Last week, I spent several days in Palm Beach, the guest of a couple who are dear friends of long standing. They invite me to visit every winter, and it’s always one of the highlights of my entire year – not to mention a lovely break from the Nashville winter.
They are excellent hosts. We eat well, drink well, have interesting conversations, and laugh a lot. What’s not to love?
And then there’s Palm Beach itself. Near-perfect weather in February, the beach on one side and Lake Worth on the other, breathtaking beauty everywhere you look. Wonderful!
But also a little disorienting.
Being on Palm Beach is a bit like visiting another planet. Everything looks both familiar and strange at the same time. The amount of wealth concentrated on this small island is hard for most of us to imagine – and it makes everything seem a little “more.”
Which brings me to real estate and perspective. Palm Beach is a great place from which to observe Nashville.
Here in Nashville, our white-hot market is unlike anything we’ve seen heretofore. This causes a lot of emotions among buyers. Many fear they will never be able to buy a house. Others are angry at the rising prices, feeling it’s all unfair. Others are afraid if they buy high, the bubble will pop and they will lose a bundle.
The Palm Beach real estate market is almost exactly like Nashville’s – assuming you add a zero to the end of every price. A $500,000 tear-down in Nashville is a $5 million tear-down in Palm Beach. A $2 million spec house in Nashville is a $20 million spec house in Palm Beach.
And Palm Beachers’ reaction to this situation is about the same as Nashvillians’ is to ours. Tongues are clucked, eyes are rolled, and things keep right on going … upward.
To me this says a couple of things –
Scale and substance are not the same thing. Everything in Palm Beach is bigger brighter, glossier, and more expensive. But, the market dynamics are exactly the same as here. No matter where you are, you buy a ticket and you play the game. For better or worse, you roll with it. More expensive isn’t better – or worse – it’s just different.
Money does not buy happiness! My hosts are two of the happiest people I’ve ever met. They have a very nice house – four bedrooms, three baths, pool, gorgeous kitchen – that is totally dwarfed by some of their neighbors. (One of those $20 million spec houses was built across the street and sold before it was finished.) Do they care? Heck no! They love the life they have. And I suspect they’d be happy in a two-room shack if they had each other.
Which brings me back to a truth I tell all my buyers. Sometimes sellers, too. This is about a place to live. Your house is where you do your life. It involves money and investing, yes – but it’s about life. If your life is okay, your house will be okay – or at least endurable – too.
My job as a realtor is to help my clients get where they want to be, when they want to be there, on the best possible terms. But looking at the market from a Palm Beach perspective might make the whole process seem less daunting.