real estate agent

I sell houses just like I drive

by John Rice

I drove up to Pittsburg this past week with a couple of friends to go to a track event. My first time. It was a lot of fun. Only hit 110 MPH on the straights since it was raining during our track sessions. We took mostly state highways up and due to rain, mostly interstate back.

As soon as I got back, I put a house on the market for some great people who used me to buy the house several years ago.

Having just spent 5-6 hours on the road, selling their house made me think about what it is like driving through traffic. Not that it was at all frustrating or any of the negatives you typically associate with traffic. I mean the whole watching all the cars around you, seeing when you can get around somebody, knowing which lane is moving better…..that type of thing.

Real estate is a lot like that these days where you can expect multiple offers. You’ve got all these moving parts around you and you have to make quick decisions and take advantage of every opportunity. It is always changing, just like all the cars around you on the road as every other driver is doing the same thing.

We put the house on the market for TOP dollar. Neither the sellers nor I really expected to get half a million dollars for the house, but like moving through traffic, we took advantage of the openings we had to get where we wanted to be.

We immediately got 3 showings. One agent never gave feedback and didn’t say his buyer’s had any interest. Lots of times getting no feedback is the feedback. They were the stopped car on the shoulder of the road. They were out.

We had another agent who had an out of town buyer. This agent called me and said her people wanted to write an offer sight unseen. Now, I really had no intention of negotiating this offer unless it was going to be the only one we got. A buyer making an offer sight unseen is like passing a semi truck right before a blind turn. Too much could go wrong. My goal was just to get it and use it to motivate other buyer’s to act quick and bid high.

Then about an hour later I got a call from another agent who asked if we had any offers. I was more than happy to tell her that another agent had just told me she was going to make an offer. That put this agent in high gear as she wanted to zoom around the other buyer and get the house for her clients. Normally when there are two offers, the default is to get in the fast lane with at least a full price offer.

We sold it for full price. I never got the other offer. That buyer ended up being like that car in your rear view mirror that slowly fades away in the distance never to be seen again. Without that buyer though, I doubt we would have gotten such a great offer…..so thank you to that agent who cruised with us for a little bit.

Worried about the real estate market crashing? This will help

by John Rice

We are living in the first tough economy since the Great Recession. Naturally there are people that worry about the real estate market crashing again. The memory of half the houses on any street being for sale and owing more on your house than it is worth is all too fresh.

While I don’t see any need to be concerned about that happening again, I got to thinking about what that would look like if it were to happen.

Let’s look at a huge difference between 2005 and today. Both are times when the real estate market was on fire.

Back in 2005, the interest rates I was seeing were around 5.5%. The market was good. Values were high. Then when the 2006 season kicked off, it wasn’t as good. The following years until 2012 got worse and worse. Fewer buyers. More sellers. More foreclosures. Unlike stocks, real estate values usually rise gradually and fall even more gradually. Short of a landfill being built behind your house, you are not going to wake up one day and find your house is worth 20% less than it was the day prior. Remember this because I will bring it up later.

That person who paid $300k for a house in 2005. Let’s say they did a 30 year mortgage at 5.5%. One year into their mortgage, they owed about $296k still. After five years, they still owed about $277,500. This is why many of them had to BRING money to a closing when they needed to move in 2010. Back then, one of the first things you would ask a potential seller was “How much do you owe on it?” Many were upside down on their houses, which is why many chose to walk away and let the house get foreclosed.

Today, a buyer can get a 2.875% interest rate for the same $300k house. That is just over half what it was 15 years ago. After one year, they owe about $293,500. After five years, they owe around $266k.

Okay, now it’s time to remember I said real estate values, when they drop, don’t drop fast. It took about 5 years for values in the Lexington area to drop about 15% from the 2005 peak values. Some houses didn’t even loose that much. Picking a good house with a good floor plan, on a good lot, in a desirable neighborhood for the price range and with average or better performing schools is the best way to protect yourself from a bad market. If you look at the math on today’s buyer getting a super low interest rate, you will see that in five years, they have paid off about 12% of their balance. If they get a couple years of appreciation before a decline, the numbers are even better!

I know I got a little nerdy there with the math. Sorry. In the end, my point is that should the market crash again, today’s buyer is going to be in much much much better shape due to low interest rates. If the value of your house drops at the same rate that you are paying down your mortgage, then the worst thing that can happen is you just aren’t building equity in the house. It’s effectively like you’ve been renting where you pay to live there and walk away with nothing when you sell…..and this is the worst case scenario. The best case scenario is that the market stays good and you build a ton of equity. I just don’t see much risk in buying a house right now thanks to low rates.

How do houses go up in value?

by John Rice

Ever wonder HOW prices rise for houses?

Before I got into real estate, I didn’t really think about it. You’d read stuff like the average price went up something like 4.6% last year…I assumed it was like a rising tide and affected every house the same way at the same time.

But it doesn’t work like that. It works more like traffic taking off after a stop light. The first car goes, then the second car see the first car moving and goes, then the third car sees the second car moving and goes, and so on. As much as I wished they would all move at the exact same time, they don’t. And that is exactly how prices go up in real estate.

There are lots of factors impacting value: Supply/demand, location, price range, condition, etc. No surprise here, but when prices are going up, the neighborhoods that are the most desirable and have the least supply go up first. Once there is enough of a price gap between those neighborhoods and the next best neighborhood, the prices of the second best neighborhood start to rise as buyers see a bargain and move in that direction. Then when the prices are up on the second best neighborhood, that does two things: It makes the prices go up on the first choice neighborhood since it is better, and it also drives bargain shoppers to the third best neighborhood. This process ends up going through ALL the neighborhoods in town as long as the market remains hot.

I sold two houses in one particular neighborhood several years ago to some friends wanting to rent them out. I was telling my friends that I thought the prices in the neighborhood were about to go up since there was a big gap between what an identical house was selling for in other neighborhoods. Since I tend to Geek out on this type of stuff, I don’t think they were as into it as I was…..but now their houses are each worth $35-45k more in just a few short years.

So, next time you are stuck in traffic, forgive me if it makes you think of real estate.

How the market really works

by John Rice

Let’s say there are 10 houses for sale and 10 buyers, which would be a balanced market.

What happens with the #1 house?  It gets multiple offers and sells immediately.

What happens to the #2 house?  It is now thrust in the #1 position and gets multiple offers and sells.

Why does all this happen?  Because everybody wants the nicest house they can get.

This process continues down the line UNLESS new listings come on the market.  You can have the #1 house sell and the #2 house still be the second best one IF a fantastic new listing hits the market and assumes the #1 spot.

What about that #10 house?  Unless there are far more buyers than sellers, the #10 house will sit there for a longtime.  Every buyer has seen it and decided to wait for a better house to hit the market.  Sometimes this #10 house can become something like a #2 or #3 house with a price reduction.  Price is everything in real estate.

I’ll put this into some real world things you may have seen.

A house you have been following has been on the market for a while.  Every other house in it’s price range sold the first day on the market.  You wonder why it hasn’t sold.  Then all the sudden it gets multiple offers.  That is because the houses that were better have sold and now it is the best available house in its price range.

A house you have been following has sat on the market all summer and fall.  It’s a house nobody wanted.  Much to your surprise, it sells in January.   This happened because there are far fewer new listing that time of year and now this house appears to be one of the best.   If this house doesn’t sell in the winter, it will sit on the market during the spring/summer/fall again because there will always be a new listing that is better.

The market is all relative to what else is available and it changes daily.  As a seller, you want to get your house to be one of the best ones available in it’s price range.

Real Estate Proverbs

by John Rice

You know, I’ve been doing this for a long time.  You start to see patterns after a while.  I guess that is called wisdom?

Here are some things I have learned that are typically true in real estate:

  1.  If somebody says they are going to make an offer, every hour afterwards that you don’t have it in hand reduces your chances of getting it at all.
  2. If you are a seller and decline a showing, few buyers ever reschedule a time.  They say they will come see it later, but never do.
  3. Usually the best offer you are going to get is the first offer.  The times it isn’t the best offer, it will be the worst.
  4. If you get 10 offers on your house, 8 will be practically the same, one will be crazy low, and one will be the best.
  5. If 20 buyers have seen your house and given the same feedback about the condition and list price, odds are the next 20 buyers will say the same thing.
  6. If you get a full price offer the first day, that means you priced it just right.  Don’t wonder if you should have asked more.  When a house is priced too low, almost always does it get more than one offer and both will usually be above the list price.
  7. If you feel like you got a good deal on a house, most likely it is because it was a house nobody else wanted.  You will have to give a good deal when it is your time to sell.
  8. Crazy realtors have the craziest clients.  You can often tell a lot about a buyer by who their realtor is.
  9. The more complicated the deal is, the more likely it is to fall apart.
  10. The longer the time between contract acceptance and the closing date, the more likely it is to fall apart and not close at all.