Real estate extremes, from Jekyll to Hyde

Flickr image by maria_lc.

In this recession, many of us have cut household expenses by getting rid of unnecessary "help" and re-upping on the self-reliance. We've gone from eating out to cooking at home, ditched our dry cleaners for Dryel, and started substituting every other visit to the manicurist for a quick home file-and-polish job.

This trend, plus the fact that so many of the shady segment of subprime loans were a result of an implicit conspiracy of intentional under-information between house-hungry homebuyers and their mortgage professionals has, as I've discussed before, given birth to a new generation of awake, reading-before-signing real estate consumers.

And this is great -- ideal, even. Even better, this awakened proactivity has trickled over into every phase of real estate transactions and homeownership. Sellers are researching the comps for their homes on the Web and beginning to prepare their homes for sale before they even call the first listing agent candidate.

Homeowners are reading their escrow statements -- the most "autopiloted" of ownership bills -- and calling the bank to reconcile the insurance bills and property tax statements with the amount their lender has been collecting since time immemorial.

All good. Well, except for one thing. You've heard about how fine the line is between love and hate, of course. I submit to you that the line is even finer between being a smart, proactive real estate consumer and overdoing it as a do-it-yourselfer.

See, it's like this: Some people own the label "hypochondriac." These folks are typified by the guy in that WebMD commercial who says he surfed the site so much he got carpal tunnel syndrome. This guys needs to see a medical professional, but probably more a mental health provider than someone to treat his wrist.

I, on the other hand, prefer to think of myself as an amateur doctor. In addition to being committed to healthful living practices, I take responsibility for my health by staying up to date on the constantly evolving medical data relevant to me.

I research alternative treatments on the rare occasions I do have a concern, and interact assertively with my family's health care providers to ensure, among other things, that all my questions are answered and that I understand and agree with their conclusion regarding the best course of action -- before we go down that road.

I subscribe to the general rule articulated so well by my dear friend Elaine, who says that 80 percent of sicknesses can be resolved without traditional medicine, 10 percent cannot be resolved at all, and the other 10 percent can be resolved only by a traditional medical intervention.

Yes, despite my request for a scalpel last Christmas (which, by the by, are really hard to come by), I do acknowledge that there is a critical set of conditions that you most certainly need an M.D. to treat and procedures you want only an M.D. to carry out (plastic surgery being at the top of this list). ...CONTINUED

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