I
walked into a local Circle K recently to grab a quick fountain drink – I don’t
need anyone telling me how soda is bad for me and my kidneys, so just go with
me on this – when I looked up and saw there was a small dispenser that you
could use to add a flavor shot to your drink of choice. You love Mountain Dew but want to add a
little lemon to it, pop your styrofoam
cup under the dispenser, press “lemon”, and out shoots a short burst of
yellow-colored syrup that – I’m assuming – is lemon flavored. Variety is the spice (or syrup) of life,
right?
What
caused me to pause, though, was on this particular dispenser there were four
choices: lemon, vanilla, cherry, and cherry (zero calories). Did I mention that the shot that comes out
when you make one of these selections is enough syrup to fill, at best, the cap
on top of a two-liter bottle of soda?
How many calories could there be in the regular, unadulterated cherry
syrup that made it necessary to come out with a zero-calorie alternative? Was there a rash of cases of young children
and small Chihuahuas being rushed to the ER as a result of diabetic comas
brought on by this calorie-laden cherry syrup that Circle K HQ made it their top
priority to come out with this alternative?
So many questions ran through my mind!
The
truth of the matter is if you’re standing there filling up a foam chalice with
44 ounces of soda, is cutting down on the 10-15 calories (if that many) by
going with “cherry lite” REALLY doing you any good? Chew and swallow the Twinkie in your mouth
before answering. While you’re doing
that, I’ll get to my point – I promise I have one.
This
past week, I’ve conducted some informal research on millennials
(read: I had a conversation with two people who are college graduates and are
in their mid 20s) related to the real estate market. To wit, I asked them what is keeping them
from purchasing their first home. You
can guess at some of their answers and be dead nuts on, but the one answer I
got from both of them that caused me to think about the subject of this
newsletter is this: they don’t want to be tied down – they view purchasing a
home as being chained to a particular city and giving up freedom. Light bulb moment!
Up
until this very moment, the vast majority of us had the mindset of “once the millennials
take a moment and realize that home ownership is the American dream, we’ll be
good to go – just give them a little time.”
After talking to these two people, I realized that mindset, when it
comes to millennials,
is similar to the thinking behind offering a zero-calorie cherry syrup – it’s
dumb!
What
I’m about to suggest is not intended to be THE answer – millennials,
like everyone else, are individuals and have their own opinions – but I think
it’s a good one: we need to treat them like investors, not home owners. We need to educate them on how to get the
most house in the best neighborhood for the least amount of money. We need to demonstrate to them that a
purchase is a wealth-building tool just like many other business ventures they
might be considering to improve their station in life. This means helping them understand what
others (renters in particular) are looking for in a house and pointing them in
that direction – this will help them to see a purchase as a sense of financial
freedom rather than being chained down.
This approach, in many instances, is going to take more time than just
getting a pre-qual
and then putting them in a car to go look at houses, but those of us who put
the time in now will do much better as this segment of the market is only going
to grow. And when we start seeing the
benefits of the time we’ve put in to help these investors, we’ll be able to
take a break and have a soda – splurge, and get the real cherry.
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