rural houses

“How long will it take to sell my House?”

by John Rice

I get asked this on every listing appointment. It is hard to believe that a couple of years ago, it was rare for any house in any condition to make it past the first day on the market. I usually don’t reply with an amount of time, but with a sequence of events that need to happen to attract a buyer. The honest to goodness truth is that any house should sell pretty quickly if the seller will do some prep work. Granted, there are exceptions…..Two million dollar house? Will take time since there aren’t many buyers in that price range. A unique house? May need a unique buyer. An overpriced house? Will usually only sell to an idiot with a realtor who thinks we are still in the 2022 market.

I’ve been doing this a long time. This is how it usually goes in this changing market. I see the house. I ask the sellers if they are able to do any work that needs done to attract buyers. Buyers want as move in ready as possible and for the best price right now…..well, I guess they always have but now they have more listings to chose from and sellers can no longer just put their house on the market without a little prep work. Sometimes the seller can’t/won’t do anything. If they can’t/won’t, I tell them the price I think their house will sell for just like it is. Usually though, the seller picks a few items from the list. We put it on the market. They get positive feedback for the things they have done. They get negative feedback for the remaining items on the list.  After awhile, the seller starts to realize that they are going to have to do more items on that list or reduce the price. Often, buyers subtract about 5 times the cost for the remaining items on the list. I’ve been on the buyer side of this. They almost always say something like “If I have to paint this whole house I’m not paying a penny more than $XXX,XXX!!”  or “I would need to replace all the carpet and I like hardwood, so let’s just subtract the cost of hardwood from the asking price and go from there.” Can’t blame them. After all, it is turning into their market these days.

Eventually, the seller plugs away at the list until it sells. See, there is the sequence of events I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Now that the house is ready, it is going to sell because it is competitive and will almost always fall on the short list of a buyer.

But what happens to the people who do everything on the list from the beginning and price it correctly? Their house usually sells very quickly. Why? Because buyers want the best house for their money. Make your house THAT house, and start packing.

What I like about a contingency contract

by John Rice

Well, I don’t really like them, but there is a good side to this type of contract if you are the seller.  Guess what it is? The buyer will typically pay you more with a contingency to sell their house first than they would without it.

I see it all the time. A buyer with a house to sell gets really nervous about not knowing where they will be living once they sell their old home. Now, unless the buyer already has a contract on the house they are selling, I always counter back with a kickout clause.  That basically means that IF the seller would like to sell the house to another buyer who does not have a contingency, they give the contingency buyer a certain amount of time to remove the contingency or back out of the deal. 

Another thing I like is that IF the contingency buyer can and does remove their contingency,  you have a back up buyer. Sometimes it helps when negotiating repairs if the buyer knows there is somebody else wanting the house if the deal falls apart!

I don’t really care for this kind of contract though when I am working with a buyer…..for all the same reasons. When I have a buyer who wants to write a contingency offer, I usually try to get them to just wait until we sell their house first. Here is why I don’t think they are a good idea for the buyer who can’t possibly remove the contingency if needed: Any decent realtor is going to counter back with a kickout clause. That means that if another buyer comes along they will lose the house. If no such buyer comes along, that means that the house would still be there when the buyer’s old house eventually sells, and they could probably strike a better deal at that point.

What’s it really like living in the country?

by John Rice

I’ve been in the sticks for almost a year now. I get asked this a lot. For the most part, it has been everything I hoped. I enjoy it. I did have some concerns before we moved, and of course there are a few things I had not thought about.

My biggest concern was getting stuck out here in the winter. I don’t know why, but for some reason ice on my street in the country bothered me more than ice on the street at my old house in a neighborhood. It was about two miles inside the neighborhood at my old house before I got to well maintained road. Well, I live about the same distance from a major state highway. Guess what? Two miles of ice is still two miles regardless of where you live. The good thing for me is that my road gets plowed and salted faster than my old neighborhood road did. My next door neighbor out here is the police chief, so I guess they want him to be able to get out easily if there is an emergency.

I was worried about crime. That is probably because having grown up in neighborhoods, the thought of nobody being close by was scary. That’s been a non-issue. Only your neighbors drive past your house unless you live on a main road and there seems to be a real strong sense of respecting the property of others out here. And for those that aren’t so respectful, they assume everybody has a gun so they don’t really want to risk getting shot at for your stuff.

There are really only two things that I didn’t think about. Neither are big deals thankfully.

The first is that most people in the country keep to themselves. My neighbors will wave to me. Several stopped and introduced themselves to me when I was new. But most of the time it is just like a neighborhood where you mostly just smile and wave. I guess small talk is harder to do at the mailbox when your houses are so far apart.

The other thing, and this one is what bothers me the most, is that there are no storm sewers. In a neighborhood, the rain water runs neatly down the curb into the storm sewer and disappears. Out in the country, the water runs down a hill, crosses the road leaving mud and gravel for daaaaaaaaays after it quits raining. This probably wouldn’t bother me if I wasn’t trying to keep my cars clean. As soon as it all dries up, here comes another rain to do it all again.

And that’s it. Other than these few things, it really isn’t that much different than I expected. Sure, I have to drive longer to get anywhere and I have a lot more grass to mow. That is totally worth it to me to get the peace, quiet, calmness and beauty that county life offers.

I love showing rural properties. Nothing like a fun drive in the country and then getting to see a house and some land. Here are the counties I work in for both rural and neighborhood properties: Fayette, Scott, Jessamine, Clark, Madison, Woodford, Bourbon, Montgomery, Franklin and Garrard Counties.

5 things I like/dislike about country living

by John Rice

I never thought I would live in the country. I’ve always been a neighborhood guy. I like having pizza delivered. I like not having wild animals around, especially snakes. I hate snakes. When I was a kid, I was convinced that living in the country was the surest way to be murdered since nobody was around to hear you screaming for help. Or get eaten by a wild animal. I never investigated the statistics, but I was sure that living in town was MUCH safer than living in the country.

My love of seeing trees instead of concrete, hearing nature instead of traffic and leaf blowers, feeling calmness over chaos eventually convinced me that I could only get all that in the country.

So, here are my top 5 things I like and dislike about being in the country. I hope it helps you decide if country life is for you!

THINGS I LIKE:

  1. Peace. You can’t get this type of peace anywhere else. You wake up and everything is so calm. You notice more enjoyable little things like the wind blowing through trees.
  2. Space. I used to think having a big yard was space, but there is nothing like neighbors being 500 feet or more away from you.
  3. Sunsets. I have always loved the sunset. It is even better when paired with hills and trees than your neighbor’s roof and power lines.
  4. Being alone. I am either the world’s most introverted extrovert or the world’s most extroverted introvert. Whichever it is, I really enjoy when I am home. It recharges me.
  5. Being outside. When you live in the country, you tend to think of your property as land, not a yard. I don’t know if this makes sense, but when I was in a neighborhood, I thought my house was the property and it was just on a lot. Now I have switched it and think of my property being the land on which my house just sits.

THINGS I DON’T LIKE:

  1. Gravel. It’s usually all over the road and at the end of driveways. I am too into cars to not have this bother me.
  2. Snakes. I have only seen two of them but I did find a 5 foot skin that one left…..which means it is bigger than that now.
  3. Mowing. I actually love mowing. Always have. I just don’t like that it is a half day commitment. I especially don’t like it when you are half way done and it starts raining.
  4. Mowing.
  5. Mowing.

That’s it. Overall, being in the country has been super nice. The positives far outweigh the negatives. Every house in the country I have sold, the sellers have all missed their homes. Most of them moved back into town because they were driving more than they wanted to be. It can be a little tough for those with kids who are always needing shuttled to and from band practices, sports and other events.

Sold for 25% OVER list price!!

by John Rice

I listed a manufactured home in a tiny town in northern Scott County on 15 acres last week. I have had it in my pipeline for close to a year so I have been watching the market in the area for a while. Prices have gone up quite a bit, but lately similar properties have all been listed for about $160k.

So we got pictures and put it on for $160k. I fully expected it to sell for a little more since the market value is no longer determined by recent sales. It is determined by how desperate the buyer is.

Turns out they get more desperate every day.

We got 8 offers. 10 actually but two were for a financing type that did not do manufactured homes so we can’t really count those.

One offer was $155k. I always laugh at those buyers and scratch my head. What rock have they been hiding under that they and their realtor don’t know that practically every house in multiple offers goes for at least list price.

Five of the offers had escalation clauses. That is where the buyer pretty much says they will pay so much more than any other offer up to a certain price.

I got one offer for $200k. My mind was blown. No escalation clause. Just a flat $200k.

This gave me the chance to tell the buyer’s agents with the escalation clauses that they might want to up their amount if their buyer really wanted the house.

Fortunately one buyer whose offer had some better secondary terms raised their escalation clause to be $200k. I have seen where people throw out some high number on an escalation clause to get their offer noticed but they have no intention of every going that high. I called that buyer’s agent to confirm they were legitimately willing to go that high. They were. They got the house for $200k. Next step is to convince the appraiser it is worth that.