It’s easy to blame bad luck when you miss a property deal, but sometimes the problem isn’t timing — it’s indecision. One realtor we spoke to, S, shared the story of a client who managed to stall himself out of the market entirely. Over four years and nine different ballot opportunities, he never actually bought anything — and it all boiled down to a classic case of analysis paralysis.
Too many projects, and too much to take into account
“I think he was consistent,” S says, half-laughing. “Consistently overthinking. He’d think too much and just didn’t dare to commit when the time came.” At first, S thought nothing of it. People do back out even after getting a queue ballot sometimes; it’s uncommon but not unheard of. But after the fourth or fifth time, it became clear that this client wasn’t going anywhere.
The most painful part is that it wasn’t as if he didn’t have chances. “He had a damn good queue number for AMO and Lentor Mansion, but he’d find some last-minute reason not to go through with it. Sometimes it was an excuse, sometimes just freezing up. But the end result was always the same — no deal.” In total, S estimates the client rejected nine different opportunities, including projects like Clavon, Penrose, and AMO.
All the while, prices kept climbing
Back then, Clavon and Penrose were launching at around $1,500 to $1,600 psf, and AMO was about $1,800 psf. In comparison, resale options like a three-bedroom at Thomson 800 were going for around $2.3 million. To put it in perspective, if he had bought the AMO unit he was once offered, the profit could have been around $358,000 on just a 579-day holding period. Today, the same stack has already climbed from $1,890 psf at launch to about $2,359 psf.
And this isn’t just about one project. If he were to buy today, most new launches — even in non-central regions — are already above $2,100 psf. Every cycle of hesitation closed more doors, and every year that passed raised the bar for entry higher. Asked whether the client was unlucky or just indecisive, S shrugs:
“Probably a mix of both. But after nine launches across four years, it was clear he had stalled himself out of the market.”
The worst part? The client never even bought anything in the end. “I lost contact with him, so I don’t know if he ever did. But this happens very often; people don’t recognise a good deal until they’ve already missed it.”
S’s advice for anyone still stuck in “wait and see” mode is blunt but to the point: “Time is the only commodity you can’t buy back. Maybe you’ll find a better deal in the future, but it’ll always come at the expense of ‘I should have.'”
A lot of this boils down to the myth of the “perfect property”
While S’s client was an extreme example, other realtors have said this isn’t unusual. There is a subset of homebuyers who are perfectionists: they believe they shouldn’t act until they find a property that ticks every box: close to work, close to school, close to an MRT station, cheaper than surrounding projects, future upgrades in the neighbourhood, and on and on.
But the reality is, some degree of compromise is better than nothing. It’s almost impossible to find the “perfect” property purchase that meets every requirement, and while you spend too long trying to find this proverbial unicorn, the real market could be zooming past your comfortable price point.
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This article was first published in Stackedhomes.
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