About Me

Rinse, wash, repeat-The secret to my success

by John Rice

I’ve never really done things in a conventional way.

Before I got into real estate, I owned a lawn care business.  Believe it or not, I really like cutting grass.  It’s great to be outside and to take a look at the yard once you are done.

I was working at another lawn care company when I decided to go out on my own.  I had a $99 push mower from Wal-Mart that I would put in the back of my Dodge Colt.  My wife called it the Grass-Mobile since it had grass clippings everywhere.  It smelled like gasoline too.  I would see my past co-workers around town.  They all had a good laugh at my expense because I am sure I did look pretty silly driving around town with a mower hanging out the hatch of my car.

I did a great job and showed up on time.  I didn’t cuss or smoke and customers felt good about communicating with me.  My single female customers were not afraid of me.  The threshold for success was low in that business.

Before long, I was able to buy better equipment.  I also got a truck, then added a trailer.

I would see the same former co-workers around town and instead of laughing at me, they would ask me questions on how I did it.  I was always happy to tell them.  My attitude was that all I needed to be in business was a customer and to do a good job.  Rinse, wash, repeat.  I stepped out with not much and it grew organically.  They would look at me like I was crazy and say that they would need to start out where I was at that time.  I wished them luck and went on to my next yard.

Flash forward a bit to 2005.  I’ve just gotten my real estate license.  I joined the biggest firm at that time.  I was told I needed to do things like send people football schedules, flower seeds, and let them know when the time changes would be.  I’ve never understood why the realtor community bears the responsibility of letting the world know when to change their clocks forward of backwards?

I told them that I didn’t want to lick stamps all day.  I got into real estate to DO real estate, not to try to drum up work.  They thought I was crazy.

They said I needed to remind people I was a realtor.  I told them that if I had to remind people to use me again, I must not have done anything worth remembering and didn’t deserve to be used again.

So, slowly I built my real estate business based on word of mouth.  The only advertising I have ever done has been to promote two blog posts on Facebook.  I’ve spent $20.  That is why you’ve never seen me on the shopping carts at Kroger or seen my face as you drive around New Circle Road.  I had a client who referred his mother to me several years ago, a lady I have enjoyed becoming friends with, she said to me “Jimmy tells me you are a top realtor in town.  I’ve never heard of you.”

My proudest accomplishment is that 75% of my work is from past clients and referrals from past clients and friends.  That is the way I want it.  I want to do such a good job that people remember me and send their friends and family to me.

Over the years, I have had several agents approach me about how I did it.  I have always been happy to tell them.  My attitude was that all I needed to be in this business was a client and to do a good job. Rinse, wash, repeat.  I stepped out with not much and grew this organically.  They too look at me like I am crazy and want to be where I am overnight.  I usually wish them luck and move on.

 

Mold and $5000: Why I feel like Superman

by John Rice

“Do something a person can’t do for themselves or something they don’t want to do and you will always have a job.”

I think my dad said this when I was about 11 years old or so.  It is one of the many things he said to me that has always stuck with me.

I had a lawn care business when I was younger and stronger.  That was clearly something anybody could do for themselves, so what I was doing was something my customers didn’t want to do.

Now I’m a realtor.  To some people, it can look like I am doing something anybody can do.  Sure, people do sell their own houses, buyers do buy without the assistance of a realtor.  The funny thing about it is that those people never really know how well they did…..what did they have to compare it to?  Often, a bad buying decision isn’t discovered until you go to sell.

That is where experience comes in.  I kind of feel like all my life has been preparing me to be a realtor.  I was into architecture as a kid, always drew floor plans, went to open houses and model homes as my hobby.  Took drafting and construction classes in high school and college, worked around building materials at Lowe’s, was an estimator for a construction company.  It’s all helped me to offer something beyond opening doors and filling in the blanks on a contract for my clients.

I recently had 2 experiences that I am pretty proud of:

  1.  I have a client who is building a new home.  We just did what is called a pre-drywall walk-thru.  The builder’s goal is to make sure they have the buyer sign off on where all the outlets and such go before the drywall gets hung.  My goal is to check out the house.  I like to just walk around and look, and look and look.  Besides a few little things, I noticed what looked like mold on the roof trusses.  I sold a newer house to some friends a few years ago.  The home inspector found mold on their trusses.  The trusses are delivered to the site in bundles and sit outside until the workers begin the roof.  If it is really wet, those trusses get mold growing on them and are installed before they dry out.  Ever since then, I am always looking at roof trusses when I have a client building a new house.  It was a real pain for the seller of the house my friends bought, and I don’t want my clients to go through that.  We got lucky this time.  The builder at first tried to say it was dirt, but then agreed to spray something on them that would kill any mold.  That’s a win for my client on several layers, the most important one is their health.  (By the way, the truss in the picture  is cracked, which is also being addressed!)img_1756
  2. One of the most common things I get asked from a seller is what needs done to get their house ready to list?  I had a client whose house had a 27 year old roof.  That is pretty old.  I rarely see a roof that old.  And it wasn’t really in that good of shape either.  He was ready to spend $5000 to replace it before we listed it.  I came out and looked at it.  I told him we should put the house on the market as it is.  If we get lucky, nobody will ask for it to be replaced.  There weren’t a lot of listings available at that time and buyer’s could not be that picky.   We got the home inspection repair list.  Nothing at all about the roof.

So, a little experience got one client a mold free house and saved $5000 for another.  It feels really good to be able to do for my clients what they can’t do for themselves….often simply because they don’t have the experience to know what to do.

 

The house that made me a better realtor

by John Rice

“There is nothing wrong with this house that can’t be fixed.”

Being a young, inexperienced home buyer, these words were soothing to hear from the home inspector.

What I didn’t realize was that fixing everything would take all my time and all my money.

It was April 1st 2002.  Closing on April Fool’s Day should have been all the sign I needed.  I bought what was called a “Fixer Upper” back then.  Now we seem to have shortened it to just “Fixer.”  This was before HGTV, but I had the same aspirations as the home buyers always do at the beginning of the renovation shows.

My house had T-111 siding, which is like grooved plywood and lasts for about 30 years if maintained.  My house was 29 years old.  And it hadn’t been maintained.

It had the old crank out Pella replacement windows.  The kind that after about 20 years, you one day crank to open and the aluminum mechanism inside snaps.  That day had happened on all the windows long before I had ever seen the house.

The roof had two layers on it.  On a positive note, the HVAC was only 2 years old.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the house had a lot of settlement.  That is a nice way of saying STRUCTURAL ISSUES.  The seller gave me an $8k credit for putting piers under the foundation.  The structural engineer (A.K.A.-SALES PERSON) told me the house needed 20 of them.  They were $1k each.  I told him there was no way I could do that since I only had $8k to work with.  Suddenly, he decided that 8 piers would be just fine.

I got what I thought was a bargain. I paid $118,200 and other similar houses were going for $145-150k on the street.

The evening of April 1st, after moving in all day and getting the boy’s beds set up, I decided to take a shower.  As the steam from the shower filled the bathroom, the pea green tiles in the shower slowly started to fall off the wall.  Many had been glued on to what little drywall was left behind them.  It kind of looked like a pizza commercial where the cheese is stretching as somebody pulls out a slice.  The shower had some goofy accent tile that must have been trendy in 1973.  I keep the tile that is pictured below in my office.

Tanforan Tile

Then there was the time we had family over.  I slept on the couch in the basement.  I woke up, ready for my first cup of coffee.  I knew it wasn’t going to be a good day when I heard a splashing sound and my left foot felt wet.  Turns out the basement leaked too.  The seller said they had never had a water problem, although all the neighbors knew otherwise.

But I got a great deal, and there was nothing wrong with the house that couldn’t be fixed.

Oh yeah, now that I am a realtor, I realize that all the other bidders I was up against for this house were investors who were probably offering no more than $90k and wanting to flip it.

So, over the course of several years, I gutted all 3 bathrooms and remodeled them.  New roof.  Some new windows.  New siding. Added a fireplace. Completely gutted the basement since it was wet and moldy.  With some help from my dad and uncle, we turned 2 paneled rooms into one massive space with all new drywall, can lights, new electric and all new trim.

To solve the water issue, I had the leafguard gutters installed, the basement waterproofed with two sump pumps and brought in 3 dump trucks full of dirt and regraded the back and side yard.  Now the house next door gets water in their basement.  I didn’t feel too bad though.  If the builder had graded my yard properly, he would have been getting the water for 30 years.  It was his turn now.

I have always hated this house.  It is sort of funny that I still own it.  We moved out in 2007 and I’ve been renting it ever since.  Part of that is because houses were not selling back then.  Part of it is because after doing all this work to it, I wanted to be the one who benefited from it.

This house was sort of like real estate college for me.  I am a much better realtor having having had these heartbreaking, time consuming and costly experiences.  Having had a house that had just about every problem a house can have and fixing it all has benefited every client I have ever worked with.

And I will never recommend a home inspector who says “There isn’t anything wrong with this house that can’t be fixed.”

Before and after (Circa 2008):

 

My own “First Time Buyer” experience

by John Rice

Back in the late 90s, we didn’t have zillow and few people had the internet.  Searching for a home was about driving around neighborhoods calling the number on the sign, or getting a Sunday newspaper to see which houses were open that day.

I was working with a realtor, but I found a for sale by owner and never thought to call her first.  I was in the car and called the number from my 4 pound cell phone that was 2 inches thick.  I could see the seller get up to answer his landline phone.  Next thing I knew, I had bought a house.

Like a lot of people, I never thought of all the time the realtor had spent with me.  I also never realized how the sum of all the little decisions that she had input on had lead me to THIS house.  I still feel bad about that.

However, I wish she had been involved in the sale.  This was looooong before I became The LEXpert.  I thought “How hard can this be?”  While none of real estate is what I call hard, there is a lot that experience can do to make it a smoother, better process.  I’ve loaded boxes at UPS in the middle of the night.  That was hard.

The seller and I kind of just made up a contract with the help of my mom.  I wish I still had a copy, because I doubt it covered things like if all the appliances stayed, when the seller would move out, what happens if things get sideways and the seller and I need to break up.

I did have a home inspection.  Kind of.  I was a broke twenty-something so a friend of my mom’s did it.  The roof was originally wood shakes with two layers of asphalt shingles over them.  It is a house that today, I would tell my clients to run from.  While we were there, my mom looks at the house two doors down and asks the seller “Is that the house where the shooting was last week?”  The seller told us that that guy only shoots at people he knows.  This is why I keep up with crime and tell people to look at the crime map online.

I had no idea that it was typical to negotiate with the seller to do repairs.  I just thought since I wanted the house still, I would have to deal with any issues.

The seller moving out didn’t go that smooth.  They kind of never fully moved out.  I kept calling him to come get his stuff.  He eventually brought a trailer over to clear out a shed.  As he was loading all the junk, he would occasionally ask if I wanted any of it.  He had several cast iron weights from old windows.  He said they would make great anchors for my boat.  I joyfully told him I did not have a boat, so he could keep them.  This is why I tell clients not to close until the seller is out.  Sometimes I have to be the bad guy and tell the listing agent or seller that they aren’t done moving out and no, they cannot come back later…..we close AFTER we see the place empty.  I’ve had to do that twice this summer.

While this house was a total dump, my wife and I loved it.  We brought both of our boys back from the hospital to this house.   Lots of great memories were made there.  We have since moved 3 times and life has taken me in a direction I always hoped it would.  I’ve been a realtor now for almost 12 years.  The experience of buying this house has helped ALL of my clients because it was one step towards becoming The LEXpert.

7 reasons I love being a Realtor

by John Rice

The title pretty much says it all, so I’ll just get started.

 

  • I like helping people.  When I was in college and didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career yet, I remember thinking “I wish there was a job where you just did favors for people.”  I’ve been able to take that attitude and apply it to being a Realtor.  I get to help people plan, coordinate things, advise them, help them save money….even after we close, I still get to help because many of my clients are always asking me what they should do to improve their house, for contractor recommendations, etc.
  • I like houses and neighborhoods.  Ever since I got my driver’s license, I have been cruising around checking them out.  Now I get to do that and making a living at the same time….only I am much older and my car is much nicer now.
  • I like numbers.  My dad can tell you that the best thing he ever gave me was a calculator.  Even now, it is the most used app on my phone.  I get to crunch numbers to figure out what a house is worth for both my buyers and sellers.
  • I like being on the move.  It about killed me in school and jobs I’ve had where you sit in one room all day.  I like being all over town and seeing what is happening.
  • I like seeing the pictures my clients post on Facebook.  There is no greater pleasure than to see people enjoying the home that I helped get for them.  I’ve got to see bland rooms transformed into nurseries, kids grow and all the life that happens in a home.  I also get to see clients move on to bigger and better things in their lives too.  It is sad when they move out of town, but it is nice to know that I was able to help with the transition.
  • I like writing.  I had a newspaper with I was a kid.  That was before there were copiers at home.  Fortunately I had a circulation of about 4 neighbors so making each copy by hand was not that big of a deal.  I did the newsletter when I worked at UPS.  I’d post my favorite movie quotes, I’d ask my co-workers random questions and have their replies.  Everybody had a great time reading it.  That is when I learned you can get people to read stuff IF you make it fun for them.  That is why I try to be creative in my marketing remarks for listings.
  • And the last reason is because being a Realtor has allowed be who I am and enjoy doing what I do.