lexington

Best way to negotiate

by John Rice

Most people think negotiating is making the other party do what you want.   That works when one party has the power to force the other into submission.  Like if you’re an 18 wheeler trying to make a slow car get out of your way.  If you’re the President and can threaten nuclear war.  Fist fights.

Not in real estate.  That behavior typically is counter productive because the other party can usually find somebody nicer to work with and still come out better.

It is a seller’s market now.  Sellers have the upper hand since there are fewer houses for sale.  But they still can’t make a buyer do more than the buyer is willing to do.

Negotiating is getting the other party to do the most they are willing to do for you.  You get them there by thinking of which terms are the most important to them.  In a sale, you have price, inspection repairs, what stays with the house, closing date and possession date.  You also have to know which terms you have some wiggle room on.

Sometimes the timeline is more important than a little more money.  When I bought my current house, there were several other offers.  To compete, I asked the listing agent what plans the seller had made for moving.  They had not found a new house yet.  Since I was keeping my old house as a rental, I did not care when they moved out.  They had lived in the house for 20 years and taken good care of it, so I was not worried about them trashing the place.  I wrote the offer with us closing in 30 days and agreed to let the sellers rent back from me until they found a new house.  They stayed for 3 weeks after the closing.  Now, I know not many people can be THAT flexible, but it is a prime example of giving the other party something really appealing that was really of no value to me.  Conversely, I’ve had clients who needed to be in or out of a house on a short timeline.   I’ve even had clients who had a new fridge and let the seller take the one in the house for agreeing to a better price.

I sold a house last night and it is a prime example of good negotiating.  The buyer had a price in mind.  My seller had a price in mind.  It wasn’t the same price unfortunately.  We were $1000 apart.  This was a cash sale.  The house was sitting vacant.  The buyer offered to close sooner than originally stated and agreed to not ask for any repairs unless there was something majorly wrong with the place.

To my seller, this meant less interest to pay for a house to sit vacant.  Less to spend to insure and heat the place in the dead of winter.  No concern for having to do repairs.  All in all, it probably added up to $1000 in saving for him.

So, the buyer got his price and the seller effectively got his price too.  All because the buyer gave the seller something that was not important to him, but was of value to the seller.

This is how it should be done.

 

If I could have any house, this is it

by John Rice

I was out with a new client last week.  She told me that she had asked her husband which house he would pick if he could have any house in Lexington.  Eventually that house came on the market and they bought it.

It got me thinking about what house I would pick if I could have any house in town.

Here it is:

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As many of you know, I moved to Lexington in 1985, the same year I got my driver’s license.  It was a magical time of combining my love of driving and my love of houses.

I’ll never forget when I first saw this house.  I had never seen such a place except for on TV shows.  I remember thinking it was a very interesting piece of architecture.  At first, I really couldn’t tell if it was a house or an elementary school since a lot of modern/contemporary homes can look a little institutional.

There was no Google Earth back then.  No Bird’s Eye view unless you were in fact a bird.  The view from the street was all I had.  And I loved it.

I wondered what it would be like living there.  I was picturing all the goofy pastel furniture and art that were so popular in the mid 80s.  I pictured myself waking up in the house, putting on a mint green T-shirt with a light gray sports coat and white pants, then getting in my Ferrari and having an exciting day……because this was the type of house you’d see on Miami Vice.

 

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But, eventually reality sat in and I was a chubby teenager driving a green 1976 Chevy Chevette parked out front of this house.  To keep from getting the police called on me, I moved on.

The house last sold a few years ago for $2,500,000.  Still a bit out of my price range.

Here is the bird’s eye view I would have loved to have seen back then:

 

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See that house behind it?  I showed it a couple of months ago.  While I was in the backyard, I did walk over and touch the brick wall of the pool house.  That is the closest I have ever been to this house.

If you could live in any house, which one would you pick?

 

What I did today between cups of coffee

by John Rice

It’s been an interesting day.

Like all my days, it begins with a cup of coffee.

A client wanted to see a new construction town house again.  It was 60 degrees today.  When we get a temperature like that in Kentucky this time of year, we usually get something not so fun to go with it like wind or rain.  It was rain today.  My client and I ended up with severely muddy shoes.  Thankfully I had my emergency pair of socks in the car so I could enter the last house I showed her.  When you wear sandals year round, you’ve got to keep a pair of socks in all your cars.

There are about 5 recent pending sales within this upscale townhouse complex.

The last house I showed her was one I had been very interested in seeing.  It has been on the market for a loooooong time.  I found out today that it recently got a contingency contract and was being kept an active listing for a buyer without a contingency.  I also found out that flooring made from distressed barn wood pulls the threads in your socks.

Then on my way home, I returned a phone call from an agent friend.  She and her husband are considering moving to my neighborhood and wanted to know what it is like living here.  I probably disappointed her a bit because I told her it is the most unfriendly neighborhood I have ever lived in.  She told me that the house she is interested in, which has been on the market for several months, got an offer this morning.  The current list price is well over $500k.

As I am coming home, talking to her in the car, I drive past a house in my neighborhood that I thought would only sell if it were the last house for sale in all of Fayette County.  It has a SOLD sign plastered across the sign in the yard.

Another house (not in my neighborhood) that looks like a Spanish Mission style version of the Brady Bunch house recently went pending.  The list price was over $450k and it was pushing a full year of being for sale.

I am really amazed at all the higher end sales between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Could it be that people feel good about the economy and are ready to spend?  Could it be that rising interest rates have pushed some 2017 spring buyers to act now?

All I know is that I was happy to spend the day checking out some pretty nice properties and sliding around in the mud with my client.

It’s the end of my day now.

Time for my evening cup of coffee.  Decaf this time.

Winter really IS the best time to sell

by John Rice

There are two kinds of listing:

  1.  The listings that are so desirable based on price/condition/location that EVERY buyer currently in the market wants it.
  2. All the other listings.

If you have one of those houses that makes people hear angels sing as soon as they walk through the door, are in an extremely desirable neighborhood, have priced your house to sell, or any combination of all that, congrats, your house will sell quickly any time of the year.  You have nothing to be worried about.  Spring is good.  Summer is good.  Fall is good. And yes, winter is good too.

If your house isn’t one of those, then you need to tweak everything you can if you want the coveted “SOLD” sign in your front yard.  You have what I call the Bridesmaid house because you know that saying, right?

Every year, people ask whether they should wait to list, or take their house off the market until spring.  My answer has always been no.

Why?

Because if you have a Bridesmaid house, there is always going to be a better house on the market all other times of the year.  I see it happen all the time.  A listing that is always the buyer’s second or third choice stays a second or third choice as long as those better houses keep coming on the market in the spring, summer and fall.

In the winter, there are far fewer buyers but there are also far fewer great listings.  Winter buyers typically have to settle for what is left over from the fall.  Picture this…..you’re at a Chinese buffet for lunch.  It’s 12:55.  There is one greasy looking Crab Rangoon.  All the General Zhao’s Chicken left are those thin, hard looking pieces that you think are really cat meat.  You are the only one at the buffet and nothing looks good.  Then, somebody comes out from the kitchen with some fresh food.  Even if it is just Pork Lo Mein, you eat it because it is the best thing available.

That is how the winter market works.

So, if you are ready to sell your house now, there is no need to wait until spring.  If you have been on the market without an offer, now really is your best shot at selling.

 

I improved a neighborhood BEFORE it was a neighborhood

by John Rice

10,000 trees.  That is how many I planted in what is now known as The Enclave at Chilesburg.

It was the mid 90s.  Back then Andover Hills was a fairly new neighborhood.  There was a 32 acre parcel that was outside the urban service area.  The developers, Bob Miller and Lynwood Wiseman, decided they would build their own houses on it.

Bob Miller went first.  He had Jose Oubrerie design his house while he was in town serving as Dean of UK’s College of Architecture.  Oubrerie learned a thing or two about architecture from his time with a more recognizable name in architecture, Le Corbusier.

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Ok, that is the history of the place before my time planting trees.

Bob Miller was a lawyer.  My dad was a lawyer.  All lawyers know each other because half of them have been partners at one time or another.  Anyway, my dad was good friends with one of his partners and that is how I found out about the job to plant 10,000 trees.

I had seen Bob Miller’s house only from the road.  This was long before Hays Blvd existed.  There was just the little country road over there and it was called Walnut Hill-Chilesburg or something like that.  In the fall and winter, you could see the house from that road.  I had always wondered what it was since it is unlike anything else in Lexington.

Bob gave me the address, which was then on Maple Ridge Road in Andover Hills.  I remember wondering how I was going to plant that many trees on a neighborhood lot-this was before google earth.  I pulled up to a driveway between two houses at the end of the cul de sac and there was a gate.  It opened and I followed the road to the house I had previously only seen from a distance.

I was speechless as I approached the house.  It was a piece of art to me, surrounded by 32 beautiful acres as it’s frame.  There was a pond in front of the house….well, it was really the back of the house but you saw it first as you came down the driveway.

Bob liked trees.  He had made a walking trail all the way around the place, which is now part of the neighborhood.  He wanted to make a forest in the middle.  So, I spent a few weeks randomly planting about 8 different types of saplings all over the field across from his house.

One late afternoon, I took a break and gazed across the land that is now Chilesburg.  I remember thinking that one day, I would bring my kids to see these trees when they were huge.  The trees when they were huge, not my kids.

Another time I was out planting, Lynwood Wiseman came out in his Nissan Pathfinder and gave me a hard time about planting where he was going to build his own house one day.  He drove over most of the freshly planted trees on his way in and out.  I told him I was only doing as I was told and he would need to talk to Bob about it.  Few people disliked Lynwood.  Everybody else hated him.  Lynwood would eventually build his house on the opposite side of the pond from Bob Miller.  It is still there, right in the middle of the neighborhood.  The pond is long gone, filled in to make lots for new houses.

I was in an architectural program at LLC at the time.  I told several students and a few teachers about Bob’s house.  Word got over to the College of Architecture.  Turns out that Bob had involved many students in the designing and building of the house, allowed it to be photographed for various architecture books and magazines…..and then closed the gate once it was all over.  I was the only person those architecture loving people knew who had seen it in person.  I asked Bob if I could take some pictures and make a video of the place.  I did not realize at that time how private he was about the house.  I have always appreciated his kindness to me for that.  The video I made ended up in the UK College of Architecture’s library.  It was a VHS tape.  I sure hope somebody converted it to a DVD.

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Those were happy memories for me.  Then there were some unhappy memories of that place.  Bob Miller passed away.  His wife Penny, who was the inspiration for Penny Lane in Andover Hills, sold it to a developer.  That developer went belly up.  The house was vandalized many times.  While it finally did get an owner who appreciates it, it just isn’t the same for me when I see it now.

I did take my kids to see the trees when Ball Homes began to develop the land.  About half of them are gone (the trees, not my kids).  They are about 30 feet tall I guess.  I think of all the people who picked their lot because it backed to the wooded area that I helped create.  I think of how nice it felt the day they were planted, when I was out in a beautiful field, the only sound being the wind passing through trees, and Bob’s house in the corner of my eye.  I also think about the day when somebody backing to my trees calls me up to list their house, and I get to tell them everything you just read.