“The Five-Year Rule” for Home Buying Can Help You Buy Your Dream Home (But There’s a Catch)

It’s no secret that real estate professionals have a leg up when it comes to buying a home of their own. They know the markets and comps, and they even sometimes know the other pros who are working to sell the house they want. But more than that, they have institutional knowledge that can come in handy, and years and years of experience when it comes to deciding to move.

That experience and perspective came in handy for Jason Saft, CEO and founder of Staged to Sell Home, when he saw what would eventually become his 475-square-foot studio for the first time. He knew it was the one, despite several impracticalities and two potential red flags. That’s because of his own home-ownership philosophy that helps take the pressure off buying your next home, which is highly practical.

That rule? “What works for you today, and for five years, may not work for you in 10 or 15,” Saft says.

It sounds wild — most people want to buy homes they can see themselves living in for the next several decades. But in some markets, it can help to see a home-buying transaction as more of a practical decision, one that needs to work for the near future, but not forever.

This so-called “Five-Year Rule” philosophy (coined by me) was one born out of Saft’s own 18 years of experience selling and staging homes across New York City. The perspective he’s gained as his own needs and tastes have changed has led him to have a totally different approach to home buying.

“We find ourselves at different points in life,” he says, “needing different styles of housing. Something that maybe wasn’t appealing 10 years ago is now the ideal thing. I think for some people who have unlimited funds, unlimited resources, all of those things, then yes, they can do whatever they want. However, for other people, you have to make compromises.” 

Saft is proof that thinking less long-term, if you can, can actually work. The listing for his now-home came with two red flags that might’ve pushed someone else away: It was a studio — and he needed a place for both him and his daughter to live — and there was a history of a death in the home. However, these ended up having the opposite effect on Saft because the apartment aced his one major nonnegotiable: the neighborhood.

“In the middle of the pandemic, my now ex-partner and I moved to Brooklyn Heights with our daughter, as she was going to start pre-K in the neighborhood,” Saft says. “Brooklyn Heights is the one neighborhood that we both always wanted to live in; we didn’t look anywhere else.” When they split up, Saft was dedicated to maintaining “our little village life” that the family needed. 

“I didn’t need to see a single comp. The apartment was incredibly impractical, but what it lacks in space it makes up for in spades in charm,” he says. 

One of the red flags — the fact that it was a studio, and a 475-square-foot one, at that — wasn’t enough for Saft to turn away from the space. He even turned it into a positive.

“I’ve lived in studios for a long time, and they’re easier to manage. They’re easier to just exist in. And so while it has its drawbacks, it also has its pluses … This space, and this location, and this building, are so charming and so perfect.”

When he learned that the previous resident had passed away in the space, rather than feeling squeamish about it, he felt that it was also a draw. 

“A lot of the projects that I take on are estate sales,” Saft says. “I’m often in people’s homes who’ve been there for decades and peacefully passed away [there]. I think there’s something really interesting about someone who wants to stay in their home. There’s obviously a deep connection.”

And in any case, though most states don’t require that real estate agents or sellers disclose if anyone has passed away in a home, in cities dominated like New York City, where the average age of a home is almost 100 years old, it’s nearly guaranteed. 

Beyond the connection, there was also the practical aspect. 

“What I’ve learned as a real estate agent is there’s often a lot of opportunity for [homes] like that. If that information is public, sometimes you can assess that if other people are sort of turning their noses up at it, then there’s an opportunity for someone to find a property at below market value.”

That wasn’t the case for Saft — he bought his home at market value — but it didn’t matter. The space had everything he needed in a home: It was in the right neighborhood, in the right building, and would fit for the next five to 10 years. 

Saft moved in quickly, so he wasn’t able to do the full suite of renovations that he wants to, but he did manage to do some light cosmetic work to zhuzh up the space, and he got a floor guy to come in and refinish his floors. 

But even then, he’s glad he has the time to figure out what he wants to do next: “It’s not always a good idea to renovate before you move in, because you don’t always know your needs. You don’t always know how to lay [your renovation and space] out, you don’t know the functionality [of your space]. There really is something fantastic in getting to know a space and understand it, how it functions, and figure out a renovation from there.”