The Joy/cash curve
I think there’s a major opportunity here. It seems that for many products, the more you pay, the less fun the buying is. (Not the shopping, the buying). It used to be true at the bottom end of the scale too–the less you pay, the less fun.
The excuse at the bottom was, "hey, you’re not paying a lot, what do you expect?" But Starbucks and others have shown that it doesn’t have to be that way. But what about the top? Why is a house closing such a horrible affair? Why is paying for your car such torture? (It turns out that many dealerships put you through hoops at the end of your buying process just because that’s when they have the most leverage… they don’t try to sell you rustproofing at the beginning!)
Given the amount of money at stake, I won’t be surprised if organizations start offering a way to make this more pleasant. Example: what if a real estate broker hired a really personable ex-cheerleader/glee club member for $20 an hour to do nothing but sweat the details and be charming the entire time the closing was going on? Someone to run and get donuts and do xeroxing and get papers organized in advance… in the scheme of a million dollar purchase, not such a big deal, right?