“The market is the most efficient mechanism anywhere in the world for transferring wealth from impatient people to patient people.” – Warren Buffett
Back in 1992 when I entered the Manhattan real estate market professionally, I made a conscience decision to join the residential industry over commercial. I thought that the sale or purchase of a home consisted largely of an intangible emotional component which attracted me. Twenty-three years later, emotion continues to be an immeasurable factor omnipresent in almost every residential real estate transaction. Unfortunately, panic and impatience are all too often emotional drivers when the proverbial “sh– hits the fan”. I saw it in the decision making of buyers and sellers when the Dotcom bubble burst in 2000, after 9/11 when our country and the world was shaken to its core, and again after the Crash of 2008. And it is way too soon to predict, but there is little doubt in my mind that some buyers and sellers will be hitting the panic button much too soon as a result of the debt crisis in China and theramifications felt at home and across the globe.
No one has a crystal ball and no one can possibly know how the Manhattan real estate market may be impacted by such a disruption in a flawed global economy that is still in its infancy. Even history can only tell us so much as never have the world’s financial markets been so intricately tangled as they are in 2015.
