Buying Sequim homes for retirees can be a challenge. Real estate from east of Sequim to west of Port Angeles offers quite a variety of homes and land. The challenge that many buyers have is in deciding what they want. Not knowing can create confusion and frustration in the process. Knowing generally what the ideal property would look like will simply life immensely. For example, knowing what specific parameters to put into an online search for an online Sequim MLS search will give you a list of potential properties to look at. If your parameters are too broad, you will be overwhelmed with possibilities.
Even after knowing and doing this kind of search, you still can’t tell from simply viewing the online photos and data on Sequim homes whether this is something that you would really like until you see it. But when you arrive in Sequim you can’t be looking at a hundred homes. There isn’t enough time. This is where a professional buyer’s agent can email with you to answer questions and talk to you on the phone so you can narrow down your prospective list of homes or land.
Have you noticed that great athletes make their victories look easy? My son, Jesse Marunde, was a world class professional strongman, and he made flipping a car look easy. Great actors, whether we are talking about Dakota Fanning or Gene Hackman, seem to become the person they are playing, and they make it seem so natural. Great speakers use words, intonation, and gesticulate so effectively, we hear the power in their message, but don’t realize what it took to be able to do that. It takes hard work and years of focus to become an expert. An extensive study concluded it takes at least 10 years to become an expert in any subject or career.
While my own son’s feats of strength tantalized the spectators around the U.S. and Europe and South Africa, I remember vividly the many hours we worked out together when he was young in a two-car garage full of weights and loud music. Jesse was focused and disciplined for many years before he achieved expert status. By the way, that garage never did have a car in it.
It is hard work looking for a Sequim home and negotiating for the best price and terms (and it’s stressful), but it takes a foundation of knowledge and experience to make it look easy. Sometimes it takes more work to simplify an offer or to keep the language unambiguous than the “spectators” realize. Mark Twain once paraphrased Blaise Pascal with this wonderful quote, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
I’ve spent my life in real estate, about 30 years now, 20 as a real estate attorney. I love this business, but it has taken me decades to learn what it takes to buy and sell real estate, avoid traps for the unwary, negotiate from a position of power and maintain control, and manage transaction details all the way to closing. When I represent a buyer as a Sequim buyer’s agent or a Port Angeles buyer’s agent I cost my clients absolutely nothing, because the seller always pays my commission. I love that! Give me the privilege of representing you as your buyer’s agent, and I will give you every ounce of experience and energy I have to help you take a complicated process of finding and buying your next Sequim home and make it look easy.
Last Updated on July 27, 2012 by Chuck Marunde
