Hi Lizzie
I think the most important lesson I have learned is that property is very forgiving.
Physically, if you paint it the wrong colour or break a window or flood the upstairs, there's not much which can't be repaired or replaced.
Sure, perhaps the front of the building falling down a hole is a bit of a tricky situation, but that, too will pass.
Financially, you can pay a bit too much and twenty years later find it hard to remember what you did pay for it.
Location wise, quiet side streets become access roads for freeways or sleepy suburbs get a whole new shopping plaza or that unfashionable suburb gets a new planning scheme and suddenly you can build three townhouses in the overgrown backyard.
Perhaps we remember our embarassment more than the money. I figure, nothing is about the money, anyway, but if we have been treated shabbily that is very hard to forget.
Learning that it is all a bit of a game is important. Whatever or however we buy, whether we hold, trade, develop or whatever, at the end of the day we can't eat the stuff and it doesn't keep us warm at night. So it's a game.
So now when I hear about the other buyer I yield the ground. 'Oh, OK, let them have it!' When I hear about the higher offer which the vendor has already refused, I say 'Well, they're a bit of a mug, aren't they? They knocked that back? Phew!'
Maybe I'm just getting crusty in my old age, but if it aint fun, why do it?
I think it's important to keep things in perspective, to remember that this is an optional activity (Elective 1:01) and is for our own prosperity, no one else's.
Long after the agent has paid their mobile phone bill and bought the week's shopping, we will still have that house. Whether we pay $10,000 too much (who said it was too much?) or rent it straight away or buy broad acres and farm thistles, unless we were really possessed at the time, we will still have that property many years later.
He who laughs last laughs longest.
Don't feel embarrased, don't feel regrets, practice laughing and get out there and buy the next one.
Lizzie, I'm sure the agents concerned can't even remember your incidents. I make a fool of myself at least twice each day and three times on Thursdays. I just make sure I wear colours which won't clash with blush!
Silly Lizzie? No! Clever Lizzie! Buying all those houses, who would have thought a wee slip of a lass would be out buying houses before breakfast and have them renovated by tea time? Silly Lizzie? I don't think so!
Cheers
Kristine
By the way, when I bought the Bank the agent couldn't even be bothered coming out from their City office to show me through.
I had been talking to them since January yet it was only by chance that I say the Auction advertisement in the paper in the May. Like to take bets how I felt about that?
'Hello, Mr Big Time City Agent, when can I see through the Bank?'
'It will be open half an hour before Auction time'. Yeah, thanks.
Then, he rang me and said that a 'couple' were wanting to look through so I 'could' look through in the fifteen minutes that he would be there. 'Do you have the S.32?' 'Oh, no, they're not ready yet, they'll be at the Auction'.
Well, the 'couple' came to the auction but didn't bid.
Mike came to the Auction - hey presto! suddenly I was part of a 'couple', and the Big Time City Agents looked differently at me. Not much differently (I was, if I remember correctly, wearing a full length dress decorated with stars and moons and a velvet coat thingy which was a bit tight across the shoulders), but somewhat.
They couldn't keep straight faces when we all crammed into the change room back at my 35msq New Age shop to sign the contracts.
Eight years later, who's laughing? Do they even remember the property, or me, or their smirks? Nah, but that Bank is the Jewel in the Crown, worth every anguished dollar we paid for it, worth every cent we scraped together to keep up the instalments in the first few years, worth the dread of watching as it's value - and the municipal rates - fell, for one, two , three years in a row.
Mistake? Lesson? Yes, lesson, mistake, no. Lesson: Property forgives you. Property will calm your fears and sooth your hurts, embarassed though you may be when you buy.
Silly Lizzie, keep doing what you're doing. Have a lapel button made: Hi! I'm Silly Lizzie and I Buy Houses. When you're counting your $4 million in net worth just before you set off in your three bedroom Winnebago, look back and be glad you were Silly Lizzie, and not Sensible Lizzie, who would have known better than to buy those tawdry old houses in the first place!
By the way, I'm sitting here shrieking with laughter, remembering that dress! I sold lots of clothes like that, and the Anventageous range (made in New Zealand, I think) which were High Goth at the time. Outrageously expensive, people lay-buyed them for months and then wore their lace up Doc Martens with their tie dyed lace and ribbon creations.
The shop was lots of fun. I missed it for years later. But I've still got the Bank as a little momento to remind me! I can cope.
) and then did a runner! 
