Living with my head in the sand

Too often I find myself thinking that life is always so good, and although it really is despite the economy, etc., I still need to keep my eyes open and my head out of the sand. First example was last year, when our booming real estate market that was still strong when the rest of the country was tanking. I had all the confidence that we were not going to be affected, we had the strong banking centers and were the second largest financial center in the company. Suddenly our market shifted drastically, and it honestly took most of our community by surprise. I'm still hoping that we won't be as dramatically affected for as long as other parts of the country, but you just don't know.

But that's not what I wanted to write about. My rude awakening came the Monday after New Years when I got a text from my husband while I was in a listing appointment. Our house had been robbed in the middle of the day. Our house is in a modest neighborhood close to town, a neighborhood that has appreciated 200% in the past 5 years, except of course the past year when the market tanked. I've been in the house for 15 years, my new husband for almost two. We are on a slight hill on a street that is often used as a cut-through, so our front door is fairly exposed. We have two large dogs in the backyard with access to the back porch, so I never was concerned about anyone breaking into our house because the dogs wouldn't let them in the back door. Therefore we never turned on our alarm! So you can imagine how stupid I felt when I found out that these burglars kicked in our front door and took out our 42" TV as well as cameras, laptops, IPod, and my jewelry, right out the front door. Yep, head in the sand. So now I call our house "Fort Knox", and encourage all of my friends and clients to get a security system and turn it on, just because you never know who's going to be wandering in your neighborhood! It doesn't make my neighborhood nor our city an unsafe place to live, break-ins are becoming more common in all areas of the country with more people out of work and homes. I equate it to my advice to sellers..."Think ahead of the market and price accordingly, don't chase the market". We have to think ahead of the economy and plan accordingly, whether that is getting an alarm system, pricing homes ahead of the market, or cutting our projected expenses in 2009, just in case!

There is some comic relief to the burglary that I'd like to share....I had a jewelry box on my dresser that had most of my necklaces, mostly Lia Sophia jewelry I've collected at parties the past two years, nothing too valuable or sentimental, but things that I wore a lot and loved. The same night my neighbor across the street was taking out his trash, and found the box and the jewelry all in his garbage can! So the adage is true in many forms, "one person's treasure is another person's trash"! Fine with me that they didn't have my taste in accessories!