Real Estate Spidey Senses

By Vena Jones-Cox

Ok, so this is me making the craziest-sounding post I’ve ever made here, but here goes.

I’ve talked to a lot of people now who’ve both been in real estate for decades AND who’ve done a lot of different kinds of deals, and so far, they all agree that we eventually develop what I call “Real Estate Spidey Senses”.

What it feels like from the inside:

You’re looking at a deal where everything seems perfectly fine. The numbers work. The seller/borrower/partner is agreeable and aligned. Maybe the title and inspections even look clean. Nothing has actually happened that should make you nervous.

But something…

…Maybe it’s in the seller’s story. Or a single conversation you’ve had with the proposed partner, out of many. Or the way the deal is coming together.

Something you can’t put your finger on makes you think:

“This deal is going to blow up.”

You can’t tell exactly HOW it’s going to blow up. You can’t point to a specific problem. You just have a feeling that something you don’t know about yet is going to present itself—and when it does, the whole thing is going sideways.

(There’s a reverse to this, too: the rare scenario where the seller has said “No” in a seemingly no-going-back way, or maybe even signed a contract with someone else, and your spidey-tingle says, “I’m going to buy this one…”)

Since in real life, I have very little in the way of “intuition”, I have to think that tis is long-term, accumulated pattern recognition.

After you’ve done enough deals, your brain notices tiny things you don’t consciously notice. An answer that’s a little too vague, or a little too pat. A detail that doesn’t quite fit. A person who should be involved but hasn’t appeared yet. A seller who is too agreeable—or oddly unconcerned about something that should matter.

None of those things is enough to make you walk away by itself. But together, they remind some experienced part of something that it literally can’t describe, but definitely feels.

Eventually, given the right inputs, you can even see this in other people’s deals. I sit on Friday morning exchange calls every week saying to people, “I think there’s something this seller isn’t telling you” or “I have a bad feeling about this borrower you’re talking about but that I’ve never met”, only to find out later that yep, the whole deal blew up.

I’d argue that this is one of the biggest reasons you need really experienced people around you.

Sometimes you’ll tell an experienced investor about a deal you’re excited about, and they’ll say, “I don’t know. Something about that bothers me.”

Your immediate response will probably be to think that they’re being negative. You’ll be tempted to explain, again, all the reasons the deal is perfectly fine. And they still may not be able to give you a clear, logical reason for what they’re feeling.

Listen anyway.

I’m NOT saying kill the deal. II don’t even kill my own deals when the real estate spidey sense goes off.

But what I DO do is slow down, ask more questions, verify more things, avoid spending money too early, and make sure I have a clean way out.

You don’t have to understand somebody else’s spidey sense to benefit from the hundreds of deals that created it.

Sometimes the most valuable thing an experienced person can tell you isn’t, “Here’s exactly what’s wrong.”

Sometimes it’s simply, “I feel like I’ve seen this movie before, and I don’t think you’re going to like the ending.”