John Rice

Fall Market Blunder

by John Rice

It’s that time of year again.  The time when sellers make their biggest mistake.

Many people think fall and winter are bad times to sell.  Truth is there is never a bad time to sell.  If you have a good house that is priced right, it is ALWAYS a good market for you.  Sell it whenever you want.  You might even get more in the fall/winter.  There are two sides to the supply and demand equation.  Yeah, there are more buyers out in the spring and summer, but there are also fewer good listings in the fall and winter.

Let’s say you have a house that hasn’t sold this past summer.  Your instinct is to take it off the market.  But guess what?  If nobody knows your house is for sale, then there is a 0% chance of selling. Then let’s say you wait until spring to put it back on the market.  Well, you are setting yourself up for failure all over again because you will have to compete with better listings.

Without a doubt, fall/winter is the BEST time to sell a house that did not sell earlier in the year.  I preach this to sellers all the time……few ever believe me.  Whenever I have a listing that is hard to sell for whatever reason (steep driveway, bad lot, poor condition, awkward floor plan, etc) it always sells in the fall/winter.  It is because there are so fewer choices for buyers that your listing looks better.  It’s like that last piece of pizza.  The one that only had one pepperoni on it and didn’t have much cheese.  Once all the better pieces have been taken, you eat that one because you don’t have another choice.

I’ve had two listings that were hard to sell this year.  One was an amazing house whose only flaw was a sloping lot.  The other was a great house too.  On a golf course with a view of a pond.  The problem there was that the HOA dues were nearly $1500 a year.  If you didn’t plan on golfing, there were similar houses for similar prices in similar neighborhoods that didn’t have those HOA dues.

The high HOA seller took their house off the market and wants to try again next spring.

The amazing house with the sloping lot just sold.  While it was an amazing house, it was always the bridesmaid and never the bride as long as there were other amazing houses with flat lots.  Once the market exhausted it’s supply of amazing houses with flat lots, this one rose to the top.

So, if you are thinking of selling, or you have been trying to sell, now really is a good time!

What The LEXpert has been thinking about

by John Rice

Here are some things that have been on The LEXpert’s mind lately:

 

  •  I am seeing more and more interest in the houses around Liberty Road and Henry Clay Blvd.  About 25 years ago I saw that once Kenwick got expensive, interest would move to the Courtney/Clayton area.  And once those prices shot up, it would keep going further down Henry Clay Blvd.  What I didn’t see back then was that Delaware would become a hip spot for businesses and restaurants.  Back then, we all thought it would remain the scuzzy industrial area it had always been.  You watch, once the National Avenue area gets filled and rents go up, you’ll see more businesses you want to frequent along Delaware and Winchester Road.   The great thing about the Henry Clay/Liberty Road area is that you are minutes to downtown, minutes to NoLi, and minutes to Hamburg.  It really is an ideal location.

 

  • Greenbrier is seeing a lot of sales.  I have seen several that sold by word of mouth lately.  A couple others sold extremely fast.  I think it mostly has to do with the new school districts.  It is no longer a nice neighborhood on the wrong part of town thanks to Hamburg.  It is also no longer a nice neighborhood with a poor performing school district.  It will attract people who want to have their kids in public school now.   That makes for a broader market.  That means more buyers for fewer houses.  That means prices go up.

 

  • The $350-500k market is strong in Lexington still, even as we get late in the year.   Sales seem to come in waves.  There might be a few slow weeks for certain parts of town and then, all the sudden, that area will have lots of sales in one week.

 

  • Century Hills is blowing my mind.  I have seen several 3 bedroom/1 bath houses without a garage sell for over $100k, some close to $110k.  It wasn’t too long ago that the nicest ones out there were $95k!  Percentage wise, that is a huge increase.  Looks like we are back to the days where under $100k doesn’t get much.

 

  • I think that the new Citation Blvd is going to be a big gain for the west side of town.  That road really ties together all the neighborhoods between Georgetown and Leestown Road so well.  It is easier to get in and out of that area too.  It nolonger feels like a bunch of random neighborhoods scattered across the west side of town.  Businesses are what the area needs.  I think values will really go up if the residents of those neighborhoods do not have to go to Hamburg or south Lexington for shopping/dinning/entertainment.  A nice big road like this might attract them.

 

This is an exciting time to be in real estate.  Things are changing so fast.  Prices are increasing in some areas, stable in others.  Tastes are shifting too.  It is a lot to keep up with…….every new business, every new road that opens changes how people feel about a location.

Kitchens/baths and how NOT to over-improve

by John Rice

Kitchens and master baths.  There is a lot of confusion about them.  Watch HGTV and you’d think that is all home buyers care about.  Since I don’t want you taking your advice from people who don’t sell houses, here are some things I tell people:

  1. While kitchens and master baths ARE very important, the whole house must be attractive.  All too often I see sellers who blew the budget on a kitchen renovation and left the hall baths and other rooms the same.  That is polarizing.  Plus, the new stuff just makes the old stuff look worse.  If you have $50k to drop on your house, spread the love all over the house.
  2. Watch out for over-improving.  It is soooo easy to get carried away.  You’re like “Everybody has granite.  I want marble.  Well the Carrera Marble is just a little more and I love the veining.”  You only have to be a little better than all the other houses in your price range.  If you’ve got a $150k house, no $150k buyer is expecting higher end updates.
  3. Some things just don’t give you a good return on your investment.  A massive deck that cost $10k to build might only get you an extra $3k compared to other houses with normal sized decks.  A $7k roof really isn’t worth any more than a roof that is less than 10 years old and doesn’t leak.  A new water heater has no value over an existing one unless the existing one is just super old.  Buyers don’t like to reimburse sellers for maintenance.  If it isn’t exciting, then it has no value.  It is easier to sell a house with bad windows and granite counter tops than it is to sell a house with argon filled, Low-E triple pane windows and a green laminate counter top.
  4. THE cheapest thing you can do to help your house sell is fresh paint and carpet/flooring.  Think about it, flooring and paint is all you see in most rooms.  Even an ugly kitchen or master bath can get a nice facelift with just new flooring and paint.

All this reminds me of several houses I have been in over the years.  The best (or worst) one was a house behind where I use to live.  A realtor was flipping it.  This is in a 1970s neighborhood where most houses still had everything original.  He came in and did an amazing kitchen and master bath.  He also left the paneling in the downstairs family room.  It was a polarizing house.  You loved some of it and hated some of it.  It didn’t sell.

My wife and I looked at a house in our current neighborhood.  It had an amazing deck and high end kitchen cabinets….the kind you see in a magazine.  We tried to like it, but the 99 cent laminate floors in the kitchen and the paneling downstairs turned us away.  Those sellers must have run out of money when renovating the kitchen.  I’ve never seen such cheap. rental grade laminate floors with such nice cabinets.

So when you are thinking about resale, look around and see what is the norm in your neighborhood and price range.  Definitely don’t cheap out, but also don’t go overboard.

One of the best sellers I’ve seen

by John Rice

I always say you see people at their best or their worst in a real estate deal.

I closed on a house last week.  The seller had lived there for 28 years.  I saw her at her best.

Most people do a few nice things to make it easy on the buyer…..like labeling the keys, cleaning the house, mowing the yard right before the closing, letting them know when garbage day is, etc.  This seller did all that and more.  She had a list of everybody who she used to work on the house.  She mowed the grass right before the closing.  She even cleaned out the gutters the night before the closing.

She told me afterwards, she had gone over to the house and had prayed for the house and the new owner.  Now, regardless of what you believe, you have to admit that was a very caring thing to do!

As we left, I told the seller that not all transactions are this smooth.  She had not bought or sold in 28 years.  She was amazed that some deals can get rough.

Working with this exceptional lady sure made up for the time a crazy lady got so mad while talking on a cordless phone to her loan officer, that she threw the phone down on the closing table and I had to dodge it as it flew across the room.

Neighborhoods with good design

by John Rice

Some people just want a house.  Some people want a house and a neighborhood.  I don’t mean location when I say neighborhood.  That has more to do with proximity to features.  Neighborhood is a vibe thing.  A feeling.  Has to do with trees, the layout of the streets, etc.  Think curvy streets and roads with landscaped medians.  Some good examples are Hartland Parkway in Hartland, or Slashes in Ashland Park.

It is no surprise that neighborhoods with a good vibe are more desirable than neighborhoods that don’t.  That is one reason the exact same house is worth more in a neighborhood like Chilesburg than it is in Willow Bend or Masterson.

I am more of vibe person.  I really like neighborhoods that have some pretty features to see as you walk or drive through them.  An element of design.  So, here are a few that I can think of off the top of my head and why I like them:

  1.  Hartland is probably the best thought out neighborhood in Lexington since Chevy Chase and Ashland Park.  It has a landscaped median running through the whole neighborhood.  All of the cul-de-sacs have landscaped islands in the middle.
  2. Chilesburg-Since it has so many creeks running into the reservoirs in Jacobson Park, the developer didn’t have much of a choice but to work around them.  There are several ponds in the neighborhood, a walking trail with plank farm fencing around it, and some wooded greenspace areas such as the best one on Willman Way.
  3. Greenbrier-There is just something about seeing so much green as you drive through it.  Then you pass the clubhouse and see the golf course.
  4. The Woods-I really like the elevation changes and meandering road that runs through the whole neighborhood.  It is now old enough to have some amazing trees.  You feel like you have left the heart of the city and are in a secret, private place.  Lakewood is a lot like that too because Lakewood use to be on the edge of town.
  5. Chevy Chase and Ashland Park-no explanation needed.

Those are my favorites.  I don’t think we will see anything like these neighborhoods in Lexington again.  There just isn’t the space left.  Other than a few areas in town, we are down to infill projects.  Those often don’t have the space to do much more than clear the land and lay out the neighborhood in a way that maximizes the number of lots.