real-estate

What is being a realtor really about?

by John Rice

You’d think it would be about houses, but it is not.

You’d think it would be about the market, but it is not.

You’d think it would be about knowing what a house is worth, but it is not.

You would think it would be about marketing a property for sale, but it is not.

You would think it would be about showing houses to buyers, but it’s not that either.

All of these things are important, but they are not what being a realtor is really about.

It is about guiding people to make a good decision using all of the things above. I often describe my job, when asked, as “Talking people into making a good decision and talking them out of making a bad one.”

In the future, realtors might not even be needed for a buyer to view a house. People may end buying real estate like they do anything else online, or there will be an app to open the lockbox on the front door without a realtor. In the future one of two things will happen: Technology will make tools like Zillow’s Zestimate more accurate, or people will broadly accept them as being accurate. Either way, realtors won’t be needed to determine market value.

It all comes down to helping people make a good decision. There are tons of tiny decisions in buying or selling a house that can have huge consequences. Money can be lost. Time can be wasted. Stress can be compounded. Since most people only buy or sell a house a few times in their lives, often they don’t know the difference between a good decision and a better one. It is easy to make a good verses bad decision. Good verses better requires some knowledge and experience.

A realtor friend and I often chat about what we having going on. It makes us both better realtors I think. He had a situation where he had two offers on a listing. One was slightly better than the other, but the people with the slightly worse offer really wanted to live in that specific neighborhood. Do you go with more money and risk losing those buyers if the home inspection didn’t go well? Do you go with the slightly less offer where you know the buyer is less likely to walk away because they have to have that specific neighborhood? I told my friend to go with the higher offer. My thinking was that if the higher offer people walked away after the inspection, which is usually within 10 days, the other buyers who wanted that specific neighborhood will still be around. Best of both worlds.

Since the market is so hot right now, I am seeing lots of sellers saying a neighbor or a somebody they know is interested in buying their house before it gets listed. My advice to anybody today is to put the house on the market and try to get at least two offers. Today’s buyers are used to fighting to get a house. Get two or more buyers competing for a house and YOU as the seller will always come out the winner. Also, a buyer wanting your house because their parents or grown children live on the street will ALWAYS be there too. That buyer is not just looking for any house in your price range. Being close to mom, dad, grandma, grandpa or grandkids is what makes them want your house. They may or may not pay the most for it, but they are not out actively looking for any house in your price range all over town.

Another thing I am seeing more of is the opposite end of this where a buyer thanks me for my time and tells me they have bought a house from a friend. I had somebody this year with a friend who was selling their house by owner. My client bought it. The house had been on the market for quite a while. In today’s hot market, not selling fast is a sure sign that something is wrong. When buyers decide to wait for the next new listing and pass on your house, can you imagine how difficult it will be to sell the house in a cooler market? This is where the whole good verses better decision starts to have big consequences. People who make poor choices as a buyer typically don’t realize they made a poor choice until they go to sell the house. I saw plenty of that from Great Recession sellers who told me they went over the asking price in multiple offers when they bought the house that they were now selling for less that they owed on it.

So, being a realtor is really about using your experience and knowledge to help people make the best decisions possible. There is nothing that feels better than knowing your seller got the best deal possible, or that your buyer landed a house that will always be easy to sell when that time comes.

How COVID will affect what people want in a home

by John Rice

It won’t change a thing.

I don’t know about you, but all the news I have been reading is saying buyer’s wants have shifted due to quarantining. They say people are wanting a place to work from home, wanting bigger houses, wanting great outdoor spaces, and a less open floor plan.

I personally think that writers of such stories don’t know much about real estate and just have to write something because that is their job.

When have people not wanted a bigger house? When have they not wanted a better backyard? When have they not wanted a home office? Okay, the wanting a less open floor plan is something that has been emerging for the past few years but isn’t really possible in a smaller house. To do a less open floor plan you need a big enough house so it doesn’t feel like you have a bunch of super small rooms. People may covet these features a little more right now, but it definitely is not a new trend in housing.

I think the biggest effect COVID has had on what people want in a home is simple……..to just find one they like, pay at least the full list price, possibly waive inspections, and take advantage of incredibly low interest rates. Beyond that, the buyers of average priced homes are not all that picky.

Kicking a buyer to the curb made my seller $10k

by John Rice

My seller was impressed that I sold his house so fast.

Big whoop.

Just about every house sells fast these days. back in 2008-2011 was when selling a house fast was something to brag about.

Today, I think the most valuable thing a realtor can do for a seller is helping them pick which offer to accept and taking some strategic steps to keep the deal glued together…..or strategic steps to easily get into an equally good contract should the one you have fall apart.

So, the house I am talking about was priced at the tippy top of the market. It got a ton of showings and the only offer we got was from somebody who had a house to sell. People with a contingency have to come in stronger than a buyer without one, so getting no other offers and a full price one from this buyer is a sure sign we got 100% the full market value.

The offer was contingent on the buyers selling their old house. I never like those, but I don’t mind them if I can get the buyer to accept an immediate kickout clause. A kickout clause is when you can keep the house on the market, but if some other buyer makes an offer the seller wants to accept, the first buyer has to be given the change to get the house if they can buy it without having to sell their old house. Usually the time period for the first buyer to either put up or shut up is 24-48 hours. Naturally, a lot of buyers and their realtors don’t like to show houses with kickout clauses. It can be heartbreaking if the first buyer actually can remove their contingency and buy the house. BUUUUUUUT, with an immediate kickout clause, the seller can enter into a contract with the new buyer and all they have to do is tell the first buyer they just lost the house. It is the best of both worlds for the seller. You get to keep the buyer who is paying top dollar for your house and you get to keep looking for a better buyer. There is nothing to lose.

There is a third great thing about having a contingency contract with an immediate kickout. It is called leverage. One reason I advised the seller to accept the offer if the buyer would do an immediate kickout clause was because I wanted to be able to tell future buyers that we already had a full price contract with the immediate kickout.

Well, a few days later, we did get an offer that was about 95% of the list price. I told the other agent that we had a full price offer on the table with an immediate kickout, and her buyer would need to go full price in order to make the seller kick the first buyer to the curb. They agreed to it. Without the presence of that first buyer’s contract, I would have had no leverage to get the new buyers to come up $10,000.

I more than paid for my own commission by strategically positioning my seller to get the most money.

Dave Ramsey is wrong

by John Rice

“When you’re buying a mobile home, they go down in value. From a financial standpoint, mathematically, you’re buying a car that you sleep in—a very large car that you sleep in. When you buy a home, they go up in value.“

He said it. It can be true. But it is not always true.

It is true when you buy a mobile home and rent a lot in a trailer park. In that situation it is just the trailer that is owned. They are harder to sell and cost a lot of money to move off a lot you don’t own. Couldn’t the same be said for a normal house? When a normal stick built house is moved off of it’s foundation to another location, the value of the house is extremely cheap for the exact same reason. often selling for $1.

Another example of this being true is when a mobile home is sitting on a piece of land but is not permanently attached to the ground. Lenders do not want to lend you money for a property with a mobile home that is not permanently attached to the ground because you could move it. Let’s say you borrowed $100k for the land and the mobile home. Then you sell the mobile home for $10k, leaving just the land. The value of the land probably isn’t going to be $90k without a home on it so the lender is at a greater risk should you default. Lenders don’t like that.

Another example of a mobile home not appreciating is when it never gets updated. Most don’t get updated. The same can be true about a house. I am sure you have seen old, worn out houses that haven’t appreciated once adjusted to inflation?

Okay, so I have sort of agreed with him so far in some situations. When does buying a mobile home become a good idea then? When it is permanently attached to the ground. Now, it really makes no difference to most people whether it is or is not. You are not going to “Feel” any difference inside and it really isn’t going to look much different from the outside. The only reason this makes a difference is for financing. In a world where almost everybody finances their home, you expand your pool of buyers when they can get a Conventional, FHA or VA loan. Imagine what the real estate market would look like today if you had to pay cash for a home? The values would plummet because there would be almost no buyers out there who could afford to buy a home.

As a realtor, real estate investor, advisor and friend to my clients, I can give a thumbs up to purchasing a mobile home on a permanent foundation. If you keep them in good condition and update them as often as you would a normal home, they DO appreciate and ARE a very affordable way to own a home.

Some numbers that don’t matter

by John Rice

After 15 years in this biz, I’m finally going to drop my opinion on some numbers that don’t matter as much as people think they do…..Let’s go.

Average days on market: This is a snap shot to tell you exactly what it says, the average. If you are a seller, you only care about the days on market of one house, your own. While the average days on market can give you a snapshot of the overall market, there are soooo many variables that it really means nothing. The average days on market is tainted by several things. Thing 1 is that it includes the loser houses that stayed on the market forever. Thing 2 is that it includes new build to suit homes which show either zero days on market or were placed on the market before ground was broken.

Average sale price for all of Lexington or the entire state: You will often see data published that will say what the average sale price is for a specific town, state or even nationwide. Again, it’s just an average and is not at all useful to anybody for any purpose other than people who are writing an article about the real estate market. If more expensive houses are selling, guess what, the average goes up. If more cheaper houses are selling, it goes down. All you care about is your own house, right?

Average appreciation: You’ll read stuff like “The average home value increased by _% this year. That does not mean it is equally applied to every house. Some houses and neighborhoods did better than that, some did worse.

The exact square footage of a house: Sometimes I will encounter a seller who thinks his house is bigger than the PVA or an appraiser says it is. Often that difference is less than 100 square feet. Buyers tend to search within square footage ranges like 1500-2000, 2000-3000, over 3000 square feet, etc. If you have 2050 verses 2150 square feet it is not going to make any difference to a buyer. Which leads me into the next item.

Cost per square foot: This is again an average thing mostly used by people writing articles about the real estate market. The average person reads it and thinks it must be important. If it really mattered, then a very plain 2000 square foot home with ancient HVAC units and a roof that leaks would be worth exactly the same as a 2000 square foot, totally updated home that looks like something out of a magazine and has brand a new roof and HVAC units.

What the PVA says the house is worth: The tax assessor drives by every house every few years in their Toyota Prius, snaps a picture of the outside and places a value on the house for tax purposes. The value is just a number used to determine your tax bill. It is not the market value. They don’t go inside so they have no idea what it is like. Often, it can take years for a house to be reassessed. I bought a house in 2002 for $118,200 that I now rent out. The tax assessment was the purchase price until a neighbor sold in 2004. It then went to $135k. It stayed at $135k until 2018. During that 14 years, the market crashed, stabilized and took off again. The same house is now assessed at $153,300 and appraised earlier this year for $225k. (I hope nobody from the PVA follows my blog….shhhhhhh!)

The Zestimate: Is almost never correct. It’s a computer that takes in a lot of data without any wisdom about what makes a house worth more or less than other ones in the neighborhood. It’s sort of like the ultimate use of averaging data. Like the PVA, it can’t take into consideration things buyers factor into picking a house like colors, cleanliness, floor plan, shape of lot, slope of driveway, amount of natural light, number of trees, or a good or bad view. About the only time I have seen it be fairly accurate is in a newer subdivision where most of the houses are similar. The less variation in condition or updatedness, the easier it is to figure out a value because the value range is less broad. The more variation, the more you need an experienced realtor.

There you go. It feels so good to get this off my chest. I hope it helps you better understand the real estate market and how it impacts what is likely your biggest investment.