real estate predictions

Should I buy if I know I won’t keep the place for long?

by John Rice

Back when the market was bad, I would always tell people not to buy a house unless they did not know exactly how long they would own it. If they knew they would only be in town for 2-3 years max, my advice was to rent. Same for “Kiddie Condos” too where a parent buys a condo verses renting an apartment or paying for a dorm for 4 years.

Back then the only variable was the housing market. Inflation was flat. Today is a LOT different. The value of the property AND inflation are both variables that are poised to benefit you in this situation. All the major players are predicting both housing prices to continue to rise and inflation to rise in the near future. That’s a double bonus for you and really for anybody buying any asset right now. Buy now at today’s lower price and pay it back with deflated dollars through a mortgage. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Many people seemed to enjoy my last two posts about my weight loss journey. I’m thinking I might include a little bit more stuff that’s going through my mind these days. I’ve gone through a lot of changes and unfortunately I’m now old enough to want to share my experiences and wisdom gained along the way.

Growing up, I always had a lot of anxieties. Sometimes they would be really debilitating. Couple anxiety with a mind that never turns off and it gets worse. I know a lot of people with what is now called high functioning anxiety. I am hoping this helps them.

I think two things helped me out the most.

The first was that I was able to train my mind to separate my perception of reality FROM reality. When I would get anxious about something, I would tell myself “Okay John, this is what you FEEL is happening but this is what is REALLY happening.” It sort of switched my response from being emotional to logical.

Then I realized that most things that make you anxious are either things in the past or the future. We all tend to dwell on either since I sort of feel in general, humans suck at being in the present. If I was anxious about something in the past. Maybe dwelling on some awkward social situation where I worried if I said the wrong thing, I would just try to learn from it and go on, making the next awkward situation easier……because guess what, I can’t undo the past! For future anxiety, I would just try to focus on the present and remind myself again that how I feel about it is totally different than reality and reality always wins. If it was some sort of performance anxiety, I would make whatever I needed to do as basic as possible. That seemed to make it a manageable task. I still do this if I have a super stressful day ahead of me. If I wake up and have to take 3 different clients out to see houses, negotiate a repair list, write an offer, have a closing and otherwise have a crazy busy day, I might just tell myself “All you need to do John is drive around with people and look at houses, make a few calls and do some paperwork.”

I really think like any obstacle in your life, you need to realize YOU can train yourself to control your mind and your responses to things. It isn’t easy and it isn’t quick because you are basically battling yourself. Just slowly do these two thing and you will find your anxiety level decreases.

Why now is the best time to buy all year

by John Rice

At the risk of sounding like the stereotypical realtor who is always saying that now is the best time to buy, it really is the best time to be a buyer since before COVID hit.

Why? Lots of reasons but the biggest single reason is that we are seeing more listings hit the market at a time when most everybody who was going to buy a house in 2021 has already done so. If the market were a restaurant, picture that time when you walk into a very popular place that is hard to get into at noon, but you have arrived at 12:45 and there is plenty of seating.

This won’t last long though, which is why I think now is a great time.

I put on a new listing for $185k last week. We had tons of showings, some interested buyers, but only one full price offer. That hasn’t happened all year. One of the agents that showed it gave me some feedback. She said that her buyer opted to buy another house that was closer to her grandparents whom she took care of. I read that and I was a little shocked. It was the first time in the past two years I have seen where a buyer had a choice between two houses. Lately the choice has been the one house on the market or waiting for the next new listing.

The week before that, I put 3 new listings on the market. Granted all sold the first day, but two of them sold for slightly less that the list price and only got one offer.

I think the market will remain strong for years to come. It might not be the frenzy we have seen but there is no doubt we will have more buyers than sellers for quite some time. We will see what next spring brings. That is usually when we see prices got up the most. That is why I think between now and late winter might be the best shot you have for getting a house!

Are prices going to drop?

by John Rice

I’m reading a lot of headlines and seeing YouTube videos about the market crashing.

Is it going to happen? Short answer is NO.

Is the market slowing down a little right now? YES. It always does this time of year. People go on vacation and those with kids like to be in their new home before school starts. I always like this time of year because I can catch my breath and enjoy a break before it picks back up a little for the rest of the year. When I go to a track and I get used to doing 120 MPH in a straight, hopping on the interstate on the way home and doing 80 feels slow. Right now we are all so used to a crazy fast market, that even a strong but not super strong seller’s market feels like a major slow down.

Are we seeing more houses come on the market right now? YES. I think this is because all the sellers who would have sold during COVID now feel it is okay to put their house on the market. We started seeing more listings hit the market after the vaccinations rolled out. This makes me think that the sudden increase in inventory hit all at once. We will see if it keeps up. Really though, I sort of hope it does. I would love to see a balanced market where there aren’t 5 offers the first day on the market for a loser house and 15 offers the first day for an HGTV worthy house. Simple economics tells us that as long as there are more buyers than sellers, that it will remain a seller’s market. As long as it is at least a balanced market, meaning supply is equal to demand, prices will remain the same.

Does location matter any more?

by John Rice

I guess a lot of people think being a realtor is about opening doors and cashing checks. I guess there are a lot of realtors who think the same so that is probably the source of the perception.

You don’t need me to help you pick a pretty house. You don’t need me to be there to tell you what you like or dislike about a house. You don’t need me to find houses for you. You don’t need me to walk into the only room with a chandelier and announce it is the dining room. You don’t really even need me at all…….unless you view spending the most money you have ever spent as an investment that you know you will sell someday and want to maximize the return. Oh, I guess you also need me to make sure you don’t pay too much since you won’t really know if you overpaid until you go to sell it.

So here is a quick lesson on how I go about helping people pick a neighborhood. We have all heard that real estate is about location. It is, but I don’t think people really know what that means. I normally break down neighborhoods into 4 categories:

The “A” Neighborhood-These neighborhoods are the ones people know and love for a variety of reasons. Some might be close to something desirable, some might have a lot of charm, some might have lower crime. Almost all “A” neighborhoods have a good performing school district. These are the ones that people know by name. These are also the ones that will always be easy to sell in even a bad market.

The “B” Neighbhorhood-Is like the “A” but may not be as well rounded. It’s popular, but often viewed as an alternative to another “A” neighborhood that is close by.

The “C” Neighborhood-This is one that no buyer has ever mentioned as somewhere they would love to live. It is just average in everyway. Nothing really is wrong with it. Nothing is really great about it either. It is just a neighborhood full of houses.

The “D” Neighborhood-These are like the opposite of the “A” neighborhood. These are neighborhoods where 16 years worth of buyers have told me they DON’T want to live. It is often because of high crime in or around the neighborhood or due to a combination of poorly performing schools. Let’s face it, if buyer’s are telling their realtors they don’t want to live in specific neighborhoods, there’s your sign that it isn’t the best investment.

Why does this make any difference if you’ve found a pretty house you like in your budget? Shouldn’t you be happy just to have found a house in this crazy market? Isn’t finding a house in a less than popular neighborhood better than not finding a house at all? The answer to all of this is that it doesn’t matter at all when you buy the house. It matters a lot when you decide it is time to move on and you want to sell it.

Right now, let’s say there are 100 buyers in the market. There are 20 houses in each of my categories for sale. That means there are 80 houses for 100 buyers. Oh no! That means all 80 sell for at least full price in multiple offers the first day on the market.

But markets change. I am no doomsday person. I don’t think the market is going to crash. It will however, over time, swing back and forth between being a buyer’s market and a seller’s market.

This is what it looks like in a buyer’s market: There are 80 buyers in the market. There are 100 houses for sale, 25 in each of my 4 categories. How do you think this pans out? The “A” neighborhood houses sell first, then the “B” neighborhood houses, then the…….well, you get it. When there are more houses for sale than there are buyers, buyers get pickier. Buyers can’t be picky in today’s seller’s market but they will be able to again. I am sure of that.

My first house was in a “D” neighborhood. I was in my mid 20s and didn’t know anything. Like a lot of first time buyers, I was focused on just finding a house I liked. As I improved my house, I would look out my window and realize that I had no control over my whole neighborhood. Many of the houses around me were owned by investors. There was some crime. I loved the house but not the neighborhood. I sold it for about what I had in it, which meant I didn’t have a lot of equity to carry over to the next house. That is another reason to always pick a winning neighborhood. You will use the equity you’ve built in your old house as your down payment on your next house. You want to maximize that.

So do yourself a favor and always pick the best neighborhood in your price range.

What happens when we do see more houses for sale?

by John Rice

I read a lot of news about real estate. It is always a little funny to me to see what people who are not realtors have to say about the market. There are two things that I have read this week that have me rolling my eyes.

The first one is the headlines about how the number of sales have been declining. Gee, that’s just what happens when there are so few houses for sale. This does NOT mean that buyers are deciding not to buy a house. It means that they can’t get a house.

The other one is that it seems there is a projection that we should have more houses for sale later this year than we have in a long time. That would be great but let me tell you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that prices are going to drop. They might stabilize prices a bit but when a hot new listing in Lexington can easily get 15 offers, we would need 15 times the listings for a balanced market. There is going to be more buyers than houses for a while.

A lot of the people who are fantasizing about what that market might look like are not old enough to have lived through the housing crash during The Great Recession. Back then we had more houses for sale than ever and do you know what? The best houses still sold fast and often in multiple offers. Do you know why? It is because everybody wants the best house in their price range. We could triple the number of houses for sale today and it wouldn’t change much. What would happen would be that the best houses sell fast and for top dollar while every other house languishes on the market. This flood of new inventory does not mean that every buyer will be able to get their ideal home.