neighborhoods

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.

The peas and carrots can touch now

by John Rice

It was 1987.  A friend of mine lived in a brand new house in Cumberland Hills.  It was gorgeous and seemed huge to me.  I lived in a Bungalow in the first block of Kenwick.  His parents paid $148,500.  Two years earlier my parents paid $58k.

Today, if equally updated, the Cumberland Hills house might be worth $300k.  Our 1920s bungalow would pull around $400k.

My how things change.

Lexington has always been a town of either older or newer houses.  You had Chevy Chase and Ashland Park if you wanted a nice older house.  You had Greenbrier and Westmoreland if you wanted to pretend you lived in the country.  Everything else was generic new construction of various price ranges or older affordable houses.  You didn’t see much variety of prices within a neighborhood either.  If Lexington was a plate of food, it was the plate of that person we all know who doesn’t like any of their food to touch.

Today, it seems like it is okay for the peas to touch the carrots and some of the gravy to run on the roll.

An incredibly renovated house on Lakeshore Drive listed for $1,200,000 sells as soon as it hits the market and it is surrounded by mostly $500-600k houses.

A house on Townley in Meadowthorpe sells for $275k.  This is one of the highest prices EVER in Meadowthorpe.  Townley had always been the most affordable street in the neighborhood.

The renovated houses on Rand Ave sell for about $170 a square foot.  Very little of Lexington gets that kind of money per square foot.

There is more and more interest in living downtown.

The north end of Lexington seems to be losing it’s stigma as being the “Bad” side of town.

The Hamburg area seems to be equal to the southwest side of Lexington in terms of housing stock, good performing schools and retail/dining/entertainment.

I think all of this is a good thing.  I think there are a lot of factors driving all the change in the market, all happening at once.  We’ve got first time Millennials transforming downtown and several affordable north end neighborhoods.  Downsizing boomers are wanting smaller homes closer in town, selling their bigger houses on bigger lots to Gen Xers.  The market is good.  People are in a mood to move.  We’ve almost run out of room to build, so we are seeing more of an interest in renovating existing houses.

Who knows….maybe in another 30 years that Cumberland Hills house may be worth more than my old Kenwick house again?

Supply/Demand in Lexington-Not what you think?

by John Rice

Supply and Demand.  We tend to think of that term regarding the whole market.  Most people right now think we have a shortage of listings.  We really don’t.  We have a shortage of listings people want to buy.  But back to my point, most would say that, over all, the whole market has more demand than supply right now.  I never like to generalize things that broadly.  Here in Lexington, some neighborhoods have more demand than others, and some have more supply.  Here is how it works:

Lets say you have 10 buyers wanting a specific neighborhood.  If there are only 8 houses for sale, then they all will sell.  If there are only 8 buyers and 10 houses for sale, well, two sellers are losers.   Those numbers will vary every year.

Right now, Hartland is pretty hot.  It has always been a desirable neighborhood, but right now, there are fewer houses coming on the market than there has been in the past.  Conversely, Pinnacle was super hot about a year and a half ago.  I had two buyers wanting to be in Veteran’s Park Elementary district.  Houses were selling as fast as they were listed.  Today, many sellers in that neighborhood have put their houses on the market and there are more for sale than there are buyers.  It is still a desirable neighborhood, there are just more sellers than buyers at this moment.

Sometimes these changes are complicated and sometimes they are as simple as how many houses are available.  We just went though the schools being redistricted.  During that time, people had no idea where the district boundaries would be.  I think many wanted to play it safe and picked neighborhoods that they knew would not be affected.  Pinnacle was within walking distance to Veteran’s Park Elementary.  There was more demand than supply.  Now that we all know where the new district boundaries are, there seems to be less demand.  And also, I wonder if today’s sellers saw how fast their neighbors were selling last year and decided they wanted a piece of the pie…..and flooded the market.  Meanwhile, over in Hartland, there was really no hope of getting a better school district.  Nothing has changed except there is less supply at the moment.

Supply and Demand applies to specific neighborhoods, price ranges, types of property, school test scores……really just about any criteria people use when considering locations.  It is a very fluid thing and changes as often as the price of a lobster at your favorite restaurant.