Buyers are back. The Mortgage Bankers Association reports applications for purchase mortgages, down for more than a month, jumped 11% over the prior week. Even refinance applications were up 8% for the same period.
Sellers are back too. Realtor.com says “The first couple of months of 2024 have proven to be positive for inventory levels, as the number of homes actively For Sale was at its highest level since 2020.”
And sellers have plenty of equity to work with. Analytics firm CoreLogic reports that the average homeowner with a mortgage ended the year with $298,000 in equity, gaining more than $24,000 in Q4 alone.
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ~ Thomas A. Edison
Sir James Dyson, British inventor and founder of the Dyson Company, is a firm believer in failure. In fact, he sees it as an essential part of his success -- a step toward a truly Innovative solution.
When Dyson invented his first Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner, which hit stores in 1993, he spent 15 years creating 5,126 versions that failed before he made one that worked. The payoff was a multi-billion dollar company known for its creativity and forward-thinking designs.
Here is a short interview with Dyson by "Entrepreneur Magazine":
Entrepreneur: You often talk about the value of failure. How has it helped you?
Dyson: Failure is interesting -- it's part of making progress.
You never learn from success, but you do learn from failure.
When I created the Dual Cyclone vacuum, I started out with a simple idea, and by the end, it got more audacious and interesting. I got to a place I never could have imagined because I learned what worked and didn't work.
Entrepreneur: How do you embrace a long series of failures without letting frustration overwhelm you?
Dyson: We have to embrace failure and almost get a kick out of it. Not in a perverse way, but in a problem-solving way. Life is a mountain of solvable problems and I enjoy that.
Entrepreneur: Your cyclone technology is often held up as a model of creative problem solving. Does failure help spur your creativity?
Dyson: It absolutely does. You don't have to bother to be creative if the first time you do something, it works.
Creativity is creating something that no one could have devised; something that hasn't existed before and solves problems that haven't been solved before. Making something work is a very creative thing to do.
Entrepreneur: When you fail, how do you approach the next iteration?
Dyson: What I often do is just think of a completely obtuse thing to do, almost the wrong thing to do. That often works because you start a different approach, something no one has tried. You get a different perspective and view of (the problem).
Entrepreneur: What do you do to encourage taking risks among your employees?
Dyson: You must remove any sort of criticism. A revolutionary suggestion often sounds stupid and you don't want people who make cynical remarks.
It's a matter of having the right attitude -- humble, curious, determined, willing to fail and try. (I hire people who) embrace the fact that failure is interesting.
Entrepreneur: What would you say to entrepreneurs or inventors who feel afraid to fail or worried that they'll be judged?
Dyson: That's a sort of lesson in life, isn't it? You mustn't be worried about what people will say about you. If you want to do something different, you're going to come up against a lot of naysayers.
Big companies tend not to take risks, so there's a big opportunity for entrepreneurs to take them and march on competitors. Business is constantly changing, constantly evolving. You've got to try things out.
That kind of advice may be lip service for a lot of people, but coming from the likes of a billionaire who got there because of 5,126 failed prototypes, it has a pretty big impact! ~ Nadia Goodman
Nikki Craft
Lucerne Valley Properties, Inc
760-912-2103
CraftyNikki12@gmail.com