Earlier this morning, I had to drive into Charlottesville to drop off my High School basketball rules test to my supervisor. During my drive, I was listening to one of the latest editions to my music library– The Very Best of Chicago 40th Anniversary Collection. With Chicago in my ears, and officiating and real estate on my mind, I got to thinking about how all of these things are linked by one simple concept– context.
We all know about context. We hear all the time from celebrities or public figures who are reported to have said something, only to come out later and say that they were misunderstood, that everything was taken “out of context.” There is no doubt that context is important. Nothing in life occurs in a vacuum. The context in which an event occurs has a great deal to do with how we interpret that event.
I want to share with you three examples of context, and the tremendous difference it can make. The first is from officiating, the second from the world of entertainment. I want to finish with an example of how important context can be to real estate, especially if you are selling your home.
Good call or bad? Depends. . . Context is absolutely CRITICAL to officiating, especially in basketball. Most fans who watch games just assume that a referee sees plays and makes a call whenever there is an infraction. That simply isn’t so. By rule, any contact between players in a basketball game COULD be a foul. It COULD be. That doesn’t mean that it is. So how does an official decide what to call and what not to call? Simple– context.
A good official watches a play through development, action, and finish. After doing all of that, then a proper call can be made. Sometimes contact that looks as if it is severe enough to cause a disadvantage has no effect at all, and is ignored. The official also has to take into account previous calls in the game. If a certain play has been called one way at the beginning of a game, it should be called that way at the end of the game. That being said, there are times when a call that might have been a great call in the first minute of the game, might not be such a good call in the last minute of a game. Understanding context is critical to officiating a basketball game well.
Chicago’s greatest hits or greatest flops? Depends. . . I confess that Chicago is one of my favorite bands of all time. So what if much of their music was made before I was born. I still love it. The funny thing is, when I was listening to the “Very Best Of” album that I just bought, I was hearing the songs in a totally different context. If you take each of the songs on its own, they are all incredible. The problem is that when you listen to the whole album, the contemporary songs sound very different compared to the more classic songs.
The early hits like, “Saturday In the Park,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is,” and “25 or 6 to 4,” are juxtaposed against their later hits, “You’re the Inspiration,” “Hard to Say I’m Sorry,” and “If You Leave Me Now.” While the latter are each good songs in their own right, their over-produced and highly-synthesized sound comes across as ridiculous, almost embarrassing, when heard after the richness and complexity produced by the horns and instrumentation of the former. I still like all of them, but the context of the songs helps me appreciate some of them more than others.
Competitive listing or not? Depends. . . In the real estate market, context matters just as much as it does to officiating and music. When you decide to sell your home, there are going to be other homes on the market competing with your home for attention and contract. These other homes provide the context in which potential buyers will see your home. They will compare it to the other homes on the market. Sometimes this can be good, other times, not so good. It all depends.
Because real estate inventories are not static in any given market, the context of your home changes constantly. Let’s say that your home is priced perfectly in line with recent comparable sales and current comparable listings. What happens if, over the course of a few weeks, all the competing listings reduce their prices by 10%? Buyers will now see your house in a completely different context than they did before. Pricing is probably the most important context to buyers, but not always. Location can be just as important. I often work with buyers who say, “I just wish I could take this house and put it over in that neighborhood.” These buyers are expressing a dislike for the context of a home, not for the home itself.
If you want to give your house the best possible chance of selling for the price that you want in the time frame you want, it is important to understand the effect that context can have on your sale.
Remember– nothing happens in a vacuum. If you have any hope of understanding one event, you will need to understand the context in which it occurs. Context isn’t just for public figures or people giving interviews. Context matters to all of us. It matters to basketball referees, it matters to musicians, and it should matter to you if you want to sell your home.
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