Podcast - 7/14/23

Good morning and welcome to Jay and Tom's Real Estate podcast. As you can tell, I am not Tom.

Your voice is a little bit softer than Tom's,

That's right.

Just a little bit. So, yep. Tom is on vacation. We're letting him enjoy his time off. I'm hoping he's actually getting some pool time in. And I asked Christina to join on this one cause it's always fun when I can have my wife with me going through what's happening in the most recent real estate market, what's going on. So why don't you start with, let's talk about, we've said that the market is still hot, however, there are homes that are not selling. And what are you seeing as some of those reasons for maybe a home is not moving?

So it's interesting. I just had this conversation with a would be seller, and one of the things that we were discussing is a price, right? Over time, it's always come back to price. If you push the envelope too far, people don't find what you have appealing. You're going to find that you're going to sit on the market and you're not going to get the attention that you want or deserve. The second thing is people who have a more unique type house that isn't necessarily suited to everybody. So if you have something that's a little outside of the box or something that is a very unique demographic of a buyer, then that might sit a little longer too because you might be looking for that one right buyer.

And I mean, what, two of the other things that I've noticed that's changed as well is one, those that are limiting access and showing times or rejecting showings.

Yeah.

That is not a good thing. As we talked about, things are moving quickly, how there are less buyers that are out there, and you're going to get into some of the details on that. And the other thing that really stands out in addition is during the pandemic, you could get away with selling a house and it needing painting, flooring, everything out of date. And that has shifted quite a bit. You're, you're not able to just put it out as rough and raw as you might have been able to before. Because what I've been telling the sellers I'm meeting with is when you look at it, so before they were going to be moving in, they were paying X amount of dollars, getting a 3% mortgage. Now they're in the upper sixes, possibly sevens. So that monthly payment is taken a huge chunk out of what would be some extra change, they could have to do updates as needed because, but the payments are so different.

Discretionary budget, there you go. Is kind of gone. Right.

Thank you. That was the word I was looking for.

So if you want to get away with not doing things, you've got to take it out on your price. So you have to manage your expectation as a seller. I don't want to do carpet, I don't want to paint. I might not even want to clean. Whatever that is, do what you can do, put in the sweat equity of the things that you can do, cleaning, landscaping, keeping it looking fresh. But if you can't do big projects, it's going to come off of your price.

And it's, it's going to be more than a dollar for dollar because these people may not have the cash to do it, which means they may be doing some type of financing in order to get this done where it's replacing the flooring and getting financing and those interest rates for those types of things or if they're using credit cards, are much, much higher. So if it was going to cost you 10 grand to redo something, they may want a reduction of 15,000 to 20,000 because their real cost is going to be more than that.

Right. Well, and also keep in mind, and we tell our sellers this all the time, you got to remember, buyers buy with emotion. They buy with what they feel when they walk in the door, when they pull into the driveway, they're buying off of what they feel unless they're an investor. And investors don't make up a huge part of our market right now because prices have been so high. Interest rates are high, so the cost of borrowing money is high. But if you're trying to appeal to somebody who is going to buy your home and live in it, they have to feel good about it from the time that they pull up to the time they walk in the door and their decision making is happening instantly.

Yeah, that's true. It's a feeling. It's, it's what hits them. So I mentioned earlier that there may be less buyers, the demand is still there, but the demand has changed a little bit based on affordability. Do you want to talk about some of the statistics and some things about that?

Yeah, so the National Association of Realtors came out with a report and they were talking about the number of what is considered affordable mid income type property. So nationally, that average is around 256. Now for those of us in this marketplace, it's hard to find anything that's under 300, quite frankly. That's just, that's a unicorn anyway. But if we think about what is a mid range affordable home that the masses can afford and would enjoy, what they're saying is we are 320,000 listings short nationally. There's only about 23% of all the listings out there that can appeal to what is the largest demographic of buyers. The largest demographic of buyers is that middle income, mid range. Buying it to live in it and needs something that is move-in ready, doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be renovated, but has to be something that they can move in and feel comfortable without having to make a lot of cost improvements to.

So more than three quarters of the homes that are on the market are not considered to be in the affordable index range.

Exactly.

Wow. Well, that sort of explains what's going on. Lot of good information here. If you're curious about any of this stuff, you can visit our website dayhometeam.com. And today I'm going to mix it up a little bit, and because this is a listing that Christina has, we're going to have her do the house of the week.

I'm so excited about this one, and I'm excited because Stribling in Martinsburg is a property that I actually sold to the people who own it. So my partner, Kyle and I had found this home for them a couple years ago and they have done a remarkable job updating and improving it. When we went into it the first time, literally, I don't think the property had changed hands in decades, and it showed, but it was a really great good bones property. This is kind of like a Cape Cod/Bungalow style home, but it's actually pretty spacious. It has almost 2,000 square feet, four bedrooms, two full baths. And the nice thing about this property is it actually has a little land with it. So they're on 2.85 acres. They're not far from the highway. It has an updated kitchen, updated flooring, fresh paint. They've expanded and enlarged what was the front porch. Now it has a bigger deck area and wraps around. It has an integrated garage. It's an awesome property. So if you're looking for something that has a little bit more land around it for privacy, I know like their kids ride four wheelers and things like that on the property, plenty of room to play and that kind of thing. This is a really great house for that. It's also a very manageable price range. It's only 400,000.

I was going to ask you what the price was on that one.

Only 400,000. So updated 2.85 acres, four bedrooms, two baths, almost 2000 square feet for 400,000.

If you're listening to this and that sounds appealing, go to wfre.com. Look up Tom and Jay's real estate podcast. You can see photos, you can click a button to schedule a private tour, and we could make this your home. I'm Jay Day

And Christina Day.

Thanks for tuning in to our Real Estate podcast.