resistance heat, and the list goes on...

So, why is it? Why do people love to give other people their money to "learn" how to do something only to not do what they learned in order to save far less money than they paid to learn what they're not doing?

Got it? Good, now 'splain it to me cause I don't get it!