About Me

Why my wife would fire me as her Realtor

by John Rice

“Sometimes I don’t like being married to a realtor.”  Oh no she didn’t?  Yep, she went there alright.  See, after casually looking for a new house for what seems like forever, we are finally going to pull the trigger on something this summer.  Problem is I keep shooting down every house my wife falls in love with.  She also told me that she wished she could just find a house she likes, get excited about it, and buy it.  I told her that the reasons I shoot down some of the houses we’ve seen are for things she will thank me for years from now.

One of her favorite houses (and mine) backed to a big field full of tall trees……for now.  I hit the PVA to see who owns that property and if it is inside the urban service area.  The owner is a developer who has never had a truly successful project, so I shoot that one down.  It would only be a matter of time before the bull dozers regrade that field and we’d have all the runoff potentially flooding the basement.  It was zoned for single family housing, but zoning can be changed.  Sure, the neighborhood’s HOA would have fought putting apartments back there, but you never know.  Then there is resale value.  If you pay a bit extra to have nothing behind you, you’ve lost that money once there are houses back there.  NEXT!

Then, we find one we both really like.  My issue there?  There is a similar neighborhood right next to this one.  No big deal, right?  There is when there is a $50-75k price difference for a similar house.  I wonder if in 10-15 years buyers will perceive a difference between the two neighborhoods, or at least enough to justify the price difference…..NEXT!

There is one she totally loves.  Has a pool, kitchen in the basement, everything.   Price isn’t bad for all that…..but, it is in an area surrounded by much cheaper houses.  There are only about 10% of the houses in that area that are in our price range.  The rest are about half the value.  Never a good thing to have an island of more expensive houses surrounded by less expensive ones.  Over time, the less expensive area is more likely to impact the values of the more expensive ones than the other way around, especially when there are more of the less expensive ones.  Plus, right around the corner, there are a few streets with the same houses as the one we liked that are only about 5-6 years older and sell for much cheaper.  I kind of think that once the newness wears off of this area, the prices will be more in line with the streets full of the slightly cheaper houses that are 5-6 years older.  NEXT!!

So, now we are considering one that we both like due to the neighborhood.  It is a good value.  The area is old enough that the dust has settled and we shouldn’t have any surprises about its future.  Problem with this one is that it is on the main road through the neighborhood and sits diagonal on its corner lot.  I’m having a hard time thinking about being on the main drag of the neighborhood since I am always telling people that you’ll lose some buyers when you go to sell.  Plus, the backyard is really small where the house sits diagonally on the lot.  That doesn’t bother me personally, but you’re losing some buyers with several kids since it is not the backyard they will want.  I’m only going to buy this one if I can get it at the low end of the comps since I will always have to sell it at the low end of the comps due to the lot and road.  We’ll see.

I think my wife would sometimes like one of those realtors whose advertising says something like “Let me find the home of your dreams!”  For some buyers and realtors, that is all they think a realtor needs to do.  Take people out in a shiny car and open doors for them until the dream home is found.   I often get listings from sellers who used an agent like that when they bought.  All they knew was that they liked their house.  The agent didn’t tell them that their lot sucked, their floor plan was odd, or anything that would have an effect on their ability to sell their house later……SEE HONEY, I’M JUST TAKING CARE OF YOU LIKE I DO ALL MY BUYERS!!

All joking aside, my wife knows I’m watching out for us.  I shot down a great house when we last bought because there was a vacant field across the road.  I looked at the zoning.  It was so broad that practically anything could have been built there.  Ground has just been broken for a large apartment complex in that field.  The same house is for sale again for much less, and still hasn’t sold.  Meanwhile, our current house has turned out to be a good investment because it is in a popular neighborhood with a good school district, and I bought it right.

Some rewarding moments

by John Rice

My son brought his yearbook home the other day.  One of the things his school does is post dedications in the back.  A parent posted a dedication to the teachers that said “Anybody can make a buck, but not everybody can make a difference.”  That got me thinking about my job.  While I’m not putting out fires, arresting bad guys, teaching kids (other than my own) or finding homes for abandoned pets, I’m the guy that helps get those heroes a place to come home to at the end of their day.

There is a new born boy who is probably asleep right now in his new home.  His parents bought a townhouse at the peak of the market long before I met them.  They needed something bigger for the new family.  We put the townhouse on the market, and it became obvious that it wasn’t going to sell at the price they needed to even make the move possible.  I didn’t take a commission on that one so they could reduce the asking price.  We got it sold juuuuuuust in time for them to move into a new house before he was born.   It makes me very happy knowing I had a part in getting a home for their little guy to grow up in.  The new mom and dad were very appreciative of what I did for them, but I think I got more out of it than they did.  It was a total pleasure to be a part of such a special time in their lives and to know that their son would learn to walk/ride a bike/throw a ball in the house I helped them get.  The mom texted me a picture of him just after he was born…..talk about feeling special!!

There’s another family that almost paid too much for a house.  They won’t really appreciate what I did until they go to sell.  See, the listing agent gave me a counter to the offer we made.  It was at a price that I knew my people would accept, but I wanted to get it for them for even less.  Like most listing agents, the realtor tried the “But that will only be $8 a month more on your people’s payment and it’s $2000 real dollars to my people.”  Well, it is actually more than $2000 to my people because they’ll be paying interest on it.  Knowing this agent wanted it all wrapped up that night, I slowed down the process, suggesting we continue negotiating in the morning.  The agent then told me that the sellers would accept the number I wanted.  A little effort on my part means that my folks are $2000 better off when it is their turn to sell the house.  (This was with an agent I know and like a lot, so I joked that if the seller would just add the $8 a month to the payment on their next house, we’d have a deal.)

I’ve made sure single women have a safe location, recommended the best home inspector I know (Often creating many more problems for me to solve), done plenty of minor repairs, helped people move (not as much now that I’ve crossed the big 4-0), heck, I’ve even told a few people that they were better off renting than buying…….plus a lot of other stuff that makes me feel good as I fall asleep at night.  While the quote from the yearbook is cool, I guess I’ll end with something I always say:  You can teach anybody to do anything, but you can’t teach somebody to care if they don’t.

MY first house

by John Rice

Well, I’ve been working with a lot of first time buyers lately.  It all has me remembering when I was a first timer myself.

This was my first house.  Before we found it, my wife and I drove all over every neighborhood we thought we could afford.  This was back when rates had dropped ALLLLLL the way down to just over 7%, so you didn’t get as much house for your money back then.

This place was for sale by owner.  There was just a sign in the yard.  We called and were able to go right inside since they were home.  We fell in love with it immediately.  I was on an old house kick back then, so the mirrored double mantled fireplace with green subway tile did me in.  Looking back, it was really a dump.  I should have figured it out when all my friends tried to conceal their reaction when they came to see it…..but I was in love.

The house didn’t have central air, and only had a giant floor furnace to heat the whole house.  The room with the furnace would get like 110 degrees in the winter, then the room beside it would be 80, the next room 60, and by the time you got to the end of the house you didn’t even think there was any heat at all.  But we took care of that by using the Buck stove insert the house had.  Every morning before I left for work, I would stack about 8-10 pieces of wood by the back door for my wife to burn.  It would take about 2 hours for her to even get a good fire going.  In the evenings, it was so funny because we would have to time how long we would be gone.  A trip to Wal-Mart meant we threw on one log while we were gone to keep the fire going.  Dinner and a movie was a two log deal.

I have some crazy memories of this place.  The local driver’s education class at the high school would use my street as the training route.  On the weekends, before the big test, I’d look out my window to see every 16 year old using MY car to parallel park.  I never understood why there was something so sacred about parallel parking in front of my house when the only thing you need was at least one other car?  The fire department would use the alley behind my house to do their annual driving tests too.  They had to back up the alley, which mean you’d hear a diesel engine running and the “BEEP-BEEP-BEEP” of an ambulance backing up.  Then there was the train.  We knew there was a track very close, but we didn’t know there was a spot just up the track where they would connect the train cars together.  Don’t know if you’ve ever heard that, but it sounds like two 18 wheelers crashing into each other………every 15 minutes…….all day and night.

I’ve got a lot of good memories too.  We brought both of our boys home from the hospital to this house.  My parents had central heat put in so our first born wouldn’t feel like he was born during Little House on the Prairie times.  We painted the nursery and got new carpet.  Then the next little boy showed up to the party.  We had great birthday parties for them with great friends in the backyard.  I did a lot of landscaping, and thanks to the neighbors busted sewer line, the Sweet Bay Magnolia tree on the right grew really fast!

I’m having a good time with all my first time buyers.   It is cool to know that I had a little part of the memories they are about to create.

 

Stating the obvious ISN’T marketing

by John Rice

You’ve been there.  You’re looking at houses online and the picture looks good to you, so you start to read the marketing remarks about the house…..only the realtors chose to tell you that “NOW IS THE TIME TO BUY.  RATES ARE HISTORICALLY LOW”, but they don’t really tell you much about the house somebody is paying them to sell.  It’s like the message is that you should buy ANY house, not just the house you are looking at.   I’ve always thought it was pretty stupid to waste the short amount of attention you have from a consumer with that stuff.   I mean, think about it.  Anybody reading the marketing remarks about a house, either in print or online, has probably ALREADY DECIDED THEY WANT TO BUY A HOUSE!!!  They’ve come to a website or picked up a flyer to do what?  Look at houses or try to figure out IF they are going to become buyers or not?  Same thing with the old “YOU CAN OWN CHEAPER THAN YOUR RENT”.  Any renter looking at houses doesn’t need to be told this, they already know it.

It isn’t just in this industry either.  Back when I was younger, I had a lawn maintenance company.  That was before the internet and advertising in the phone book was the thing to do.  I would see ads where lawn companies were trying to convince people of all the benefits of having them mow their lawns.  I used the attention I had from consumers looking at my ad to convince them I could do a great job, that I had insurance (something most didn’t at the time) and that I had happy customers.  My thoughts were that if somebody had picked up a phone book, gone to the “L” pages and looked up either lawn care or landscaping, then they had already decided to let somebody else do the work for them.  At that point the goal became to convince them that I was a better choice than the guys who were telling them they should make a decision that had already been made.

Just my 2 cents for the day.

Helping Buyers Moving to LEXington……LEXpert Style

by John Rice

Sold another house last weekend.  It sure isn’t like it is on HGTV, where I show them 3 houses, ask what they want to offer, then fill in the blanks on the contact.  I don’t know how other realtors do it, but this story shows how the LEXpert does it:

These folks were from out of town.  I do a lot of work for out of towners, so I became their primary source of info about Lexington.  All buyers seem to appreciate my perspective from being in Lexington for so long.

Before these peeps have even come to Lexington, we’re communicating about houses that are for sale, I’m giving them my thoughts on the neighborhoods and all the positives and negatives.  At this point, it is about narrowing down what they want in a house, schools and which part of town they’ll prefer.  Like most out of town clients, they came to Lexington for a weekend to see in person everything we have been talking about.  I drove them past the schools, through neighborhoods and the shopping/dining areas around town.   We also checked out a few houses just to show them what they can get for the money here.  (It’s always fun for me to meet my clients for the first time.  I usually have no idea what they look like, so I just wonder around a hotel lobby until somebody looks at me like they know me, then I say “Are you_______?”)

These clients, like most, had a house to sell and a job to start here.  As we got closer to this date, I have to give them almost all of my attention.  See, my goal is that when my buyers come to pick a house, I have done all my legwork and they know enough to make a good decision while here.  I can’t tell you how many sellers I have represented with stories about being rushed to pick a house while they were here for just one weekend.  I have had several sellers who didn’t know they bought in a poor performing school district……That’s why they’ve called me to sell.  I wish these sellers had found me before they bought rather than some Realtor that just opened doors for them and filled the blanks in the contract.

Something I did for these buyers and that I have done for many others is to preview the houses that interest them and make a video.  That gives them a chance to see the WHOLE house, not just the best pictures the listing agent has online.  I’ll give them my two cents during the video, describe the layout, show them how the house sits compared to the neighbors, etc.  I’ve saved buyers a lot of time by doing this since most of the time we can eliminate half the list before they even get here.  This is great for them because they can be thinking about the houses from back home.  I think that is what makes it less stressful for my folks.  The more I can make it like they are actually here in town, the better.  Can you imagine spending two days looking at something like 19 houses and trying to make a wise decision?  In this case, my people started out with 19 houses (see, not just a made up number!) and when they got here we only had to see 7 in person.  That is a lot less info to process in one weekend.

I like to try to see all the houses on Friday or Saturday, then come back before the weekend is over for a second showing of their short list.  You always see more negatives the second time you see a house.  I usually try to lay low on second showings.  This is where people are really trying to envision themselves living at the house.  Almost all buyers are very silent on second showings.  I usually take a closer look at the house in search of anything that I think could bite us in the rear during the home inspection.  The house that was these folks top choice had a lot of rotten wood around the windows.  I pointed that out, plus the fact that I thought the house was mainly a lot of lipstick and a new kitchen.  That house was going to need all new HVAC and windows before long.  It was cheaper and wiser to buy the less expensive house around the corner that was in better shape, had a better lot and just apply the same lipstick they liked from the other house!   These folks made their short list and picked the one that we all thought was the best for them…..which is good because 3 of the 7 we had seen got contracts that same weekend.  I think that means we know how to pick good ones 😉 

When we got to the point of making the offer, I’ve already checked the crime map, the sex offender registry, the PVA to see the lot size/shape.  Most importantly, I’ve spent the time to analyse the recently sold houses in the area to determine what the house is worth.  I think many realtors just look at square footage when they suggest a price.  I not only make adjustments for square footage, but also for the difference in the QUALITY of the square footage.  I also  looked to see if the recent sales had any seller paid concessions, the ages of the roof/windows/HVAC.   I think that is why I am usually so spot on with my opinion of value.  About the only time I am off is when a stupid buyer has a careless Realtor and ends up paying too much.

So, after all that, my folks are now back at home, just waiting to see how the home inspection goes here.  Assuming all is well, they’ll be in their new place in about a month.  I am so excited for them.  They made a wise decision and will be great Lexingtonians 🙂