Mainly they are a function of the availability of financing and investor sentiment, which have as much to do with psychology as anything.

Even though it may sound counter intuitive, paying down the smallest balance first will help with the psychological aspect of your debt payoff.

Lower interest debt like mortgages, car payments, student loans etc. are a bit more personal and again involves your own personal psychology and comfort level with debt and risk.

I believe we will see compressed cap rates unravel as less asset-rich buyers are in the market, as well as the psychology of the average consumer become more pessimistic in response to a bearish environment in our American equities markets.

Been a while since I said anything on this thread.1) The ethics issue - It's like the old moral problem from college philosophy and psychology classes ( can't remember the name) would you steal medicine to give to a sick child.

Difficulty here is I'm describing something new in a forum not really intended (jewelry in a RE space).This exercise was strictly focused on one root that hinders success - investor psychology.

not sure why, must be some psychological bias against telemarketers or something.

In fact, for a real estate contract, the buyer's consideration can just be their promise to buy and the seller's consideration can just be the promise to sell -- in contract law, it's not true that earnest money is required for a real estate contract to be valid (unless there is something in your state statutes that require it).So, in theory, you could just agree to no earnest money.That said, I'm guessing that having earnest money will provide some psychological incentive on the part of the seller not to look for another buyer and it also may weaken any legal case you have should the seller back out (a judge could determine that you weren't a serious buyer because there was no EM).I'm not an attorney, so take that for what it's worth...

I'm also a psychology major so I try to incorporate things I've learned about human nature and patterns of thinking into my negotiating.

A longer answer would get into group psychology, about how a group reinforces self serving ideas, Collective rationalization, Stereotyped views of out-groups, etc...