Learn to listen to that small voice in the back of your mind.
Most people can remember a time they got taken in.
Maybe not immediately. Sometimes it takes years before you fully admit it to yourself.
But when you look back honestly, you realize something uncomfortable.
You usually knew.
Not consciously, at least not in a clean logical way. But something felt off the whole time. Your brain was picking up signals you didn’t fully know how to process yet.
Maybe the story was too polished. Or the promises came too easily. The numbers seemed a little too good to be true. The person seemed just a little too smooth.
You knew. You just wanted it to be true badly enough that you ignored it.
When you read stories about retirees losing their nest egg because they listened to a shady promoter, of course you feel bad for them. But it’s also true that part of what pulled them in was the desire to believe the story.
Car sales is the stereotypical example because most people have experienced it.
You walk into the dealership already emotionally attached to the idea of the car. The salesman does this every day. He knows how to create urgency, lower resistance, keep you focused on monthly payments instead of total cost, disappear for “manager approval,” and generally move you along psychologically until signing papers starts to feel easier than stopping.
The strange thing is most people know it’s happening while it’s happening.
They know the guy is full of it, but they go along anyway because they want the car.
Then later comes the regret phase, where suddenly all the little warning signs become obvious in hindsight.
My business is famous for telling people what they want to hear. At least up front. Especially on pricing.
A seller wants to believe the property is worth more than the market probably supports. An agent who needs the listing understands that immediately. So they tell the seller what they want to hear, get the listing signed, and worry about dragging the client back to reality later.
That game works often enough that people keep playing it.
Most of the time, the seller knew something felt off from the beginning. But the higher number felt better emotionally, so that little warning voice got ignored.
That’s the dangerous part about hearing exactly what you want to hear.
It lowers your defenses.
A lot of landowners avoid getting valuation information entirely because they don’t want the pressure and harassment that often follows it. Which is understandable. Once some agents think they smell a possible listing appointment, it can start feeling like getting circled by seagulls at the beach.
So people avoid the process altogether.
Even though knowing is still better than not knowing.
That’s part of why I structured the MBR Land Reality Check the way I did. Some people simply want information without feeling like they accidentally clicked “submit” on a timeshare presentation.
Even if the answer isn’t exactly what they hoped to hear.
PS – Most landowners aren’t planning to sell right now.
But when something changes, the ones who already understand what they’re dealing with tend to handle it better than the ones figuring it out on the fly.
That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. It looks at actual sales, what’s competing, and the things that push value one way or the other.
Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?
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