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My dream place to live when I was 12

by John Rice

woodland-village-lexington-ky-primary-photo

I rarely go through campus any more, but I found myself stopped at a red light on the corner of Woodland and Euclid this week.  While I was there, I decided to look around rather than checking my phone since I had just done that at the last light.

I found myself staring at this apartment complex.  Back in the early 80s, I was sure I was going to go to UK and live in one of these super cool apartments.  It would be great.  All my friends would come over.  We would do all the things a 12 year old kid thinks college is all about.  It would be Porky’s or Fast Times at Ridgemont High 2.0.  (Google that if you’re younger than 35.)

As a grown up, it made me realize that living there now would be torture.  No way I would want to be on a busy corner with all those students around me.  As the light changed to green, I thought there has to be a blog post in there somewhere.

I kept thinking about the potential post.  As I was waiting to turn left onto Walton Avenue, it dawned on me.  The post should be about how you should always look a little into your future when making real estate decisions.

When I was 18, these 1 bedroom 1 bath apartments would have met every need I had at the time.

When I got married and needed more space than these one car garage sized apartments had, a 2 bedroom apartment met all my needs.

When kids came, I needed a house with a yard.

When we outgrew that, we needed more space and storage.

Now that I am close to being an empty nester, I realize I have too much house.  But I am not moving.  Why?  I am looking ahead.  I’ve had empty nester clients buy a much smaller house than they use to have, only to discover that once grandkids came along, their little ranch was too small.  Their grown children who lived out of town would come visit for a holiday and there was no room for everybody.

Always look ahead to the next phase of life to make sure whatever house you pick will work……unless you want to keep buying and selling for each stage of life.  Which is really okay with me since that is how I make a living.

 

 

 

Which offer to pick when you have more than one?

by John Rice

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This is a house I put on the market late Friday evening.  I own it with a friend.  It is fixed up pretty nice, which is why we had over 25 showings scheduled.  We got 7 offers on it.  We had two more interested buyers, but when I told their agents we had multiple offers, they didn’t want to join the bidding war.

You’d think it would be an easy thing….picking which one to accept.  There is so much more to an offer than just the one with the highest sale price.

The lowest offer was way under the asking price and the buyer wanted us to pay $4200 of their closing costs.  When 4 of the 7 offers came in over the list price, that one was rejected with a good laugh.  I am glad I got it because I used it to force the next buyer into bringing their highest and best offer.

I had priced the house competitively. I knew that there was not much on the market.  I knew we had done a really good job making the house appealing.  What I didn’t know was how many buyers there would be.  You don’t know that until you list it and watch it unfold in real time.

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Most sellers would be thrilled to have offers over the list price.  While I was excited, I was also thinking about the appraisal.  Anybody doing any type of loan will need to do an appraisal.  And I wanted an offer that would result in a CLOSING!  All of the loan types the buyers were doing made me nervous about the appraisal.  Plus, most of them wanted us to pay their closing costs too.

 

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So, I really wanted a conventional loan buyer.  Since we were over the list price already, I wanted somebody who did not need us to pay any of their closing costs.  The closing cost issue was a really big deal.  Why?  because if the house only appraises for the original list price of $138,750 and the buyer needed $3000 in closing costs paid by us, we would only net $135,750.  If we have to reduce the sale price to match the appraised value, I don’t want to also deduct the buyer’s closing costs from that value too.

Fortunately the house was so nice that I knew all I had to do was wait until the right offer came in.  Once it did, we accepted it.

This is one of many things I take into consideration for my clients.  It was fun to do it for myself this time!

 

Neighborhood Review: Creekside at Andover

by John Rice

When I was a teenager, I use to love to drive my 1978 Chevy LUV truck out Todds Road.  This is when nothing was on Todds Road except farms.  It was black with white wagon wheels and the trendy bright stripes that were so popular in the 70s.  My Dad bought it new.  I thought it was the coolest thing in the world when he got it.  I still liked it when I got it in the mid 80s, even though rust was quickly claiming the black paint.  The bright stripes had faded too.  The red looked orange.  The orange looked yellow.  The yellow looked like a rotting lemon.

This isn’t my exact truck, but it is the closest thing I could find online.

luv-side

 

I use to drive out to a road I think was called Athens-Chilesburg.  It ran between Todds Road and Winchester Road.  It doesn’t really matter now because that road is currently two dead end roads.  On the Winchester Road side it is called Walnut Grove.  It is Deer Haven on the Todds Road side….although the Todds Road expansion has just ripped up where it connects to Todds Road.

 

Here is an old map I have.  Notice that Man O War ends at Todds Road.  Liberty and Todds do not connect.  There is no Hamburg.

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All of this gets me to the real topic of this post.  A neighborhood called Creekside at Andover that one day replaced a field and a barn I use to drive past.  I’ve got a couple of friends who live there.  Here are my thoughts on it.

Use to be this neighborhood was very popular because it was the most affordable way to get the highly desirable combination of Athens-Chilesburg Elementary, Hayes Middle and Henry Clay.  For the Hamburg area, this was THE trifecta of schools.  Just like everything, time marches on.  Today, the district is Garret Morgan Elementary, Hayes Middle and the new high school being built on Winchester Road.  I think time will prove that this new district is just as desirable.

A client who I have become friends with lives in Creekside at Andover.  Yes, she did buy out here so her son could go to Henry Clay, but she has found other things she really loves about her neighborhood.

Since it is right off of Deer Haven, she can walk down that old country Road that I use to drive on when it was Athens-Chilesburg.  You immediately feel like you are in the country….especially if you look east since that is the edge of the urban service area.  It is a short walk to that broken line in the above picture.  That old train track is a tree lined walking trail now.  It goes from Walnut Grove, cuts across Polo Club, passes by the city park on Pleasant Ridge and ends up over in Hamburg.  Being able to experience the bluegrass is one of the best things about life in Lexington, and you’ve got a remnant of it here.

Having lived in both Greenbrier and Andover Hills, one of my favorite things about this neighborhood is how easy it is to not only get to Hamburg, but how easy it is to also AVOID Hamburg.  If you want to go to the new side of Hamburg by Costco, exit your neighborhood towards Polo Club and a few stops signs and one light later, you are there.  If you want to get to the main side of Hamburg, exit your neighborhood on Todds Road and you are there quickly.  Want to go somewhere else in Lexington?  Go out Todds Road and cut through Chilesburg and Stuart Hall on Hayes Blvd to get to Richmond Road…..totally bypassing Hamburg.  Since I like driving in the country, another perk for me is that you are on the edge of town.  Turn east on Todds Road and you are instantly in the county.  This would be great for people who enjoy bicycling too.

Most of the houses in Creekside at Andover fall between about 1300 and 2300 square feet.  Seems to me that most are around 1800-2000 square feet from what I see come on the market.  They were build in the mid 2000s. There are some townhouses in the neighborhood too.  Prices on the townhouses have been around $140k recently.  That is a good entry point for first time buyers.  The other houses are all between $170k and $200k.  There are a few basement lots, mostly the ones near the top of Deer Haven and Wargrave Walk.  Those are around $225k.

Here is a very typical home in Creekside at Andover.  This model is very popular because you get a great big vaulted great room and a HUGE bedroom or bonus space over the garage.  I have seen it be one giant room as well as divided into two rooms.

creekside

Well, that is it for today.  I guess in another 25 years I will blog about driving my gas powered, non-autonomous Audi through this neighborhood and remembering when all the trees were small and how it was on the edge of town back then.  I may even keep a map from today so I can show what it was like.

 

My crystal ball was clear that day

by John Rice

In the long-range, Lexington will eventually use all of its available land.  When that happens I think we’ll start to see a huge price difference between Lexington and the surrounding towns.  When the land becomes that valuable, we’ll see a lot of what are now cheap areas redeveloped.

That is what I said 7 years ago yesterday and it is happening.  I know this thanks to Facebook’s “On this Day” feature.  Besides being reminded that I had sushi for lunch with my wife on February 4th in 2013, I found an old blog post that was mainly about downtown.

All this is happening because there practically is no affordable housing in Lexington.  Builders have given up on the first time buyer market because the land costs them so much.  Why would they use their expensive land to build small/plain houses when there is so much money to be made building expensive/upscale houses?

We have practically built out to the urban service area……..aka the city limits.  There are few big tracts of land for the big builders to obtain.

That has forced buyers and investors into areas that 10 years ago were undesirable.  Downtown is a prime example because that is where the cheap land is….or was?

The Distillery District, between the time it was actually distilleries and trendy businesses, sat empty and was mostly industrial businesses and junkyards.  There were probably more rats than people down there on any given day back then.

The Newtown Pike extension is connecting Main Street to South Broadway right through a really depressing area of Lexington that few people ever knew existed.  Meanwhile, all the old tobacco warehouses along South Broadway are gone with apartments and businesses taking their place.

Then there is all the activity on the north end of downtown.  Jefferson Street.  NoLi. Midland Avenue.  Cool restaurants, bars and old housing stock.

Heck, even Cardinal Valley and many north end neighborhoods are becoming an acceptable location to young first times buyers with a tight budget wanting to live in this expensive town.

Many people will think all this is happening because people want to return to the urban core.  Lexington isn’t big enough to have true suburbs.  Plus, you can get to downtown from any where in any traffic within 30 minutes.   So I don’t think that is the main reason.  I think the reason is because infill projects and fixing up cheap houses are the only options for a town that is always growing and has run out of space.

 

LEXpert Neighborhood Review: Meadowthorpe

by John Rice

A friend of mine lives in a neighborhood she thought I should review.  When this neighborhood was new, it was waaaaay out on the west end of town.  The elementary school was the old Linlee Elementary on Georgetown Road.  Eventually this neighborhood got it’s own elementary school within the neighborhood.

You’re probably thinking I am talking about Masterson Station, huh?

Close.  It also starts with an M, but I am talking about Meadowthorpe.

Both neighborhoods have a lot of similarities.  Both were way the heck out on the west end of town when new.  Both are off of Leestown Road.  Both went to Linlee before having new elementary schools built within the neighborhood.  Both adjoin a park, although the one at Masterson Station is much bigger.

One of the biggest complaints I hear people say about Masterson and most newer neighborhoods is that they are too “Cookie Cutter.”  I was trying to find some old pictures of Meadowthorpe online.  No luck.  I have seen old pictures at the McDonald’s on Leestown Road.  Meadowthorpe looked just as bare and generic as any new neighborhood.  I am not bashing it here.  I just want to point out that about the only big difference between Meadowthope in 1949 and Meadowthorpe 2017 are the trees.  Landscaping is what gives the ambiance that turns a row of similar houses into a pretty street with character.  Imagine Chevy Chase without trees?  In 1949, I bet the first residents could not imagine what their neighborhood looks like today.   The same will happen to Masterson as the trees create a canopy.

Here is Meadowthorpe when New Circle Road was under construction.  This same shot today would be nothing but trees.  You wouldn’t see any houses.

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Meadowthorpe has an interesting history.  There was an old mansion where Pelican Lane is now.  It would have been about where you see the tall trees in the upper right hand corner of the above picture.  I think I remember seeing it when I was a kid.  It is long gone now and there are about 15 or so newer houses there.

There used to be an airport too.  Here is a link to see the whole history of the neighborhood.  It is pretty interesting!

http://mnalex.org/history/

So, back to today.  One of the things my friend likes most about the neighborhood is the strong sense of community.  It is a really friendly place to live.  There are a lot of people who have lived in the neighborhood for a long time as well as new people moving in.  She is close to downtown and the Pepper Distillery district.  It is also easy to get around town since you have that New Circle Road exit you just saw being built in the picture.

Most of the houses are ranches and cape cods from the late late 40s to the 50s.  Those newer ones on Pelican were built after 2000.  Most that I have seen have basements.  Prices seem to be from about $150k to close to $300k.  Most are in the $180-225k range.

Here is what to expect in this neighborhood.

 

I am really glad my friend likes her neighborhood so much because I was the one that suggested it to her when she bought it in 2007.