real-estate

How to make a good choice in a frenzied market

by John Rice

It used to be real estate was all about “Location, location, location.”

Today real estate seems to be more about “Finishes, finishes,finishes.”

This disturbs me. Why? Because one day there will be enough houses for sale that a buyer has a choice on location. Right now, with so few houses for sale, buyers are considering ANY house in their price range. When you only have one or two choices, you can’t afford to be picky.

Something else that disturbs me are all the houses that have been extensively renovated and are selling for twice what a similar non-renovated house is worth in the same neighborhood.

I am not sure why this is but I suspect it has to do with the speed of the market. Nobody has time to do a market analysis and see what the house is worth compared to other recent sales or see if it is overimproved for the neighborhood

This is what I tell my buyers:

  1. Location is still important. Any house can be updated but you can’t easily move a house to a better location.
  2. Only buy at the top of the neighborhood’s price range if there are several other homes equal in finishes and value. You do not want that $400k house that looks like the reveal at the end of an HGTV show and is surrounded by $200k houses. In a balanced market, or even worse in a buyer’s market, potential buyers will love your house but will not buy it. They will be in a $400k price range and expecting a $400k neighborhood. They won’t like the cheaper houses around it. Remember when you buy a house, you are also buying stock in the neighborhood.
  3. Don’t compromise on the lot. Right now nobody cares. Buyers are just excited about any house in their price range. You don’t want the house with the tiniest or oddly shaped lot in the neighborhood. Remember neighborhoods are about conformity……fitting in among the rest of the houses. It’s okay to have the biggest or best lot in the neighborhood of course, but if most of the lots in the neighborhood are flat, you don’t want one that isn’t. If most are large, you don’t want the smallest one. Avoid driveways that are pretty steep. It is better to have a lot where the backyard slopes downhill away the house verses sloping uphill.

Basically, the best thing to remember as you frantically are trying to decide how much over the asking price you want to go is that one day you will be selling the house. The market may not be as tight. You won’t know whether the house you picked was a good decision or a bad one until it is your time to sell it.

So, always go into a purchase being mindful of your exit plan.

Good John Rice vs. Evil John Rice

by John Rice

Sorry to be clickbaitish with the title of this post.

There really is a Good John Rice and there really is an Evil John Rice. Both are realtors too.

(I am the Good John Rice by the way!)

How do I know this? Because I often have to prove I am not the other John Rice. When you are a party to an FHA or VA loan transaction, the underwriter has to submit everybody’s name to see if they are on the Naughty List of banned people. You get on this list by doing something shady. Once you are on this list, you can’t be a party to FHA or VA transactions again.

It was about 17 years ago when this first came up. Back then, just about every time I sold a house where the buyer was using FHA or VA financing, I had to give my social security number or driver’s license number so they could verify I wasn’t Evil John Rice. I started putting my middle name on the contract for FHA and VA sales and that helped a little bit.

I hadn’t had to prove I am not him for quite some time, but it happened again this week. I had to write an email stating I am not Evil John Rice of Lake Providence Louisiana……which is better than my social security number or driver’s license number floating around out there with half the mortgage companies in town.

I hope I never meet this Evil John Rice. He has caused me to prove I am not him for my whole 17 year career. I might punch him right in the nose if I ever get a chance, lol.

Here is a letter I had to write to an underwriter several years ago. I decided that I should at least have a little fun with proving I am The Good John Rice.

Off to a great start!

by John Rice

You know two of the absolute best parts of being a realtor?

One is making friends with your clients and the other is when they call you back to work with them again.

If the past couple of weeks is any indication, my 2022 is going be a really fun year!

I’ve got a client/friend I don’t get to see all that often who needs me again. We have had Indian food for lunch twice to discuss the plans. It is always nice to get to see people face to face after mostly keeping up online.

I have another client/friend who is leaving town. I will miss them. We have had so many good times and drank a lot of coffee over the years.

I woke up this past Saturday morning to a text from a client/friend. It was actually my own contact information, so I figured she was probably trying to send it to somebody she knew. Sure enough, once I got out of bed, I got a text from her mother wanting to see a house that had just come on the market. I have met her mother before and really liked her. Her and her husband bought the house and now I get to help them out. I absolutely LOVE it when I become the Family Realtor and get to know everybody.

I closed a house for some out of state sellers who I have worked with a few times. Unfortunately one of them is in poor health. I did everything I could to not only make it a smooth transaction for them, but I also tried to handle some things along the way so I didn’t need to bother them. One of those was a home inspection repair. We only had one item on the list, which was an HVAC thermostat problem. I sent my HVAC person over and told him to do whatever is needed to satisfy the buyer. Then I paid him for it. I only filled the sellers in after it was all said and done since I didn’t want them to have to deal with it. I wasn’t expecting to be repaid, but they insisted. After the closing, they sent me a nice gift and a card. They wrote “John, please accept this small token of appreciation for all the extra help you did every time we needed you! Thank you for being not just a realtor but a wonderful human being. We really appreciate you and everything you’ve done for us during this difficult time.”

Reading that card meant so much to me. I remember when I was in my early 20s, I was as lost as anybody that age about what I wanted to with my life. I really enjoyed helping people out back then. Stuff like helping people move, shoveling their snow, pet sitting, dropping off/picking up people at their mechanic and such. I remember sitting in my basement apartment on Redding Road thinking “I wish just helping your friends was a career“.

Turns out that was a viable option after all!

Of all the emerging trends, this is my favorite

by John Rice

I’m as tired of talking about COVID as anybody else in the world, but I’ve got to bring it up because it has fueled two trends in the real estate market. One is that everybody is moving up the real estate ladder due to low interest rates and the boost in equity the market has given them. I am seeing far more sales over $1,000,000 in the past year. Some of these buyers are wanting to get into their favorite neighborhood and a lot of them are wanting a place in the country.

The other trend is scaling back. Many people just want a more simple life and/or are into the F.I.R.E. movement…..meaning Financial Independence Retire Early.

I’ve been wanting to scale things back myself the past few years…….including myself since I was so overweight. Here’s my story. I think sitting around the house during the lockdown got me thinking about it more.

I grew up in the 80s. I’m a Gen Xer. I wanted the American Dream just like everybody does. I never considered myself all that materialistic. I knew stuff wasn’t going to make you happy if you were not already happy. I viewed stuff as icing on the cake of life. I have had a good life. I married when I was young and still am happily married 30 years later. I had great kids who I love in a way they will never know until they become parents. Life was and still is good. I thought stuff would make it better. As my real estate career took off, I got the chance to do a lot of things I couldn’t before, some of them I never thought I would do. I took nice vacations. I had a big house in a prestigious neighborhood (that was very outdated because I hate remodeling a house while living in it.) I was able to collect cars and waste a fortune on them. I was able to write 5 digit checks to one of my favorite charities.

The more stuff I had though, the more stress I had. Stuff needs your attention. Stuff needs maintenance. I started realizing that this stuff I thought would be fun to have was actually making my life worse. My friends would tell me to hire people to take care of my stuff for me. While that saves the time of doing it yourself, telling somebody what to do and then checking that they did it still takes a little time and mental energy.

As I was considering upgrading my Porsche 911 S to a 911 GT3, I realized that better stuff wasn’t the answer. Why? Better stuff is still stuff. Remember, stuff needs your attention. Stuff needs maintenance. So, I jumped off that train and decided that I only wanted stuff in my life if it made my life better. I still have far too many cars and I think it is time to let a couple of them go even though I really enjoy them. I just think my life would be better with less since good stuff is still stuff.

Those are the two trends I am personally seeing with my clients. Most of them want to get the biggest and best house they can afford and others are wanting less house than they have had. I’ve personally done both so I get the appeal of each one. It’s fun working with both of these type of buyers since they are both getting what they want.

What would it take to crash the real estate market?

by John Rice

A lot of people subscribe to the “What goes up must come down” theory on markets. I don’t. I tend to just use that one when describing gravity.

For real estate, we have only really ever had prices go down twice in the history of tracking such stuff. Once was the Depression which caused ALL markets to go down, and the other was the Great Recession which was largely caused by bad mortgages that were toxic to the stock market. Neither time actually had anything to do with just the real estate market.

Today’s market is probably the healthiest it’s been in a long time. Prices are high due to supply and demand. Sure, low interest rates help but not as much as you would think. People acclimate to interest rates. I remember bragging about getting 6.625% on my first home when all my homeowning friends were over 7%.

When people on Youtube or those who write for the news look at the real estate market, they tend to not look at the whole picture. I am sure you have seen headlines about how all the people in mortgage forbearance would crash the market once they got foreclosed. Didn’t happen. All those people who needed to sell had enough equity to sell and avoid foreclosure. What about all the Baby Boomers who would leave a huge void in the real estate market as they sold their homes and went into retirement homes or to reside on the other side of the Pearly Gates? No mention of the youngest generation of buyers entering the market who would keep the wheels of the whole market greased so everybody can move. Years ago I described this like a baseball game where the bases are loaded. The Player on 1st base wants to run to 2nd. The Player on 2nd base wants to run to 3rd. The Player on 3rd wants to run home. What needs to happen in order to keep all those Players moving? For the Batter to hit a home run. The first time buyers are the most crucial element of the market. Without them, no homeowner can part with their old house in order to move up to their next one.

Everybody knows how Supply and Demand works, right? Let’s apply it to real estate. Most people involved in selling or buying will be doing both. Most sellers are also buying. Most buyers are also selling. That means there is no net gain or loss in the supply/demand ratio regardless of the market. This is why the supply/demand ratio got so bad during the Great Recession-You had so many foreclosures where the previous owner did not reenter the market as a buyer. Other than in such catastrophic times, the only people who are doing one side of a sale are first time buyers or those who have passed away or are going into some form of assisted living. Historically there have been more first time buyers than there are those who are exiting the market permanently. (I am excluding those well off enough to purchase second homes since that is a smaller market and we are not in a big area for that like Florida or any other vacation destination.)

So then, what would it take to tank the real estate market if it has nothing to do with real estate? It would take something terrible to happen with the economy…..meaning something bigger and broader than just the real estate market that is like a Tsunami and wipes out everything in it’s path. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen any time soon!