I did it for you

You know the scene in old war movies where one guy falls on a grenade to save the rest?  It's always a dramatic moment.  The whole unit is in a foxhole and this guy -  usually a comic or conflicted character -- maybe the whiner, or the guy with the Italian or Polish accent, or the guy who doesn't get it -- he sees the grenade first, and jumps on it just as it goes off.  And all his faults are redeemed in that one moment of self-sacrifice.



That's who I'm feeling like right now.  I am taking one for the team. 

This is about rising real estate prices.  We're all in this war together, like our movie unit.  We're asking the same questions.  If we're renters, when will we afford a place of our own?  If we're homeowners, should we upgrade now, or sell and rent for a while? Will our kids ever be able to buy a place?  The market is overdue for a correction, but when is it going to happen? How long can we hold off?  It's a grenade, I tell you, a housing grenade.  And it's landed right in our foxhole.

Good news!  You can let out the deep breath you've been holding.  I just bought a place.  I did it for you.  Now, thanks to my decision, you know when the market correction is due to hit -- within six months at most.  That's how long it took the last time I made a real estate decision.  And the time before that.

I do not have a chequered past in real estate.  I have a uniformly grim past, a sad past, a past full of wrong decisions.  Over a number of decades during which housing prices have risen umpty-ump percent, I have lost, well, umpty umps of money.  Not possible?  Oh yes it is.  I buy high.  I sell low.  I do it consistently.  You could say I have bad luck. Or bad advice. Or you could say I'm just bad at real estate.

My expression as I signed the Agreement Of Purchase And Sale this morning was the same expression as that Italian-Polish whiny smart ass in the movie, when he jumps on the grenade.  Think Sidney Carton, only without the lost love. Tis a far far better thing I do ....