location

Masterson Station: A legit part of Lexington

by John Rice

I’ve got a long history with Masterson Station.

Long before I was The LEXpert, I was a one man lawn care operation.  I had a few customers out there in the mid 90s.  Masterson Station ended one house past Gateway Park.  My wife and I would go see the new model homes by builders such as PSC and Barlow Homes.  We would marvel at the trendy finishes like green counter tops and pickled cabinets that were sort of a pinkish white.

Back then, Masterson Station seemed so far out that you felt like you were half way to Frankfort.  I remember thinking “Who would want to live this far out of town?”  I said the same thing about Hartland back in the mid 80s.  I had always lived inside New Circle back then, so I was one of those people who thought the “Real” Lexington was just inside New Circle Road and anything outside the circle didn’t count.

Since then, Masterson Station has grown and grown and keeps growing.  It is Lexington’s largest neighborhood and has had non stop construction for about 25 years.

At lot has changed.  To begin with,  nobody calls it Masterson Station any more.  It’s just Masterson now.   I’ve changed a lot too.  Instead of pulling a trailer full of lawn equipment, I am working inside the houses now and own a house in the neighborhood.  I just got an accepted offer on the 41st house I have sold in this area.

It used to be that you picked Masterson because you could get the same house for cheaper than anywhere else in town.  It was a good value.  As it grew and people didn’t view it as some random neighborhood hung out of the west end of Fayette County, the price difference became less and less.  Today the same 1300 square foot home in Masterson sells for maybe $10k less than an identical house in one of the top neighborhoods on the south end of town.

As it grew, a new elementary school was built in the neighborhood.  Then Citation Road was built, which was really great.  The new road helped with traffic flow and all the sudden, made sense of the way the neighborhood developed over the past couple of decades.

I have always said that all the whole Masterson area  needs is some commercial development and it would become a part of town people pick because they like it, not just because its a good value.  I drove through the area last night and the gas station/convenience store on Leestown Road is now open.  Meijer owns a big corner on Citation.  I am starting to see more development along Citation too.

Congrats Masterson.  You’re all grown up and we’re glad you’re a legit part of Lexington.

The worst part of being a Realtor

by John Rice

I bet you are thinking I am going to talk about being on call 24/7 and other things realtors complain about.

Not quite.

To me, the worst part of being a realtor is seeing your client make a mistake you know they will regret later.  It is easy to do.  I mean, no buyer or seller really know the market like a realtor.  They only know what they read in the paper or hear their friends discuss.  Often buyers and sellers don’t totally trust their agent.  I recently told a client a truth about our market.  This client said none of her friends believed me.  I asked if any of them had recently sold a house in our area.  None of them had.

Here are the biggest ways clients can make a mistake:

Buyers:  There is nothing worse for a buyer than the first house they see being the most totally amazing house that has come on the market all year.  When this happens, buyers often assume every house is just as good.  They often decide to wait for a better one.  When they do this, they quickly realize the house they passed on was so much better than the other houses in their price range.  I dread it when this happens because I know that the buyer is thinking I am just trying to get them to buy the first house they see to make it easy on myself.

Another big buyer mistake is wanting to negotiate in multiple offers.  I often have buyers tell me they want to come in low and let the seller counter.  I tell them that if they had two offers, and one of them was lower than the other, which one would you counter if you were even going to counter at all?  When you are in multiple offers and you make the weakest offer the seller got, they simply do not counter your offer, even if your agent tells their realtor you are open to a counter.  I mean, they already have other offers that are better than your offer, they have no need to counter.  Always come in with your best offer in multiple offers because  you only get one chance at getting the house.

Sellers:  I feel for sellers.  I think they have it the worst.  I mean, they see in the news that prices are going up.  They know their neighbor got 5 offers the first day on the market.  They see what their Zestimate is on Zillow.  They often think their house is worth more than it is.  Like in any market, the most you can get out of a house is what a buyer will pay.   You can never get more than market value for your house.  It is just in a hot seller’s market, you might have 5 people all willing to pay market value for your house instead of hoping and praying that just 1 buyer will in a buyer’s market.

When a seller overprices their house, they lose the frenzy of having more than one buyer wanting their house.  When a house hits the market, all the buyers in that price range rush out to see it.  Buyers are afraid of losing it.  Once the house has been on the market for a bit, buyers are no longer afraid of losing the house, so they make less than full price offers.

Sometimes a seller will think the realtor isn’t doing enough to market the house.  Exposure is never a problem these days.  Houses get thousands of views on just zillow.  Once a house is listed you can google the address and see several pages of places the listing can be found.  There is no way there is a buyer out there for a specific house who does not know it is available unless they don’t have internet or don’t have a realtor.

So, those are some of the worst parts of being a realtor.  The 24/7 thing is something you get used to after a while.

Coming soon: Hype or not?

by John Rice

I say hype.

I think it is more about winning listings than getting top dollar for the house.  It’s something you tell a seller in a listing presentation to make them pick you over another realtor, who isn’t going to sort of put your house on the market but not let anybody see it for up to a week.

The thought is that during the time between posting that the listing is coming soon and when it is available to show, you will be building a frenzy of buyers who will all see it the first day on the market and it will sell in multiple offers for top dollar.

Sounds good, right?

Well, that is already happening with just about every house that is appropriately priced.

In a hot market where there are more buyers than sellers, the “Coming Soon” approach is sort of like telling a bunch of piranhas that you are going to throw raw meet at them next week……whether you throw it now or later, the results are the same.

I think the “Coming soon” thing would work best in a slow market when you need to create a buzz around a listing to make it stand out.

I wish my dog was an appraiser

by John Rice

This time of year is always tough for comps…..which is the term we use for recent comparable sales used to determine the value of a house.  Realtors use comps to determine a list price.  Appraisers use them to justify a contract price.  The thought is that the recent past will tell you what the market is doing now, but it really doesn’t work that way in a really good or really bad market when prices are either going up or down.

This reminds me of my old dog Julie.  She was a beagle.  She loved to go out in the yard and sniff around for critters.  I remember one time she was on the trail of a rabbit.  She had her nose to the ground and was on the trail of where that rabbit had been.  What she didn’t know was that the rabbit was right behind her.  That is how appraisals work.  They always know where the market used to be and never where it currently is.

Part of what makes this time of year tough is that the market for the new year is kicking off and we are looking back at late fall and all of the winter to determine value.  Sales are usually down in the winter and most of what sells are the leftovers from last summer.

So, we are looking at the worst times to sell to determine a value during the best time of the market.

I personally have a house that I sold for $200k.  It only appraised for $185k.  The best comps for my house were from 6-12 months ago.  So we have a big gap between what a real buyer with money will pay for a specific house and what an appraiser, whose job is to determine market value, says it is worth.

My current dog Sherpa is a dachshund-Jack Russell mix.  She has no problem keeping up with critters in the backyard.

I wish we had a system of determining value more like Sherpa than Julie.

Real estate match-making

by John Rice

Sometimes things just work out perfectly.

A friend of mine referred me to one of his friends.  This seller needed to sell his house quickly without having to do a lot of prep work.

I’ve always got a long list of people who are looking for something specific.  I’ve got a guy wanting a ranch on a golf course.  I’ve got investors looking for various houses to fix up or rent.  I’ve got people looking for their ideal move up house.  I’ve got people looking for rural properties in very specific spots.  None of these buyers are actively looking.  They are just waiting for me to call them up and say “I’ve found it!”  I’ve also got plenty of sellers in my pipeline who may sell sooner than later if the right situation arises.

I also have a buyer who has been looking for a similar house in the exact neighborhood as the one that this new seller has.

So, I arranged a viewing.

Then a deal was made.

The seller got the fast sale they wanted without all the prep work before listing.

The buyer got the property they have been waiting to buy, including the huge dining room she wanted.

I get the satisfaction that I brought two people together whose needs were met perfectly by what the other party had to offer.