What is the most overlooked consideration?


What is the most overlooked consideration when buying a piece of audio gear? We all buy gear and we all have to make choices as to what component to get, what brand, etc. What is at the top of your criteria for choosing a piece and why? Synergy? reputation of brand ?hype your heard? it’s the best compliment to my system? warranty and service? I just wanted to try a cable? I only buy brands from the UK? Etc 

So you can tell what’s at the top of your list but mostly I want you to share what you think is a much overlooked consideration and why?
 

For myself I often think customer service gets overlooked as being very important.

2psyop

Your room/speaker coupling and treatment is more important than any fancy cable, amp, DAC you'd ever buy @2psyop 

Chasing anything else is just a futile self convincing that leads to a loop of purchasing syndrome

One consideration NEVER looked @ IMO is the FOR SALE market...Too little attention is paid when choosing a component to how many units are active on the for sale market & how many have been sold in the past few months..
 Look at mass produced speakers like KEF,HIGHLY touted by Pro reviewers and the forums BUT if you look at the current market & past 3 months you will see they are the #1 most flipped speaker available today..Some will argue that’s because they are also #1 purchased but that just makes my point..There is a reason they are flipped more than any other speaker..
 When I choose a component,I want to know people that have bought that component before me are holding on to them..Look at speakers like Reference 3A,Harbeth & Spendor..For every 1 for sale now or sold in the last 3 months there are dozens of KEF,Monitor Audio,Klipsch,JBL & on & on...

@freediver when I bought my Blue Circle amp (since sold and easily sold) a main criteria in choosing a new amp was just how many are seen on the used market. 
So I could not agree more. Why are certain names more frequently seen for sale than others. It is not because so many were bought. It is because so many are for sale. 
I just sold a Musical Fidelity Ñu-Vista 600. An animal not frequently seen on the used market. A very underrated product. 

I think one of the most overlooked considerations is long-term reliability. Everyone gets caught up in specs and brand reputation, but hardly anyone asks if it will still work perfectly five or ten years from now. I’ve had gear that sounded great at first but developed issues within a couple of years. It’s easy to get swept up by new features, but I’d rather have something that lasts.