neighborhood

How I grew up to become The LEXpert

by John Rice

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A little tubular box just like this one is what got me into real estate.  I remember all the times I sat in my grandparent’s family room and the thrill of pulling that plastic top off the cardboard container.  My grandfather would be sitting in his green plaid Lazy-Boy recliner watching golf or some sport on the 19 inch TV with a rabbit ear antenna.  The room was paneled.  Had a giant brick fireplace that took up most of the wall.  I would sit and built houses with these 50-60 pieces.  I played with these so much that the cardboard tube was badly frayed where the lid goes from taking it off and putting it on so many time.

 

Then I stepped up to this:

105 pieces of pure real estate pleasure.  It totally amazes me now to think how far Legos have come.  Most today are about building something and following a plan.  Back then, it was about being creative and making something that only existed in your mind.

I mainly did modern, flat roof houses because with only 105 pieces, you didn’t want to use half of them to make a sloped roof.

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Then I started to draw floor plans.  It was the 80s.  The dawn of the open floor plan for the masses.  There was still enough 70s left over that things like Conversation Pits, like I have in this house, were as cool as firepits and reclaimed wood are today.  My grandfather got me the drafting kit for something like my 10th or 11th birthday.  I still have the note inside that he wrote me.  I wish it had a date on it, but neither of us realized I might need it nearly 40 years later for something called a blog.

Then I got into neighborhoods.  Thinking about how one street compared to another and such.  Asking myself which house was better, which lot was better, what I liked or disliked about each.  We lived in Frankfort at the time.  I remember thinking our cul de sac was one of the better ones in the neighborhood, but I didn’t like that it sat at the bottom of the hill, and that the house behind us sat slightly higher than ours……but it was still far better than the houses closer to the East-West Connector Road with all the traffic noise.

I’d go to Florida in the summers to see my grandparents.  My entertainment was having them drive me around cool neighborhoods and going to model homes to see new houses.

People often ask me how long I have been in real estate.  I tell them I’ve had my license since 2005, but I’ve been in real estate all my life.

 

Real estate lessons from a bird?

by John Rice

Something happened in my yard yesterday that made me think about how important location is and why buyers need somebody with experience to guide them.

A robin built a nest in one of my bushes.  I have like 50 bushes in my backyard.  This poor robin picked the one right by my backdoor.  And she built it about 2 feet off the ground.

I am sure she thought it would be great to be over there by the dryer vent on these cool spring mornings.

She worked hard building a really nice nest.  It was a great place, she thought, to lay her 3 eggs.

If this robin had asked me, I would have told her I have a dog.  I also would have told her about the neighbor’s cat named Stewart that walks down the fence several times a day.  Stewart is the reason my wife can no longer feed the birds.  Our feeder area became an all you can eat buffet for that stupid cat.

Had she asked, I would have suggested one of the taller bushes at the back of my yard, on the far side of where Stewart cuts between my house and my neighbor’s house to get home.

But there are no realtors for bird houses.

You probably see where this is going.  My dog knocked the nest out of the bush and the eggs fell to the ground.  I can’t really blame my dog for being a dog, but we were looking forward to watching this robin’s journey to motherhood.

When you are buying a house, there is a lot of stuff to process.  It is easy to focus on what you like and assume you are seeing the whole picture.  Even more so when you have to make a quick decision in a fast moving market.  I always try to make sure my clients know everything I know about a location or house.

Some things I’ve told clients:

“I know you like that this house is right across the street from the school.  Between 2:05 and 2:50, there will be 500 moms parked in idling SUVs and minvans in front of this house.  Will that bother you?”

“I know you don’t mind that this house is on a busy road.  I know you’ll have 3 teenage drivers in the next few years.  I wanted to make sure you realized that they won’t be able to park on this street and this driveway is only one car wide.”

“I know this is a great house and any house will sell fast in this market.  I think that only having two bedrooms upstairs and the rest in the basement will make this house harder to sell in a soft market.”

I couldn’t do anything to help this robin, but I can help you pick the right place to live.

 

The 3rd real estate word I created

by John Rice

One of the toughest things about being a realtor is when you make friends with somebody who buys a house from you, then they move out of town.

Phil and his wife were referred to me from their agent when they moved to Lexington.  He had taken a job here and commuting from out of state was not an option.

I had a really good time looking at houses with them.  They were a lot of fun.  We laughed.  It didn’t even feel like work to me.  It was like hanging out with old friends.

Several times a year, Phil and I try to find the best Chinese buffet in town.  We haven’t really found an amazing buffet, but we sure can tell you where not to go for lunch.

Well, Phil is just too good at what he does and now it is time to move on to bigger and better things that are not in Lexington.  Time to sell their house.

I went over to check it out earlier this week.  It was good to see what all they have done to the place.  I had forgotten a lot of details about the house, but I quickly saw why they picked it.  Back then, he had a choice of many houses in that price range.  Today, there might be 20 houses on that side of town in this price range.  I always like to make sure my people get a house that will be a buyer’s top choice even in a bad market.  We won’t have any trouble selling it.

Anyway, as I was looking at their hall bathroom, I said that the tile floor was “Decade Neutral.”  He got a good laugh, said that would make a good blog post, and here we are.

Decade Neutral I guess is my new term for those finishes that are hard to tell when they were done.  His house had 12 by 12 beige tile with a light but not white grout.  Who knows when it was installed.  It could have been the 70s.  Could have been the 80s.  Could have been last week?  It is decade……neutral!

When people ask me about updating their house, I usually suggest things like this.  It is no fun to rip out trendy tile once there is a new trend.  His tile is like a pair of jeans or khaki pants.  It goes with everything and is timeless.

Some other things that are Decade Neutral are:

  1. Hardwood floors.  Not the prefinished kind.  The kind that gets stained and polyed on site.  The Goldilocks kind because it is not too wide and not too narrow. It is just right.  The kind you see in houses from every decade since houses have been built.
  2.  Crown molding.  I’ve never had anybody tell me that they would have to update crown molding.
  3. Recessed lighting.  The beauty of recessed lighting is, well, that you DON’T SEE IT.  (Ok, I guess they did make some a long time ago that had a mirrored gold ring around it…but you can buy covers for THAT kind now.)
  4. Chrome faucets.  While they are more minivan than “Sexy Black Dress”, they get the job done and nobody is appalled to see them in a house.
  5.  Tall ceilings.  Sure, the 2 story foyer isn’t as popular any more, but nobody has ever said they wished the ceiling in the family room was shorter.

That is all I have for now.  I’m gonna miss Phil, but I sure wish him all the success he in due in his new job.  He’ll do great!

Oh, and the other real estate terms I created are “Move out ready” and “Reach-in closet.”  Move out ready is when a vacant house looks like the seller left in a hurry.  It has crumbs in the fridge, you can see the impression on the carpet where the couch was, and there are nail holes in every wall.  A “Reach-in closet” is any closet that isn’t a walk-in.

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.

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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.

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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.