If you think about it, the time you spend educating yourself about the housing market is part of your pursuit of the American Dream. Because whoever you are, and wherever you live in the United States, there is a high likelihood that your American Dream includes a house. 

It’s not just Barbie who has been living in her Dream House since 1962. Over sixty-five percent of Americans already own their homes, too. There is nothing like home ownership that offers the same elegant, color-by-numbers, one-mortgage-payment-at-a-time system for building wealth. This idea elicits an enthusiasm so contagious that it turns neighborhoods around, and brings cities back from the brink of bankruptcy. 

Somewhere along the line, house hunting also became a national obsession. Since 1975, owning a home has consistently outpolled having a happy marriage as a requirement for “the good life.” And while Americans have never been known as world travelers, we enjoy touring properties online, on television, or in person. We can’t get enough kitchen finishes or cabanas—or their demolition. We gawk at the curated lives of the famous and rich and their realtors making deals over fancy lunches, all in ultra high-definition. I write plenty of posts about these eye-grabbing deals.

But how does the thought of buying a home or selling your home really make you feel?

Your relationship with Real Estate is not straightforward—not at all. It is reliably ranked among the most traumatic events in our lives, next to death, divorce, and major illness. Why so? Because no one involved acts rationally as many real estate books would have you believe. Nor do the contours of a real estate deal look like any Instagram post, billboard, or reality television program. 

And like the other stressful transitions listed above, you can run from real estate, but you cannot hide from it forever. Home is where we seek to satisfy many of our essential wants and desires. Your home sits at the intersection of everything you have done and all that you have been. When life inevitably brings change, then, so do your needs. You may think you’re looking for a brick-and-mortar house. What you seek, however, is just the most tangible expression of a bigger mission: Your life, lived to the fullest. And like any other journey into the unknown, it is fraught with fear and mistrust. Buying or selling a home is more than a transaction. It is a rite of passage.

You might want to point out the uncooperative climate for those looking to buy a home today. No matter the contours of your market, however, the idea has always been that real estate professionals can better navigate challenging environments like the one we see today, and the numbers confirm it: More people are using real estate agents than ever before.

Yet the research shows truly abysmal outcomes. Nearly three-quarters of buyers express remorse when their closing is complete. In one study, only 51% of people were satisfied with their homes. Few buyers or sellers report positive experiences with their agents when polled. Beyond dissatisfaction, there’s also been a flurry of recent class action lawsuits. You, and many others, may wonder if the agents who make up the National Association of Realtors and their brokerage firm members merit the commissions they command.

In many ways, they have earned a poor reputation. I should know. I have been selling real estate in New York for more than twenty years. Starting out as a leasing agent, I doctored credit reports with a pair of scissors, Whiteout, and a copy machine. I jimmied open door locks with credit cards. I bribed building superintendents. It was a hustle, one step above a game of Three Card Monty in Times Square. There is a line, and I am not proud of how many times I crossed it myself—before I decided a change was in order long ago. I speak from personal experience, then, when I say that the reckoning in the real estate industry is well-deserved, and long overdue.

Nevertheless, home buying occupies what little of the common ground we still share. It’s a shame that things needed to get this bad for us to take a deeper look at the relationship with our homes, what’s gone wrong, and what we can do to repair it. 

In this context, it is worth considering what keeps anyone from a happy ending to their story. Buyers have never had more access to what’s on the market, and given less attention to the things that matter. They’ve been distracted by decades of Nancy Meyers movies and their impossibly beautiful houses. Curated Instagram property tours that ignore humans altogether. Home improvement shows that hardly feature a disagreement. Television producers and their glammed-up agent “influencers” peddling a home-buying process that does not exist. The same goes for sellers.

I believe the chasm between buyers’ and sellers’ aspirations and their real world results can be even more simply explained: Home buyers and sellers are not effectively prepared before they start. And few real estate agents are prepared to manage the process properly. This combination has been a silent killer to the dreams of those who never make it to the closing table, and an impediment to those who do. 

It doesn’t have to be like this. It’s just a question of whether or not you want to avoid what most buyers are experiencing, whether you want to make smarter home buying decisions, whether you want the process to be more enjoyable, satisfying, and successful. What if the search for a home could give you so much more than you thought? 

It can. 

Everything I offer in this blog, in my The Pursuit of Home LinkedIn Newsletter (Link here to sign up!), and soon in my book (coming out with BenBella Books, in 2025) is a window into the real house hunt, which we’ve spent two decades reverse engineering. I am lucky enough to lead one of the best real estate teams in the country, with incredibly talented colleagues who enhance our work and our clients’ lives. I will share the real estate wisdom I have applied to my brokerage business, after seeing thousands of deals from the inside—and not just the deals that closed. Many of the best lessons came from the vast ocean of flops, poor judgment, self-sabotage, and bleak moments along the way. 

I realized long ago that the preexisting buyer guides and reality television shows out there won’t get you any closer to the home you want. And many homebuyers and sellers like you are experiencing these problems in real time. It’s these mistakes, pitfalls and traps I’d like to help you avoid. 

• Are you having trouble moving from your online search to real-world property visits? 
• Are you struggling to even identify your “must-haves” in your new home? 
• Do you hate every house you’ve viewed?
• Are you losing deal after deal? 
• Are you obsessed with the idea that you can “time” the market? 
• Are you wondering why your home won’t sell?
• Are you wondering what you’re doing wrong? 

But forget the challenges, and even the lawsuits flying around today. I think you’d be more furious if they knew that the biggest secret of home buying has been hiding in plain sight: The home search is, at its heart, a path of personal growth. And because so many people seek to buy a home during their lifetime, it is also the most readily available, and least painful, access we have to that growth. There are endless life lessons embedded in this journey. 

It doesn’t matter what you’re spending on your home or where you’re from. Don’t underestimate the significance of what you’re about to undertake. The most important home improvement you can make is to yourself.  

The only thing you won’t get in anything we publish is advice on how to “steal” a piece of property. I will not treat a home, nor a buyer or seller, like a piece of meat, either. If you’re only looking for methods for ripping someone’s face off in a negotiation, you will also be disappointed. Research, cheap financing, fixing and flipping, digging for deals, and making or saving money are meaningless if you forget that at the heart of it, you’re in the pursuit of the American Dream. You’re in the pursuit of home.  –Scott & The HRT