From Transaction to Transformation: Why Homebuying is an Emotional Journey: Scott Harris - Ep - 552

People do probably more preparation, Alan, to plan a weekend vacation, maybe even just to book their rental car. I like to say people spend more time binging Netflix on one night than they probably do preparing for their home search, which is arguably one of the most critical decisions they're going to make outside of maybe who they marry.

If you think buying a home is just about the numbers, You're missing the $2 billion secret to a successful search. This episode will reveal why your emotional intelligence, not the market data, is the true game changer. Welcome to Streams to Impact, brought to you by Steve Talker Capital. I'm your host, Dr. Allen. There comes a moment in every high achiever's life when success feels less like freedom and more like a gilded cage, where every bonus, every raise, every hour of mastery seems to feed the IRS more than it feeds your dreams. But there's another way, a path the ultra-wealthy have quietly taken for decades, where money works as hard for them as you work to earn yours. It's time you rode into the open range where your wealth runs free, your taxes shrink, and your purpose expands. Beyond the Paycheck is the Financial Clarity Compass, an instructional masterclass By myself, Dr. Allen Lomax, psychology professor and investor counselor. This private educational experience is our gift to you. To claim your gift, go to www.go.stetucker.com/beyond-paycheck. Now take a deep breath, feel the reins in your hands, and let's ride into today's Just a brief disclaimer. All information shared on the Streams to Impact is for educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as investment, financial, legal, or tax advice. All investments incur risk. You should not invest if you are not prepared to lose 100% of your investment, and you are always encouraged to consult your legal, accounting, and tax advisors before making any investment. What do you get when you combine grit, the emotional intelligence of a therapist, and over $2 billion in New York City real estate sales? Well, you get our guest, Scott Harris. Scott is not just a New York City broker. He is a bestselling author of The Pursuit of Home and the creator of the Magnetic Method. which is transforming the way people approach one of the biggest decisions of their lives. Today, he's here on Streams to Impact to share how he guides clients past the paralyzing fear of buying and into the powerful transition of finding a true home, all with actionable psychological insights. Scott, welcome to Streams to Impact. We are so happy to have you with us today. You have closed over $2 billion in New York City real estate That is impressive, to say the least. At what point in your career did you realize you weren't just selling properties, but you were actually serving as, well, we could call you a real estate therapist?

Well, first, hi, Alan. It's great to be here. What I would say, I would start by saying that I realized what I was doing much long, a long time after I was doing it. Okay? That's the truth. That probably 7 or 8 years ago, I realized early in my career that what I had been doing when I got into sales played a real role in doing some inner work for me. I grew up as a child of divorce, a broken home. I moved back and forth between my parents about 500 times before I— left the house for college and helping people was doing a real heavy lift in my own inner work. And so, I realized it was really this work I had been doing all along and the satisfaction I got from helping people, not just in real estate, but just how can I help people move forward? I always knew I wanted to help people, Alan. So, it was really real estate has been a vehicle for me to do that. And early on, I realized, wait a minute, I can make a huge impact here.

Well, that is very interesting, Scott. So, your book and your approach center on this idea that home buying is a transformation, that it's not just a transaction. So, can you kind of break that down for us? What does that actually mean for someone who who is out there searching for a home, particularly probably their first home?

Well, first, Allen, I don't think that this is a revolutionary idea. I actually think that this is the most obvious thing hiding right in plain sight, that if you ask anybody who's gone through the home buying experience in the past and you start to bring up these ideas, they're going to say, well, duh, Scott, of course. The issue is that nobody talks about it. People finish their purchase and then no one talks about the emotional journey that they took to get to their home and what they do here. And what you, if you read and do the research, you realize how many people are, have some kind of buyer's remorse, some dissatisfaction with their, the outcome. So I wrote the book to sort of describe originally This experience, this emotional journey that people take that's hiding underneath the transaction. So, so many people want to make this about the dollars and cents, but it's about so much more. And you're not going to see it on social media. You're not going to see it on reality TV for sure. But you are going to see it if you ask any realtor. They're going to go, yeah, of course. We're therapists. We're coaches. We're cheerleaders. We're marriage counselors. We're all of these things. And about 5% of the time, we're really the transaction specialist. I wanted to help people, not just in New York City where I do most of my business, but everywhere across the country. And this felt like the most impactful way I could do this, to launch a podcast, to talk about real buyers buying real estate, and really to do what I feel like I have a special— I'm blessed to have a little bit of a skill of writing and to share what this journey looks like in a book form.

Well, you mentioned that Even the most talented, successful, and capable people become emotional wrecks during the home buying process, and I can relate to that as well. And it's just not at all unusual for people to have done a lot of searching and researching, and then they get that under contract and suddenly they're experiencing what we often call buyer's remorse. Maybe it's their first home, maybe it's their 10th home, but it's still— they still find themselves in that position of going, why did I sign that contract?

Yeah, people approach this, Allen, without what I think is the necessary preparation, that if you start this process By envisioning what the outcome, what you really want to get from your home—not just the home, not just the number of bedrooms, not the price point, not the location—but what you're trying to get out of it—it totally reorients the process. It creates the conditions for a much better outcome. You start to attract agents who are going to help you achieve that outcome. It helps you even mortgage brokers. It helps you. Reorient the way that you talk about this with your friends and your family, and maybe who you don't talk about the process with. I think buyer's remorse largely comes from people who think they want one thing when they really want something else, and they haven't done enough preparation to really get to the heart of what's important to them. I think it's, it's not, it's not this insolvable problem. It's actually quite easy. But it requires some communication at front and throughout the whole process.

Well, Scott, let's look into your methodology. You've developed what you call a magnetic method, and there's 4 steps to that: activate, align, amplify, and attract. So could you just walk us through that? Perhaps maybe you have an actual real-life example that you could share with us.

Yeah, that would be great. So first It's a 4-step process. It's more of a description of how we've helped sell about $2 billion of real estate over the last 2 decades that people are going through this process, I think, all wrong. They have the entire thing on its head. And so, what I'm aiming to do is show, okay, this can be a lot easier. It can be a lot more fun and can end up with a home that they really love. And I want you to imagine we're coming up at the end of the year. I don't know when this podcast will come out, but New Year's resolutions and how many people start a New Year's resolution and then they don't finish it. That is real estate in a nutshell. That's what the first step of this is about. I sit down with a couple, they just got married. They're so excited to buy their first home. I give them the tiniest bit of homework to do and they don't Even do that, right? They they sort of disappear. They get scared and they stay on the couch. So the first step of the magnetic method activate is really about creating the conditions, sitting down with someone and creating an inspiring first draft of a vision for what they're looking for. And the difference is if you go on any real estate website, even now you know you have AI that's helping out. And there's some big companies, and I know the chief technology officer of a massive company. I'm not going to name who they are, but even then, the questions are all about what's your budget, how many bedrooms, what's the square footage, where do you want to locate, do you want to be near a church, do you want to be near a school, instead of asking the most important questions, which are who are you, who are you, what are you about, what are you trying to achieve in your life? That changes the whole conversation. This is a people-focused process. If people are looking for how do I get the best deal on real estate, this might not be the focus for you. But I think when you get underneath the transaction, which is all I'm trying to do, you realize that everyone is sort of justifying their emotional decision with the transaction part.

Mm-hmm.

So activating is just getting rid of that, that veneer of the transaction and getting to the heart of what matters. And then, you know, I've got, I've had so many couples. This is the hard work. The second step is called, is align. So we have to get everybody rowing in the same direction. Over 70% of homebuyers are buying as a couple. So to get to the heart of it, you sit down, there's always one person who's a little bit more excited, ready to go than the other. And it, how do you slow down enough to get both people the room, give them the room To communicate with each other and with you, and it's all about what your communication styles are. You know what I found is that you're going to have somebody in the couple that is more data-oriented. They need all of that data, and God bless them; they need the data. Somebody else is usually emotionally driven, and so if you don't give both of those people the space to sort of express what they need, they're going to. Not be with each other. They're not going to trust you. So, that part of aligning is really the hardest work because it takes the longest amount of time to get everybody rowing in the same direction. And the third step is what I call amplify. Again, this is all using the metaphor of a magnet. I call my company, my real estate brokerage is called Magnetic. Amplifying means how do we continue to push and provoke and Get more— do more activity to make sure that that first draft of your vision gets clearer and clearer. That means making offers and seeing more property and more and more communication so that ultimately what happens is in the 4th step, which is attract, you really start to attract the home that you want. I mean, people talk a lot about manifesting the result, how it looks in real life. Is you call any real estate agent and they say, "Look, I believe in you as a home buyer. Look, Mr. and Mrs. Home Buyer, I believe in you. We're going to make this happen." And it's constantly the buyers are. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm scared. I'm afraid. They keep borrowing that belief from their agent and from their friends and whoever the trusted circle of people. And then all of a sudden, some something happens, and they find, "Hey, I saw this property. It's not exactly where you were looking. It's not exactly the price point." But it's I had this intuition that this is going to work for you. That miracle part that if you ask any real estate agent, it just happens. All the people are about to give up, and then the next day or the next week, that perfect property shows up. I think people have gotten. You've heard rise and grind. You know, that's like a saying that you know, hey, let's just go after it and push and push and push. This is like, hey, maybe you need to just communicate. and create that clear vision, and then it comes to you. It can be a lot easier. I know it's like scary as can be for some people to say, wait a minute, you're saying that I don't have to work? And I actually say, no, this is harder work than pushing and pushing and pushing. This is like trusting in the universe and trusting in the people that you've empowered to help you. Does that make sense?

Oh, it makes perfect sense to me. I work with investors rather than homebuyers, but we go through that exact same process and we start with vision and help them align everything they're doing from an investment perspective with that vision. And without that— I mean, and even with that, there's still all of those scary moments when they're ready to place their investment and it's like, well, there's always another shiny object on the other side of the fence. And when we've even, you know, gone through that whole entire process that you're talking about, and it's always at that last minute where it's like all that fear rises up, and you have to tie it back to that vision and help them to, to really get grounded in that vision and realize that, yeah, this is the investment you've been looking for. So yeah, I totally get it.

It happens a lot when people get their offers accepted. They find creative ways to sabotage their own deals.

Absolutely. And it's the perfect house for them, but there's always, always some way to sabotage that. So in your book, you talk about Zillow therapy, which I think is an interesting term there. And you say that that's a modern distraction, and I think it's not just in Zillow, it's anything online. We've just gotten into this addiction of scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and these short clip videos are some of the most addictive things I think that are out there. So what's— what do you think is actually happening psychologically when buyers get stuck in this pattern of just scrolling through Zillow for this listing after this listing and And comparing one listing to another and hoping to find that perfect, perfect home?

First, let me say that Zillow and Houzz and Pinterest and all of these other websites have incredible usefulness to help you initially create a vision for what you're looking for. They sort of lose their utility from there. They actually work against you. One of the hardest things for a home buyer to realize as they set out, they're going to start looking at properties and open houses. Guess what? Social media makes everything look perfect. Real life is messy. Real life is messy. And so you go in and you have this really different expectation for what things are going to look like. And then you go into the homes and guess what? They're just messy and they have dirty this and the countertops, all these things that are going to De-energize you on some level. So what is what purpose does the social media serve after that initial boost of vision creation when you really okay this is the house I like this is the kind of stuff I want it really does serve as almost like a protection for what I call in the book opposite mode people can often tell you what they don't like well I don't like this this is kind of too big this and It's kind of too much like that. I mean, I had a client who we spent about a year where they kept telling me how much they didn't like this. And what we finally cut to the year, we realized they were trying to recreate a smaller version of the home that they had just sold.

Hmm.

In New York, it's all loft apartments and regular apartment buildings. And What they needed was something else. They were in a different stage of their life, but they just couldn't wrap their head around what they wanted now. And it just took that long for their hearts to kind of catch up with their brains. They were just so stuck in their heads that they couldn't allow themselves to just have that body reaction to what they would love. So, social media, I think, gives you an excuse to keep looking for the thing that's perfect and saying, well, I'm comparing the perfect with the reality. Yeah. And it's just you're banging your head against the wall. And I, I know it's a crazy suggestion, Alan, but what if you just stopped looking at Zillow and trusted your inner wisdom? You know what you love. Guess what? It's telling you in your gut every time you walk into a home, every time you consider making an offer, you're doing that gut check. And people are afraid Sometimes to trust their gut. And so if you partner with the right real estate agent, bring the right friends in on this inner circle, I think you ultimately have a safer space where you can talk about what you would love. And maybe it looks different than what you see on social media. And that compare and despair, it really cuts against your own trusting yourself. That's what this is all about.

Yeah. I wonder why that's so hard to trust ourselves. But there was one statistic in your book caught my attention, and that is 71% of buyers hire the first agent they meet. And you say that this can actually sabotage their entire journey. Why, why is this such a critical mistake, and, and how should buyers actually overcome that?

So the statistic really is shocking that People do probably more preparation, Alan, to plan a weekend vacation, maybe even just to book their rental car. I like to say people spend more time binging Netflix on one night than they probably do preparing for their home search, which is arguably one of the most critical decisions they're going to make outside of maybe who they marry, right? And They get, let's say, and I do all the math in the book, but about 40, a little less than half of the people out there don't even get a recommendation on an agent. They just go online, find someone, maybe it's somebody who represents a property, and they just go ahead and hire them because they think that it's just about the transaction. What you quickly learn is that an agent may have a default communication style. And even worse, about 1 in every 6 real estate agents has only been in the business Less than two years, so the chances that you are working with a sophisticated person who not only knows their own way of communicating but really can understand what your own communication styles are is not high. So what I recommend is not some crazy interview process where you've got forty agents and you put them out the door and you're doing this, but actually get a couple recommendations, maybe interview three or four people, and I give the whole list of what are the questions you and your spouse, if you're working, you know, if you're buying with a partner. Ask the questions like, how did they make me feel? Did I feel seen? Did I feel understood? Did I feel like they heard me? Did they ask intelligent questions? And once you interview more than one person, you're going to be able to see somebody stands out for you. And you talk to your spouse like, how did that feel for you? These are not the easiest conversations to have, but gosh, if you just slow down a tiny bit, And really, it's— you don't have to be smart. There's nothing to like figure out. It's just, it's an answer. Like, it's either yes or no. And I— it's so hard. You said like, why is it so hard for people to trust their gut? We've built this entire society based on expertise. When, when it's your home, it's your home. No one knows what feels like home except for you. I don't know I have an intuition. I've been doing this for 20 years. I've sold thousands of homes. But guess what? I'm trying to create a space where you can have that answer, and I can just try to serve up things that I think are the best fit. But the agent, that relationship is so important because if you don't pick the person that feels right in your gut, you just spend most of your time complaining about them and you're frustrated. They're not giving you the information in the way that you need it. They're not. And if 2 people have different communication styles, guess what? That agent has to give you the data and has to give somebody else the, the quality of the schools and, oh, your children are going to feel good because of this, that, and the other. They have to speak the language of both of you, and that's not always easy. But by the way, some agents who've been doing this for 5 minutes are masterful at this. Some agents who've been doing this for 5, 10, 20, 30 years Aren't doing it well anymore. There's no one, you know, profile that's going to work. It's what works for you. I really want to empower homebuyers to take matters into their own hands and pick someone that feels right to them.

Well, relationships are so critical in really all of our dealings. And we just really don't— I think we really do not have Enough education in terms of emotional intelligence, and we are a people that we are so isolated in so many many ways and different means. And and while Zoom and other online applications help us to connect across. great distances and in short times, there's something lost in that, that, that human connection can only bring together. And so it's in looking at emotional intelligence, which is the real game changer. I totally and completely agree with you. Can you share a story with us where your emotional IQ made the difference between a client finding The wrong house versus finding the house that they really loved.

Well, Alan, we touched on people that find the home that they love and then seem to go out of their way to sabotage it, right? I was working with a couple and they— we identified, we negotiated, we had a home that they loved, we had a price that was really great. All of those things, the paper— on the paper, you know, The resume stuff. And they were— the day they were going to sign the contract, because in New York, it's not a signed contract until later in the process. In most places, it's just an accepted offer. And then there's inspections and things like that, but that get you from A to Z. They were going to sign the contract that day. I get a call from the wife. And what she said to me was, I've spoken to my husband last night. We're worried that this home is too nice. So like, let that sink in. They're like, maybe we don't deserve it. Their parents were helping them out. They were helping them buy the home with a lot. They were putting a lot of money down as a— her family. And he was like feeling like he didn't deserve it. Now, the backstory to this is that this couple years before had their first child. They lost their first child. It was born with a birth defect and they were in the hospital for over 2 years and then died.

Mm-hmm.

And it was— I was at the funeral and it was like, you know, you couldn't get a seat. You couldn't, like, you couldn't move because so many people were at the funeral service and just sobbing. This was like couples and couples, just their hearts were like, you know, being ripped out. And a lot of agents, when they would have that call from this wife telling them, I don't think I deserve this home, would Default to the transaction hat. They put on the transaction hat and say, "Actually, this is a great deal, and we've looked at lots of properties, and you know this is right for you." And you know blah blah blah blah blah, right? That's not what she needed to hear. You know, like it wasn't about the transaction. Didn't matter what the price was. They felt like they didn't deserve it. And so emotional intelligence. I I was almost like. Like God or something was— spirit was speaking through me. And I found myself telling them, actually, do you realize how much of an impact, how much of a positive impact you and your husband have made on our community? You are the— you are examples of like resilience like you wouldn't believe. You've inspired couple after couple who've had trouble conceiving and having trouble Going through life, it's just a tough. It's tough, you know, in New York or anywhere, just to hold things together. You are an example of what is possible. You've had now you've had three more kids. If anyone deserves a home, it's you guys. You are wonderful people. You were wonderful whether you went through this or not. But I can tell you, like you deserve it more than you know almost anybody out there. And that's I think what. Emotional intelligence can look like. And hopefully, God willing, it's not something that people will ever have to go through, something like that. But it's those kind of moments when you just pour your heart out to somebody and you just stay open and you're listening for not what they say, but what they really need. That's the genius that sometimes comes out. I don't claim to be the smartest guy in the room, but gosh, You know, most of the time I'm listening. Podcasts are weird because I have to talk about everything. But in truth, most of the time I'm just listening to what people have to say, and I say a lot less than I'm listening. That makes sense.

Yeah, for sure. It's a wonderful kind of intuitive understanding that that you have developed. And I can certainly understand why you've been successful, not only because of that intuition, but it, it also is very clear that you really thoroughly and completely enjoy what you're doing and enjoy being in that position where you can really help people to find Not just a house, but to find meaning in the, in the house that they're going to be living in. So, Scott, for someone who's tuning in today who's thinking about buying a home, or perhaps they're already in the search, what's one thing that they should do today to make that shift from transaction Into transformation.

Allen, that the transformation piece certainly happens over time. So there's not some magic wand that immediately they can transform. What I think is most practical and helpful for people is to maybe when they first start looking online, like we said, on a Zillow or on a whatever the website they wanna look at, realtor.com or homes.com or whatever it is, See if they can catch themselves in their own inside talk and see if they can hear themselves saying, "Oh wow, this is so expensive." Oh, there's no there's no inventory. Oh, the mortgage rates are too high. I can never afford this. Oh, I you know I just read this article that says that you know the fifty-year mortgage is going to make me a slave to you know whatever the the news du jour, and see if they can hear that negativity. And then say like, okay, I hear all this. Is this helping me find a home that I would love? I think the answer is almost certainly no. And instead ask this question: What does home mean to me? That cuts through all the noise, Alan. What is home for me? That's not an answer you can get from the website. That's not an answer you can get from your realtor. Or your mother, or your cousin, or your crazy Aunt Rita, right? Like this is only an answer you have. Maybe your spouse has a you know hopefully you guys have a very similar answer. Maybe home is the people that you have around. Maybe home is your community. Maybe home is your children. There's there's no right answer. It's your answer. And when you find when you get to the heart of things, you realize you really make your own market. You create a vision for what that home looks like and you work towards it. And your real estate agent is helping you build towards that and holding space and being an inspiring person in your life and realizing they've been here before. And those real estate agents, it's not about the commission because if you care about the person and you deliver unbelievable service, It's going to come back to you tenfold, twentyfold, fiftyfold. Anybody, you can feel it when someone cares about you. But the most actionable thing you can do, the simplest thing you can do is to stop everything once you realize all the crazy noise and just ask yourself, what does home mean to me? And you're going to start, you're going to embed this home search with a very different energy. That I think will help you find a home that you love.

Well, that truly is a profound question, and the only way to answer that is, is through feeling. It's just not an intellectual question at all. It's truly a feeling question. Well, thank you, Scott, so much for being with us. It has really been a transformative conversation. The core insights is that finding your home is a transformational experience, not a transactional opportunity, and that the Magnetic Method that Scott talked to us about provides the actionable steps to align our goals with that transition. And we learned that emotional intelligence and breaking free of the Zillow therapy trap Are the real keys to that success and asking that question, really, what does home mean to me? So Scott, thank you again for riding with us today. For everyone listening who wants to access free resources and tools to begin their own pursuit of home, you can find Scott's free resources and tools at his website. www.pursueyourhome.com/free-resources. That information will also be in our show notes. So before we go, remember that you can claim your free gift from Steve Talker Capital, the Financial Clarity Compass, an instructional masterclass that is designed to help you ride into the open range where your wealth works as hard as you. And works to earn you your time and financial freedom. So claim your gift at www.go.steevtalker.com/beyond-paycheck. Thank you all for being with us today, and please ride into the future with impact and meaning, and we will see you in the next episode.

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