The Reluctant Investor's Lament

Are you still waiting for that perfect opportunity to invest in income producing real estate?  How many opportunities have passed you by while waiting for that perfect opportunity?  The simple fact is there are good opportunities all the time.  Read the following poem written in 1917 and evaluate your current perspective.

I hesitate to make a list
Of all the countless deals I’ve missed:
Bonanzas that were in my grip-
I watched them through my fingers slip.
The windfalls, which I should have bought
Were lost because I over-thought:
I thought of this, I thought of that;
I could have sworn I smelled a rat.
And while I thought things twice,
Another bought them at the price.
It seems I always hesitate,
Then make my mind up much too late.
A very cautious man I am.
And that is why I never buy.

How Nassau and how Suffolk grew!
North Jersey! Staten Island, too!
While others culled those sprawling fars
And welcomed deals with open arms-
A corner here, ten acres there,
Compounding values year by year.
I chose to think, and as I thought,
They bought the deals I should have bought.
When tracts rose high on Sixth and Third,
The prices asked I felt absurd;
Whole block-fronts – bleak and black with soot
Were priced at thirty bucks a foot!
I wouldn’t even make a bid,
But others did- Yes! Others did!
When Tucson was cheap desert land
I could have had a heap of sand.
When Phoenix was the place to buy,
I thought the climate much too dry!
"Invest in Dallas- That’s the spot!"
My sixth sense warned me I should not.
A very prudent man am I
And that is why I never buy.

The golden chances I had then
Are lost, and will not come again.
Today I cannot be enticed
For everything’s so overpriced.
The deals of yesterday are dead;
The market’s soft-and so’s my head!
Last night I had a fearful dream;
I know I wakened with a scream.
Some Indians approached my bed-
For trinkets on the barrelhead
(In dollar bills worth twenty-four,
Nothing less and nothing more)
They’d sell Manhattan Isle to me;
The most I’d go was twenty-three.
The Redman scowled: "Not on a bet!"
And sold to Peter Minuit.
At times a teardrop drowns my eye
For deals I had but did not buy.
And now life’s saddest words I pen-
If only I’d invested then!

* This poem was first published in Farm and Land Magazine in October 1917.