Playing the hand you're dealt

The greatest joy of doing what I do is that it’s never just about the house.

My clients are always buying, selling, or moving because something in their life has shifted. These shifts create puzzle pieces that need to be put together, but there’s rarely a clear guide for how to do it. And often, those pieces can fit together in more than one way, which means we don’t always know what the final picture will look like. That’s the joy (and the challenge) of life.

Last week, I had two meetings with past clients that perfectly illustrated this.

One set of clients just lost their father. The other just welcomed their first baby. The ultimate dichotomy: death and new life. Both moments that put everything into perspective.

Both families need to make housing decisions, and frankly, neither likes the numbers they’re seeing. We’ve run all the scenarios, looked at every angle, made tentative plans, and built backups.

But it’s never just about the house. And it’s rarely just about the numbers.

Even though they’re in opposite seasons of life, my advice to both was the same.

Life has dealt you a hand of cards. Your job now is to play the best hand you can with what you’ve been given. The numbers might not look great on paper, but in time, these moments will be just small blips on the radar.

Right now, the focus is family. For one, it’s about restoring what’s been broken. For the other, it’s about building something new.

The situations are what they are, but how we respond to them makes all the difference.

The point is simple: just keep on livin’.