In Estill, South Carolina – a small town where my farm is located, a guy was telling me about a conversation he overheard at the local restaurant.  Two farmers were talking about their tractors; farmer A preferred one brand and thought it was a much better tractor and farmer B preferred another brand.  When I heard about this, I laughed because I deal with that every single day in the real estate business on Hilton Head.

It is what I call pride of ownership.  A person loves their house – they think their house is worth more than anyone else thinks it is worth because they are the ones that spend the most time there and it means the most to them. 

When someone asks me to do a market analysis on their property and I start going over the comparable sales, they normally start telling me why their house is better than the house four doors down.

Someone told me that they thought their house was worth $10,000 more than a particular house because they did not have a ceiling fan in their living room.  I think what she was really saying was that in her mind her house was the best because she had “pride of ownership”.  This does not surprise me at all – if someone owns something they are proud they own it and think it is worth more than anyone else might.