The Compression Error In Property

Every December, the same pattern appears. (Yes I see a distinctive pattern)

People fly home for Christmas. Two weeks. Family houses. Familiar streets. Somewhere between a walk by the sea and a late-night conversation at the kitchen table, the property search gets compressed into a short, intense burst of activity.

Viewings are stacked back to back. Meetings are rushed in. Opinions are gathered quickly. There is quiet pressure to make the most of the window, to be efficient, to come away with certainty.

This feels disciplined. It isn’t.

What’s happening is a cognitive error I see every year: the Compression Error. The belief that a complex, long-term decision can be accelerated without losing accuracy simply by increasing pace.

In property, speed does not improve judgment. It weakens it.

When too much information arrives too quickly, the brain stops evaluating properly. Contrast disappears. Everything starts to blur. Strong properties lose definition. Weak properties survive because nothing has time to stand out clearly. Buyers mistake movement for progress and intensity for insight.

This is not a failure of intelligence. It is a failure of temperament.

The Compression Error shows up in three predictable ways during Christmas visits.

First, false comparison. Properties viewed in quick succession are not judged on their own merits. They are judged relative to whatever was seen an hour earlier. Layouts merge. Locations blur. Compromises feel smaller than they are because there is no space to sit with them. Instead of asking, “Does this work for my life?” buyers ask, “Is this better than the last one?”

Second, decision fatigue. Every viewing, conversation, and opinion consumes mental energy. By the end of a compressed schedule, buyers are not choosing the best option. They are choosing the option that feels easiest to decide on. Relief is mistaken for confidence. Ease is mistaken for fit.

Third, urgency inflation. Compression creates the illusion that time itself is the enemy. Buyers begin to believe that if they do not act now, something meaningful will be lost. In reality, what is being lost is patience, not opportunity. Markets do not operate on Christmas timelines. Psychology does.

Christmas makes this worse.

The environment is emotionally dense. Familiarity lowers perceived risk. Ireland feels warmer, friendlier, and simpler than it does in February or October. Daily friction disappears because you are not living your real routine. You are visiting.

A short stay cannot replicate day-to-day life. Yet compression convinces people they have “tested” an area because it felt good for a week.

That confidence rarely survives distance.

One of the clearest signals that compression is at work is this: certainty peaks while you are physically present and fades once you leave. That is not intuition. It is proximity bias.

Strong decisions gain confidence with time and distance. Weak decisions feel urgent up close and fragile once removed from the environment that produced them.

The consequences tend to surface six to eighteen months later. Commutes that were never properly tested. Noise that only appears midweek. Layouts that looked workable but never quite function. Areas that felt right emotionally but fail to support the life that actually unfolds.

None of these issues are dramatic enough to justify an immediate exit. They simply accumulate. Quiet dissatisfaction. Subtle regret. The sense that the decision was rushed, even if it was well intentioned.

The irony is that slowing down usually shortens the overall search.

Spacing viewings improves contrast. Distance sharpens judgment. Letting a property sit in your mind without reinforcement reveals whether it has substance or merely situational appeal.

Disciplined buyers do not compress decisions. They protect signal. 

They allow clarity to emerge rather than forcing conclusions.

Christmas is not a neutral decision environment. It is one of the most distorting.

That does not mean you should not look. It means you should not conclude.

A simple rule for this period

1. If a property only feels right when you are physically here, pause.

2. If confidence depends on momentum, pause.

3. If urgency fades once you leave, that is information.

Use this time to observe, not to finalise.

To gather context, not to compress judgment.

Temperament, not speed, determines good outcomes.

Use this week to get some work done before the Triple “O” (out-of-offices) start

Andrew