Small Signs of Change: Is There a Light at the End of the Seller’s Market Tunnel?

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Just about all of real estate’s measurables have been pointing in sellers’ favor for the past year. Inventory hit record lows. Home prices hit record highs. Buyer demand has been off the charts, fueled by shifting priorities during the pandemic and record low interest rates.

But with the midway point of 2021 in the rearview mirror, there are signs of a light at the end of the tunnel.

On this week’s Walkthrough, HomeLight’s Caroline Feeney is here to share data from our Summer 2021 Top Agent Insights Survey. And three top agents from across the country join us to share stories from the real estate trenches — and the small signs they’re seeing that the market might be changing.

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Links and Show Notes

• HomeLight’s Summer 2021 Top Agent Insights Survey (Full report will be available on Wednesday, July 14)
• Caroline Feeney – HomeLight profile
• Pat Tasker – HomeLight agent profile
• Lisa Taylor – HomeLight agent profile
• Tyson Robinson – HomeLight agent profile
• YouTube video: Jeff Bezos’ Regret Minimization Framework
• Join our Facebook community for The Walkthrough listeners
• HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center
• Subscribe and listen to The Walkthrough: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTube

Full Transcript

(SPEAKER: Matt McGee, Host)

[Sound: active train at train station]

For the past year, real estate has been a one-way train. The market has moved completely in your seller’s direction. Inventory is down, buyer demand is up, bidding wars have been normalized. Interest rates hit record lows, home prices hit record highs.

But, as we start the second half of 2021, is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

HomeLight’s latest Top Agent Insights Survey is out today, and yes, there are some signs that things might be different the rest of this year. On today’s show, we’ll talk with three agents about what’s happening on the streets right now, what’s happening in new construction, buyer and seller activity, and much more. And HomeLight’s managing editor is here to help make sense of the new data.

Is that seller’s market train starting to slow down just a bit? Let’s find out.

This is The Walkthrough.

(INTRO MUSIC)

Hello there, how are you? My name’s Matt McGee, I’m the editor of HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center. Welcome to The Walkthrough. This is a weekly podcast. We have new episodes that come out every Monday morning. This is the show where you’ll learn what’s working right now from the best real-estate agents and industry experts in the country. At HomeLight, we believe in real-estate agents. We’re on a journey to find out how great agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable.

If you wanna get involved in the show, there’s a few different ways you can do that. You can find me in our Facebook listener community, just search “HomeLight Walkthrough,” the group will come right up. You can leave a voicemail or send a text, the number is 415-322-3328. Or just send an email, the address to use is walkthrough [at] homelight.com.

“A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.”

If you had “Matt quotes Chinese philosophy” on your Walkthrough podcast bingo card, congratulations, you win this game. I am as surprised as you to hear Chinese philosophy right now.

But it’s true. It feels like we’re 1,000 miles away from normal, from having a balanced market with enough inventory to meet demand, from home prices that are affordable to even first-time and lower-income buyers. None of that is gonna happen overnight. It’s not going to be a sudden dramatic change. When it happens, it’ll be the result of a lot of small, single steps.

My guests today…scratch that, my guests, plural…say we are starting to see some small steps in the market right now. HomeLight’s Summer 2021 Top Agent Insights Survey is out today, the results of a national survey of more than 1,100 agents. I’ll put that PDF in our Facebook listener community, by the way, so you can get a copy for yourself.

Caroline Feeney is the brains and brawn behind that quarterly survey. She is HomeLight’s managing editor. Prior to joining HomeLight, in 2018, Caroline spent 2 plus years at Inman, so she’s plenty familiar with industry trends.

On today’s show, Caroline and I are chatting about what we learned from you in today’s survey results. And we have three top agents from across the country sharing stories from the real-estate trenches. We have Lisa Taylor in Florida, Pat Tasker in Wisconsin, and Tyson Robinson in California. You will hear us talk about struggles in the new construction space, sellers wanting to strike while prices are high, the impact of COVID vaccines being available to everyone now, and much more.

All of that is straight ahead. I’ll also have a One More Minute segment at the very end of today’s show. But for now, let’s get started. Here’s my conversation with HomeLight’s Caroline Feeney.

(BEGIN CONVERSATION)

Matt: Caroline, we are past the halfway point of 2021. It’s been an interesting year for real estate, to say the least. Where does the market stand right now?

Caroline: Wow, halfway through…that flew by, didn’t it?

Matt: Right.

Caroline: As far as real estate goes, Matt, it’s the wild, wild west. And I can’t take credit for that descriptor, it actually comes from one of the wonderful agents who participated in our most recent survey and left some great comments. Speaking to the data though, across the nation, 98% of real-estate agents in our survey say that it’s a seller’s market. We’ve been collecting these agent reports of market conditions consistently for 3 years now asking people, “Is it a buyer’s market, is it a balanced market, or is it a seller’s market in your area?” And the historical data really puts this 98% number in perspective. If you look back to summer of 2019, just 63% of agents were reporting sellers market. But in 2020, when the pandemic housing boom started to pick up, that number was 79%. Now we’re at 98%. So, just looking at the broader data set, it really paints a very clear picture of the exceptional and rare nature of the current market we’re experiencing. I saw a recent report from the National Association of Realtors describe it as the most competitive housing market in 50 years.

Matt: It’s not like things are anywhere near normal, right? But is there like a light at the end of the tunnel, is that sort of the, you know, baby steps kind of thing? Is that what we’re seeing right now maybe?

Caroline: So, I definitely don’t wanna downplay the fact that we’re still firmly in seller’s market territory. That said, other data in our survey did point to what I would call small signs of change brewing under the surface. Again, nothing major but a few things to note. The percentage of agents who said bidding wars are on the rise in their market dropped from 52% in Q1 to 37% percent in Q2. Those who said that they believed home prices will rise in the next 6 months dropped from 73% to 67%. And those who said inventory is lower than they expected declined from 91% to 85%.

So, it’s not a tectonic shift but there is a pattern here that we’re seeing across all of these key indicators that we collected. And I think what it really confirms is what we’ve been hearing from the aging community now for…I don’t know, let’s call it 9 months, that the current run-up in home prices and bidding wars was never sustainable and that it’s natural we’d start to hit a bit of a wall. And I think the agents we spoke with the other day, you know, were saying that it could be 9 months, it could be a year before things really slow down, they don’t know for sure. But we are seeing these early indicators ever so small, you know, that things might be just normalizing slightly. So, it’ll be interesting to see and track that as the months go on.

Matt: It’s, as you said, it’s not a tectonic shift by any means but it’s better than going in the other direction, which is how it’s been, you know, for the last several quarters. You mentioned that…we talked to several agents, we had a conversation, Caroline and I did just a couple days ago, with three agents talking about what they’re seeing in their market. And they each talked about the small signs of change that Caroline just mentioned. So let’s hear from them. We’re gonna hear first from Pat Tasker in Milwaukee, she’s talking about how inventory is up but homes are still selling right away. She will be followed by Lisa Taylor, who’s in the Palm Beach, Florida, area. And then Tyson Robinson who works in the Temecula, California, market which is sort of in between Los Angeles and San Diego. So, let’s listen to what they had to say about these small signs of change.

Pat: I’ve noticed that the usual spring larger amount of listings didn’t happen when it normally did but it started to a little bit later. But I also noticed, at least in my direct community that I focus on, that the number of homes sold in the first few days, it still is about the same. Very few don’t sell in those first 2 or 3 days. So, the inventory’s gone up but the amount of offers under contract is staying the same. They’re selling right away.

Lisa: I’m seeing very similar. I’m seeing it slowly pick up. Our average days on market where I am in Palm Beach is actually higher than the national average. But, depending on the price range, we are still getting multiple offers. But I do see a slight slowdown with the craziness.

Tyson: I was just checking the numbers recently and the inventory slightly increased. I think the initial signs that I’m seeing is, essentially, based upon the listings we’re selling are getting just a few less offers. And, so, what I’ve been telling people is we may be at the very early stages of a shift and it may be a very slight shift but I say that, just because of the fact we’re seeing fewer offers, and so it may take at least a few more months for that shift to continue, but it’s going to be a slow shift from what I’m seeing.

Matt: Okay. So, there’s Tyson Robinson sort of echoing what Pat and Lisa said as well, that, yeah, there’s some things that are changing but it’s probably going to be a slow shift. That’s the phrase that Tyson used. Caroline, I mean it’s still, as we’re saying, it’s a very tough market right now for buyers in so many ways. When we spoke 3 months ago, I remember there was sort of this early sense of optimism that maybe new construction would help solve this inventory problem, maybe, you know, ease things for buyers. Is any of that starting to happen yet?

Caroline: Well, the industry has been calling for a boost in new construction to meet demand for years now. A recent report from the National Association of Realtors points to, and I’m quoting, an under-building gap of 5.5 to 6.8 million housing units since 2001. And the report calls the state of America’s housing inventory “dire,” arguing that policymakers really need to incentivize new development and address this head-on.

But beyond the normal challenges builders have faced over the years around, you know, permitting and zoning and labor shortages, this year we got a new challenge thrown our way in the form of lumber costs. Anyone who’s shopped for wood to build their deck or maybe put together their swing set has probably noticed the dramatic increase in lumber prices. Data from the National Association of Home Builders shows that, between April 2020 and 2021, prices of lumber rose 250% and have continued to increase in those months since. And this has added over $30,000 to the cost of building a new home.

Our survey data echoes that it has been a bit of a free-for-all for people buying new construction right now in early June when we polled respondents, 56% of agents said builders are having to increase prices on in-contract buyers due to these material-costs changes, and 45% reported that builders are having to price homes later in the build cycle to account for these fluctuations. So, it’s just creating a lot of uncertainty. I do wanna note though that, just this week, it was reported that lumber prices are dropping more than 40%. Now, they’re still higher than they were pre-pandemic, right?

Matt: Right, yeah.

Caroline: But this decline is good news for buyers and just for general affordability. So, hopefully, this means prices are gonna stabilize a little bit and maybe reduce some of these effects that we were seeing in our survey kind of peaking in early June.

Matt: We asked Lisa, Tyson, and Pat what they are seeing in their markets about new construction and there were some really interesting comments there. Let’s listen to what they said. We’re gonna hear about Lisa first, then Tyson, and then Pat. And Lisa, in fact, is describing, when we spoke earlier this week, she had just come out of a meeting a day earlier with one of their local builders in the Palm Beach, Florida, area and she describes for us what that meeting was like, how their builder is doing things right now. So, let’s listen to that.

Lisa: They, and I wrote down what they have, they have a 7 to 9-month build out, once you go under contract. But they’re only releasing a few homes a month, you have to make an offer on the home so it’s not that where it used to be like a specific price point, you have to make an offer on the home. It takes 3 days for them, for the builder, to actually accept the offer and then 7 to 9 months to build out from there. And then, depending…obviously, the price that they come in, at that point, is the price that they’re contracted for but the design center, if they’re putting, you know, whatever they’re putting in for their touches, that could go up depending on the cost of supplies and everything. So, it’s definitely, put all that on hold, you know, slowed everything down.

Taylor: I mean similar I think, for the most part, they’re only releasing a handful of properties because I think they’re banking on the fact that home prices are just shooting up so quickly that they’d be shooting themselves in the foot by essentially releasing too many homes at any given time. So, they’re slowly releasing…I wish we had even more new home inventory but what we’re seeing in my market is there’s still not enough. We could definitely probably even see new home inventory doubling, we’d still be good.

Pat: In my two immediate communities that I live in and my offices, we’re seeing a lot of building, more than we have in the past. So, that’s been good. I haven’t really seen anything…I mean the prices, of course, some people decided to wait because the prices for lumber and all that went up so much. One of our builders, their average home of 500 is now 600, and that’s over about an 8-month period, the builders rep told me.

Matt: Caroline, one of the things that I remember when we were just chatting the other day with the three agents, all three of them mentioned that they are hearing stories in their markets…like some tension between builders and real-estate agents because there’s such demand for new home construction. Some of the builders are like removing agents from the process entirely.

Caroline: Yeah. It sounds like, with the demand just being there, some builders aren’t seeing the need for a middleman. But I do think that the agents were saying, it’s not all builders, right, it’s just some, but it is creating some tension there between the agent and builder community.

Matt: The other thing that we should just I guess repeat a little bit is that, you know, builders, as you were saying earlier, builders have struggles of their own right now with lumber prices and regulation and all that sort of stuff going on. So, it is sort of a very tense area right now in the new construction space.

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Matt: Let’s switch gears, Caroline, and switch over to the seller side of things. Are we finally seeing any changes from what sellers are doing in this market?

Caroline: Well, we’ve heard a lot about how sellers are stuck right now and that, if they sold their current home, there’s no guarantee that they could necessarily secure a new residence, which has kept a lot of homeowners where they are, rather than moving. But, meanwhile, all the time prices keep going up. Right?

So, in our survey, we explored, is there a point where a seller can be bought? No matter what level of hassle it would be to move right now, if they’re having to move twice, are there some who would decide they cannot pass up this opportunity to cash out? Because I think, if you’re a homeowner right now, you’ve done the math. Right? Like, even if it’s just for fun in your head, you’re thinking about like, “How much equity have I gained?” and like, “what would that mean if I like theoretically…” Right?

Matt: Caroline, legit, I’m not kidding, like every, you know, 3-4 weeks I ask Cari, “What do you think our home would sell for right now?”

Caroline: A boatload.

Matt: Right, yeah, exactly. Right? Like it’s, if you’re a homeowner, you’re right, you can’t help but wonder.

Caroline: Yeah, totally. So, our survey results indicate that listings are starting to materialize in response to this line of thinking. Specifically, 49% of agents say they’ve already seen seller FOMO, or fear of missing out, results in some additional listings. And 48% say they expect the sense of seizing the day to unlock more listings this summer and into the fall.

We also explored in the survey what type of seller is gonna be most likely to act on prices. So, 61% of agents say that the type of seller most easily swayed by the price surge is going to be an almost retiree who is cashing out a few years earlier than planned as a way to boost their savings. Because they might not be staying in that home long enough to whether a correction and then go through another upswing. Right? So, they’re seeing that opportunity.

I also wanted to point out anecdotally, we heard from a real-estate agent named Travis Cox, he’s in Louisville, Kentucky, and he said he’s seen clients under the age of 30 selling their first or second homes and deciding to rent until prices drop. And I wanted to just quote him real quick, he said, “It’s an odd strategy and yet these clients are putting more money in their pockets than they have made in the last 12 months. Who am I to say that’s wrong?”

Matt: Yeah, that’s a good point. Right? Well, I mean it’s a unique time and, you know, as I said, I know, as a homeowner, I’m constantly wondering what our home was worth, what would happen if we tried to sell. And yeah, I mean it sounds like sellers are trying to, you know, play the game of, you know, “Where’s the peak and can I take advantage of it?”

Let’s hear what our agents had to say. We talked to Pat and Tyson, both said that they are seeing FOMO, as you said, fear of missing out. So, let’s hear first from Pat Tasker, in the Milwaukee area, and then Tyson Robinson in Temecula, California.

Pat: Definitely, I’ve seen a lot of people who may have thought…well, I’ve actually had sellers who were thinking they weren’t gonna sell maybe till next year, or within the next few years, who have jumped in and sold their home. They just moved up their dates to take advantage of the market because they weren’t quite sure when the market would change. The trend I’m kind of now seeing is a lot of people think, “Hey, I’m gonna take advantage of this market,” and they think that their home can get top dollar when they don’t realize their home doesn’t really match up to the ones getting top dollar. So, they’re throwing things on the market before they’re really ready and expecting some foolish buyer to just pay a crazy price for it.

Tyson: I’m seeing it for sure. I think a lot of real-estate agents in our area do just because we do, especially within the Temecula Valley market, we see a lot of sellers looking to buy in other states. We definitely are seeing, I would say, almost 50% of my sellers are going to other states. And, so, they’re at a point where they’re seeing where prices are at and, you know, they think, in many cases, we’re near the top. Or, if anything, they just think that they could obviously net a good amount of money to facilitate their move to Texas or to Florida or Arizona or Idaho.

Matt: So, there’s Tyson Robinson and Pat Tasker talking about seller FOMO. What about the COVID vaccine, Caroline? Last time we spoke, I remember it was just becoming widely available. Now pretty much anyone can get it, I think, across the country. Has that impacted the market at all?

Caroline: You’re right, I mean the last time we spoke was, I think, in April, and that was a very different time as far as vaccine access goes and where mask wearing was. So, I think, naturally, the percentage of agents who say vaccines are impacting their market has increased to 33%, compared to 22% who said the same the previous quarter. And the top vaccine impact seen by 45% of agents is that health concerns among sellers have dropped considerably. One agent described the impact as just an increased sense of confidence that someone can go ahead and finally move forward with their plans to sell. And this type of thinking should, in theory, start to help inventory a little bit.

Matt: And we heard that from the conversation, the group conversation with our agents earlier this week, so let’s listen to what they had to say. First, we’re gonna hear from Lisa Taylor and then Pat Tasker, both agreeing that just the wider availability of the vaccine is, as you just said, starting to make people more confident. So, let’s hear them.

Lisa: I think it has definitely opened everything up, much more people are much more confident. We are seeing more homes hitting the market, our inventory for the last month of May has gone up in my area. It’s definitely had a huge impact, as far as people feeling more comfortable [inaudible 00:22:37] opening up. I’m seeing much more open houses now as well, which were very…we were never shut down, Florida was never shut down, but, you know, people didn’t want open houses, they didn’t want people wandering through. It’s definitely changed.

Pat: I feel like, in Wisconsin, we are over it all. And I don’t know if it’s because of the vaccine or because of the rules on the masks. So, we ended the mask rule. And, last year, I did a special page in my listing presentation about seller security during COVID and the steps we could take. Nobody even wants me to go over that page anymore. I just say, “Are you concerned about COVID?” and really everyone, in the last, I don’t know, 6 weeks or so, has said, “No, skip it.”

Matt: So, there’s Pat Tasker. Carol, I thought that was really interesting what she just said about, you know, when she goes on listing presentations, people not even wanting to hear about, you know, the COVID safety and all that sort of stuff. I mean I agree, I feel like a lot of people are just over it at this point. Don’t you?

Caroline: Yes. Certainly in my area people aren’t really even talking about it anymore.

Matt: So, speaking of post-COVID life, two of our agents, Caroline, volunteered…I don’t think we asked this question but they just both volunteered, in the course of the conversation, that they are seeing a lot of interest in homes with pools right now. Does that fit with what we saw in the survey?

Caroline: That is another theme we heard from agents, essentially that “home” means something different now to Americans and there’s no going back. And that they’ve really seen a fundamental shift in homebuyer preferences, even post vaccine. As people resume their travel plans and head back to their favorite restaurants, people still aren’t ready to give up their home amenities. Right? We found that, even post vaccine, when agents are helping buyers look for homes, those buyers want, number one, a home office, number two, a great school district, if they have family, and number three is outdoor living areas.

And what was interesting is that agents say that outdoor living areas are even more critical for their clients in the Gen X demographic who are really settling into those years where they wanna host gatherings of friends, family, and colleagues at home. In addition, agents predict that pools and patio additions are going to be the number one home-improvement trend post vaccine driven, in large part, by the hybrid work week, right, where people are going into the office part time at most. And, so, they’re continuing to spend more time at their own residences and that might mean, you know, more happy hours spent at home, at the pool or on the patio.

Matt: Or, yeah, doing some work out on the patio, if you can, if the weather’s nice.

Caroline: Or doing work out there, yeah.

Matt: Exactly. Let’s hear what both Tyson Robinson and Lisa Taylor had to say about the demand for pools in their markets.

Tyson: Pool homes and homes with lots of amenities go crazy. You just get just an uncanny amount of offers on properties with pools and stuff here. And I think, of course, that was somewhat influenced by the whole COVID situation and people really wanting to have more of a destination to go home to or just to work from.

Lisa: So, a lot of homeowners or home buyers were looking for homes that have everything, especially the pools, some with outdoor kitchens but the pool was the most important for families here. And people who are moving down want the pool as well. So, that’s definitely been something that there’s been a huge push on, I feel.

Matt: So, the lesson there is, if you are a homeowner or you have clients that have pools, you can expect a lot of demand right now.

Caroline, we have covered a lot of ground in this conversation. We’ve talked about sellers, you know, having FOMO, we talked about buyers dealing with new construction struggles, talked about the impact of the vaccine. I think we also talked maybe, you know, the big takeaway for me is that we’re starting to see some small signs of change, maybe things are starting to flip in a different direction.

Where do things stand overall? I know, in the survey, we always ask, you know, are agents optimistic about where things are headed. What did we find out in the survey about that?

Caroline: We still have a majority or 80% of agents saying that they’re optimistic about the 2021 housing market. This is down from 84% the previous quarter. But, for perspective, it’s up from 68% one year ago. You know, I don’t think anyone can deny that we’re reaching, you know, a new level of housing fatigue. Some buyers are frustrated and might be throwing in the towel. The current seller’s market to this level of extreme can’t be sustained. Listings are hard to come by and buyers are tired. But, you know, ultimately, the desire for homeownership remains strong and we could be approaching a more balanced state, given the signs we’re seeing of prices and bidding awards hitting a ceiling.

Matt: And when we spoke with Tyson, Lisa, and Pat, all three of the agents that we spoke with are optimistic that the strong market will continue. I like what Pat had to say. Her thought was that, as we go forward, instead of getting 12 offers on a home, we’ll start to get 6, then we’ll start to get 4, then we’ll start to get 2, and, eventually, things will slowly get back to normal.

Caroline: That’s right. They all spoke to an incremental change, rather than, you know, expecting to see a large dramatic correction.

(Speaker: Matt McGee, Host)

Maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel and we’re just starting to see it way way off in the distance. Thanks so much to Caroline Feeney and to our three agent contributors, Lisa Taylor, Pat Tasker, and Tyson Robinson. Takeaways segment, that’s coming up in just a moment. I also have a One More Minute segment at the very, very, very end of the show.

First, two quick notes to pass along. Number one, I wanna give a shout out to Elmer Morales and Jackie Soto of e-Homes. You may recall they were on The Walkthrough just about a year ago, we did a great series about converting online leads. The reason I’m mentioning them now is they are based in the Los Angeles area but they just, I think it was a week or two ago, announced an expansion into the San Diego market. So, I just wanted to say congrats to both of you and best of luck to the entire e-Homes crew…not that you’re gonna need it, of course.

And note number two, there is no episode of The Walkthrough next week. I am taking some PTO for the first time this year. So, I’ll be back on July 26th with a great, great episode. We’re gonna talk about how to find new listings when inventory is low.

All right. Let’s do the takeaways segment. This is what to remember from today’s episode.

Takeaway number 1, 98% of you say we are still in a heavy seller’s market. But many agents are seeing small signs that the market is changing. Pat, Lisa, and Tyson all said inventory is up slightly in their markets. And in our survey fewer agents say bidding wars are on the rise and fewer agents say that low interest rates are bringing buyers into the market.

Takeaway number 2, new construction is starting to help a bit but the home-building process, it sounds like, is very very slow at the moment. Builders are dealing with their own challenges.

Takeaway number 3, in our survey, Caroline mentioned that almost half of agents are seeing seller FOMO, the fear of missing out, on these high home prices. Another reason sellers are getting more active? The COVID vaccine has them less worried about health issues. One-third of agents in our survey said that vaccine availability is impacting their market.

So, overall, still very much a seller’s market but they’re all are small signs of a shift. All three of our guest agents agreed that it’ll be a slow change.

All right. If you have questions or feedback for me, you can leave a voicemail or send a text, the number is 415-322-3328. You can send an email to walkthrough [at] homelight.com or find me in our Facebook listener community, just search “HomeLight Walkthrough” and the group will come right up.

That’s all for this week. Thanks to Caroline Feeney for joining me. Thanks also to Pat Tasker, Lisa Taylor, and Tyson Robinson as well. And thank you for listening.

My name is Matt McGee and you’ve been listening to The Walkthrough. At HomeLight, we believe in real-estate agents. We’re on a journey to find out how great agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable.

Go out and safely sell some homes. Remember, no show next week. The next Walkthrough is July 26th, I’ll talk to you then.

(OUTRO MUSIC)

Welcome back and welcome to another edition of One More Minute.

Jeff Bezos just stepped down last week as Amazon’s CEO. There are a lot of reasons to both love and hate the business he built, and we could talk for hours about that. I wanna talk now about his Regret Minimization Framework. It’s a mouthful.

What it is is a thought process that will help you work through big difficult decisions, and, best of all, it’s really simple. The goal of this framework is to minimize the number of regrets that you have about your business or your life or whatever. So, here’s what you do when you have a big decision to make.

Number 1, project yourself into the future to the 80-year-old version of you. Number 2, as an 80-year-old, you look back on your current decision. Number 3, you ask yourself, “Will I regret choosing A or B or C or whatever number of choices you have?” And then, Number 4, you act accordingly.

There’s a 3-minute video on YouTube where Bezos explains how he used this framework to make the jump from his cushy hedge-fund job to launch an online bookstore in 1995. I’ll link to that in today’s show notes. The main quote he said, “I knew that, when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called ‘the internet’ that I thought was going to be a really big deal,” end quote.

So, a big decision to make? Ask what the 80-year-old version of you will regret, and act accordingly.

That’s One More Minute. I’m Matt McGee. Thanks for listening.

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