Avdotia
Every owner of a real asset eventually faces the same question. Almost everyone answers it with the wrong input. The question is not what is the market doing. It is what is this asset for, and has that changed.
Owners usually treat disposition, the decision to sell, as a timing bet on price. They wait for a peak, watch headlines, and try to read a market that never announces itself. Hindsight is the only place you can actually see a peak, so the strategy quietly becomes hope. A more reliable frame exists.
Hold for a reason, not by default
An asset earns its place in a portfolio by doing a job: producing income, compounding value, holding capital, or serving an operation. The moment to consider an exit is not when price looks high. It is when the asset stops doing its job, or when it could do a better job somewhere else.
That reframes the whole decision. You are not predicting the market. You are checking whether the reason you own this thing still holds.
Three questions that beat market timing
- Is the yield still competitive with the alternative? If the same capital would work harder in a different asset, holding costs you, it does not just hold your position.
- Has the risk changed under you? Concentration, condition, tenancy, and carrying costs drift over time. In Florida especially, insurance and maintenance can turn a good hold into a slow bleed, even while the headline price stays put.
- Do you have a use for the capital? A sale only makes sense if the proceeds have a better home. Selling into cash with no plan creates its own kind of loss.
If two of the three point to exit, the calendar is a detail. If none do, no market peak should tempt you out of a position that still works.
Why the spreadsheet and the calendar disagree
The spreadsheet measures the asset. The calendar measures the market. They rarely agree, because they answer different questions. Owners get into trouble when they let the calendar override the spreadsheet: selling a productive asset because a cycle felt late, or holding a dead one because a number might still climb.
The discipline is unglamorous. Decide by constraint, not by mood. Read the asset first. Read the market second, and only to choose the method and moment of an exit you have already justified on its own terms.