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After reading Kristine’s post on luck and timing, it brought to mind the one opportunity we passed over that cost Suzie and me a seven-figure sum. It’s come to mind on occasion over the years. Although it causes me a pang of regret, it’s not really something I dwell on.
It was during the Irish property boom that started in 2000 and peaked in 2007. Property values tripled, driven by the peace process and deregulation of the local financial markets.
We had purchased our current home reasonably early in the cycle and had been riding a wave of rising equity valuations for six years. New housing was springing up everywhere, but development was frustrated by building companies having limited land banks in desirable locations.
This was the state of affairs during the spring of 2007 when opportunity came knocking, and I actually mean literally knocking. I opened the door to find a gentleman on our doorstep. He turned out to be the residential property director of a large construction business operating in the Irish market.
His proposal to Suzie and me was very simple and straightforward. If we would consider selling our home, his organisation would offer £1,000,000 more than our realtor’s property valuation—for context, at the time, that was the equivalent of $2,000,000. They wanted to develop our large plot.
We carried out extensive due diligence and soon realised the offer was genuine. We talked about it nonstop for weeks before deciding that we would turn down the offer and continue to build a life for ourselves and our young children in our present home. The main reason for declining seemed sound and logical at the time: If this is the opportunity now, think what we could realise closer to retirement. Let’s consider our house and garden as part of future retirement planning.
Six months later the market crashed 50% and never recovered for 15 years, by which time the heat of development had ended. Our house and garden was quietly dropped as a source of retirement wealth. Sometimes good things pass us by. That’s just life.
As bbb said below, the woulda-coulda-shoulda circumstances can you nuts. I seriously considered buying Microsoft back in the dark ages. But I didn’t want to risk the money on something unknown. I’m still OK. 🙂
Back in the early 80s I worked at a software subsidiary of D&B – a colleague said that the guys on the floor above offered him a job with stock – I think it was 10k shares and they thought it might eventually be worth $10 a share. These guys looked sketchy – beards, smoked weed in the stairwell – so I advised him not to take it but instead look for a company that you could open the WSJ and see it valued right there on the page. He ignored my advice and became one of the first 50 employees at Microsoft.
Years ago a coworker’s husband was encouraging me to invest in a company because the ex CEO had just returned and he thought the stock price was going to explode. My response? No thanks I’m not an individual stock holder, I’m an index mutual fund investor and like to spread my bets around.
Oh yeah, that CEO was …Steve Jobs. I think you know how that bet has worked out.
Re the coulda, shouldas there’s always the butterfly effect. Of course being awash with cash you might have invested a big chunk in your business to try to expand, overdone that and crashed and burned.
Bummer! Where would you have moved to? Would raising your family in a different location have turned out as well as staying (even with the extra $1,000,000 in your pocket)? Woulda coulda shoulda…who knows?
There was a kind of circularity to the experience. Two other properties changed hands around the same time. The first sold before our offer, and a small development of nice four-bed homes resulted. The one that sold after we turned down the offer was three-quarters finished when the construction company got into difficulties and folded. The development lay abandoned for a year until a government-funded social housing enterprise finished the site and rented the units out as high-quality social homes for young families. Strangely enough, my grandkids now live in one of those rental homes, and my grandson’s best friend lives in the four-bedroom development.
My neighbor was an IT guy. Around 2010 he asked me about this weird currency thing; Bitcoin. This was around the same time people had been buying Dinars. I advised him to stay away from unregulated money. Bitcoin was worth way less than a penny at the time. Oh well.
I’m curious. Has your neighbour asked your financial advice since?
For some reason, he still talks to me.
Your obviously to nice to ignore.