Run Your Runway

Hey cuz,

Everyone enters a housing search with some runway.

Maybe you have three months before your current lease ends. Maybe you just landed in Korea with four weeks at an Airbnb. Maybe you have ten days in a hotel.

Long or short, that's your runway.

And one thing I keep seeing is that people don't necessarily run it. They start looking. Save listings. Maybe view a couple places.

Then the search starts getting uncomfortable.

The Airbnb is ending. A good listing disappears. The agent says this one won't last. Or sometimes nothing dramatic happens at all. They're just tired of thinking about housing. They want the search to be over.

The decision stops being entirely about whether this is a home you want. They make an escape decision. Part of the yes is simply wanting the uncertainty to go away.

Deeply human. Housing uncertainty eats attention...

You need to run the runway.

Because that runway is more powerful than it looks. For as long as you still have somewhere to sleep, no particular apartment has to work.

A listing can disappear. An agent can tell you someone else is interested. A listing with nice photoes can disappoint you at viewing. You can say, “not this one,” and still have somewhere to go that night.

That's a position. I noticed a lot of people don't realize they have it.

Of course, runway only helps if you use it.

Go see things. Walk the neighborhood. Let a few homes disappoint you. Find out what your money actually buys. Learn what you can compromised, what not.

But you're not doing all that because more searching is automatically better. You're doing it from a position where each home is allowed not to work.

This is also why I like temporary roofs when you first arrive in Korea.

A weekly stay, Airbnb, serviced stay, or short-term lease can look like money you're throwing away while waiting for your “real” home.

But if you run that time, it can be the opposite.

You're buying runway. Another week where a particular apartment doesn't have to work. If your runway is short and you can reasonably extend it, that can be worth a lot. But even when you can't, run what you have.

Two weeks actively running your runway can teach you more than two months spent scrolling and waiting for the right listing to appear.

The goal isn't to stretch the search forever.
It's to use the time before you have to land.

So when you finally put the money down, maybe you don't know that you found the best home in Korea. You don't need to.

Maybe you just know enough to say:

Yeah. I can live with this. And sleep well with it.

--JK