Most real estate brokers will start a conversation with a prospective buyer by asking 2 questions:
- where do you want to live?
- what’s your budget?
Neither of these questions are about the client, the person. They are about locations, properties, money.
In my 15 years of working as a residential real estate broker, I’ve always started from a different place:
How do you want to live?
How you want to live is about you:
Your values. Your needs. What kind of life you want to have. What you need from your community, and where you find community.
How you want to live determines what type of physical structure suits you best.
How you want to live dictates your neighborhood choices.
How you want to live determines how much you want to invest, which is more relevant than how much you can invest.
How you want to live determines where you’ll feel most at home.
Beneath this question is a more fundamental quesiton:
What makes life worth living?
What lights you up?
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
What leaves you feeling fulfilled?
The properties, the finances, the markets …. these things have a way of sorting themselves out once you’re clear on the fundamentals.
Connecting to What’s Important
It’s these fundamental questions that lie at the heart of the holiday of Sukkot.
Sukkot, at its most basic, is about home: not about your house or apartment, but about your soul’s home.
It’s about where you find security in the midst of uncertainty, where you ground in the midst of chaos, and where you cultivate joy in the midst of despair.
It’s easy to get caught up in beliefs about what we need to be happy and feel safe. Nowhere is this more true than in the world of luxury real estate in NYC.
Sukkot allows us to experience the joy that can be found in simplicity, without the trappings of the things we are told we’ll need.
The signature reading on Sukkot is Kohelet, known in English as the book of Ecclesiastes. In it, the author lays out how he amassed great fortunes and material success, yet never really found the joy in life.
He never found his true “home” in money or palaces or material possessions.
Ultimately, the author of Ecclesiastes concludes that what gives life meaning is finding joy in the moments, in being of service to others.
Sitting in the Sukkah, surrounded by nature and stripped of the trappings of modern life, gives us the opportunity to reconnect with what really matters.
Having just prayed to be granted another year of life, this is the time to ask the hard, but essential, questions:
What is life about?
What makes life worth living?
The key to finding your true home begins with these questions.
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