New Builds

There are so many options in real estate. I got into this business to help people find what I found! A home – not just a house. My home is part of what I saw as a movement called homesteading. More families are looking for pieces of land to build their own home and live a little more sustainably. Whether that means a little space for your own chickens to have a supply of eggs, or acres to grow your own produce, there is a trend to find land and build. I have enough construction and building experience to be at least dangerous! I spent 5 years in an electrical contracting company and have already built one home in my lifetime.

Now I am on the cusp of doing that crazy stuff all over again! Five years ago I bought 7 acres in Lincoln county that we call The Dove’s Nest Farm. Our intention has always been to build a house on the back acre, in the woods. My husband and I are in the new planning stages of making that happen. A lot of clients and potential clients think they want to build. What does that mean for us? So I’m learning by doing.

We’ve done the easy part! We have the land. We’ve designed the house, inside and out. We have a budget and an idea of timing. Now comes the hard stuff. We want to general contract it ourselves. One, because that’s what I do on so many levels, but two, because there is so much of it we want to do on our own. I want to search for the door pulls on my kitchen cabinets from antique stores. I want my appliances to be a certain way. I want to build a detached garage for cash instead of rolling it into a loan. I want to purchase a lot of things for cash during the construction. All of these “sweat equity” types of options makes me yearn to do it myself, which is definitely my Modus Operands. But I have learned that finding financial help for self contracting is very tricky. It may have to be a commercial loan, and I have no idea what that means.

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So many decisions need to be made…so many pieces to follow! Hire an agent to help you!

But clients do not have to be so hands on! There are MANY builders out there that can help. It really comes down to two aspects, Location and Design. Builders are only different in the land that they acquire and the design of the homes they produce. A client looking for a new home in a particular part of the surrounding areas of Charlotte has virtually 20 options to choose from just in selecting a builder. My suggestion is to make your decision on builder based on what is most important to you. When you list the things that are important to your new home, look for a builder that can solve numbers one through three. If location is most important, search for builders with established or new neighborhoods in that area. If the acreage is most important, search for builders that traditionally offer larger lots. If design is most important, look at floor plans first.

Let’s say that you are just adamantly against living in a neighborhood. We can solve that problem as well! Or if you want a lot larger than most neighborhoods offer; we can easily solve that problem. It’s a custom build. But understand that custom build does not have to mean fancy and expensive. My first build was a custom home for around $300K. This new one will be much lower at only $150K. Those are financed amounts. The value of the property after build was and will be significantly higher, due to the hard work that we will put into it. If you want custom build without lifting a finger, those options are out there too. There are some amazing builders around Charlotte that I have the privilege of knowing!

No matter what is on your list of important things, hire an agent! Even if you are building custom, an AGENT can guide you through the entire process as your advocate. We explain things like contractors can’t while we protect your interests, and money. There are a few agents, like myself, who have experience in new builds. Either way, it is likely more experience that the client has in new construction. Best of all, the agent is paid by the builder!! That’s right! IF you start the process with your agent, the builder will cover their fee…because that is how helpful and important they can be to your happiness!

I feel like this is a wave of the future. I know this is the wave of MY future…one because that’s what we are doing on the farm, but also because that is what we want to do as a realtor and designer power couple! Looking forward to helping people all around (and in) Charlotte build whatever makes them feel at home!

The Art of Being Thankful

It is literally my favorite time of year!! Other people like other holidays, but I love Thanksgiving. What could be better than a whole day dedicated to food, family, and being thankful. I love planning that big meal. It is fun for me to strategize how to cook for two or three days. I get immense joy from making everything and having everyone in my home. But the best part of the season is forcing people to be thankful.

Are you happy?

This is something I do everyday. My prayers start with “Thank you”. I start my day with writing 2 thank you notes. But it isn’t a skill that humans innately have. I have discovered this over the last few years with my children. Every year I come up with some weird way to force them to express their thankfulness. We have had thankful baskets, thankful trees and thank you lists. It’s all the same idea. The girls have to right down things that they are thankful for. When they are young, the answers are hilarious, but as they age, they have become more generic. More surprisingly, people look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them we do these things, because they do not with their own children. So why is it that people have such a hard time being genuinely thankful?

The idea of having a thankful heart has been discussed in many publications. I realized it as a business practice while reading Larry Kendall’s Ninja Selling. It follows this concept that putting positive energy into the universe will yield you good results. I have been through and steeped in enough negative energy to never want to feel that power again. The concept spoke to a part of my “hippy-dippy” soul that believes there is good in the world. Furthermore, speaking that good outloud conceals some of the ugliness. Take the way you get news on a daily basis. If it is just from the evening news shows, it may be only the bad stuff. That leaves you with a negative feeling about the world. These shows have picked up on that idea and usually include a careful balance of feel-good stories and happy endings.

Don’t be fooled. This is not an easy practice, in life or in business. Real Estate is tough! My favorite Superior School of Real Estate instructor has a saying, “Rule #1, People Suck”. It may sound counter to the argument of putting positive energy out, but it’s really not. It gives me permission to accept that real estate agents do not follow the rules, and clients can be treacherous. I have had numerous “friends” in the last year and a half of this career tell me that they wanted me to sell their house, only to turn around and list it with another agent or sell it by themselves. I get personally offended, because this is how I feed my family! But if I remember that “People Suck”, it becomes less personal. I don’t suck! I am great at this! I take great care of my clients, do everything in my power to represent them, know all the ins and outs of the process, and have a great team to help us. I have to force myself in those situations to be thankful for the experience. Thank you, friend of 20+ years, for selling your home through another agent and not answering when I asked why! You taught me that I shouldn’t give out free information or count on anything until it is in writing. Thank you, former boarder at my barn, for selling your home to some guy off the street for dirt cheap because you didn’t want to clean it! You taught me that I need to think outside of the box when discussing solutions to clients problems. And all of these situations have taught me that just assuming something will happen will not pay my car payment, so I have to make these things happen, or in these cases, make other things happen. With my thankful mindset, I can appreciate the lesson and heal from the knifing stabbing in my back.

Maybe it sounds too kumbaya for most people. But being thankful is literally the thing that saves my mind from all the anger, hatred, and darkness in society. I choose not to deal with and dwell on that. I choose to focus on the light. There is good in everything. If I spend time taking a bad experience and finding the lesson or the good in it, it is still a bad experience and I still can’t pay the car payment, but I can focus my energy on something that will. If I force my teenagers to do dorky exercises trying to find the things in life they have to be thankful for, maybe they will grow up with an introspective soul. So when their friends stab them in the back, they can learn and grow instead of shrink and hide. Introspection is the key to change. Whether you want to change yourself or the world, you must have the ability to look inside of something, separate the good from the bad, and choose which one to focus on.

Heart Breaks

You learn how to deal with heart breaks. Sometimes it’s when hours of training seems to have evaporated into thin air in two seconds. But always it is when we outlive the ones we love the most.

Consider your life span. My goal is to be as cool as my Grandma who lived to be 93. If so, that’s enough time to outlive an average of 8-10 pets, assuming I only have one at a time, and very few people are capable of that. There are some that become part of our souls, whether because they are around so long or exist at a time that’s so important. And some we don’t even realize we will miss until we do. I wonder if it’s worth it often. Do I really want to live through that heart break over again in a few years? Is it worth my tears to have spent all of that time and energy and emotion  and power and money on them? Do they really value it? Do I really need it? Does it make any difference for them or me?

The answer is yes! To all of them…yes!

This is a story about Kate…

Kate is not a sweet little girl to most. She came to the rescue at about 1 year old, maybe 2.  I was in the middle of a terrible divorce and ugly custody battle. I had nothing to my name. I barely had a job, barely could pay rent, barely could feed myself and my kids. My best friend, who knows me better than anyone, called one day and said, “you should foster this cat.” She’s crazy, literally. My best friend and this cat! I wasn’t a very sweet girl then either.

I pick her up at a storage facility, where the rescue gives me everything I will need, litter box, food bowls, etc, because I am too poor to buy any of it. We are fine. She meets the kids. She is fine. My 6 year old carries her around like a football. She is fine. On a Saturday, I put her in a carrier and take her to an adoption event. She is fine. Person number 1 walks over to pet her and she turns into a she-devil that will tear you to shreds and eat you from the inside out. We try every Saturday, at great sacrifice to many because of work schedules, school schedules, custody days, and crazy ex-husbands. She literally bites at least two people a day. They have to put a sign on her kennel that says CAUTION! At home, my six year old still carries her around like a football and she couldn’t care less. Finally the rescue calls and says, “would you like to make Kate a part of your family?”

“Oh, no! I can’t afford the adoption fees!”

“Oh! We’ll waive those. Please just don’t bring her back to an adoption event.”

What?! Seriously?! I don’t want a cat! I can’t even feed myself every day of the week!

Five years later she is the matriarch of this crazy farm life we lead. She is  the OG, seriously, Original Gangster! She will allow you to pet her, purr sweetly while you do, then attack your ankle viciously while you walk away. When her bowl is empty at night she gets on the headboard and throws whatever item she can find on your head to wake you up. She has taught 1 crazy, stray hound dog how to live with a cat, and 1 cute, baby kitten how to survive a tough sisterhood. She explained to an outdoor OG the difference between life on the inside and life on the outside. She relished her peace and quiet when we were all away on vacation. She hid in a few pocketbooks, boxes, and drawers. She sometimes made a break for it out the door, but soon realized how stupid that idea was. And always let mommy love her, even if she completely disagreed. Because for some reason Mommy was always different.

And then today she is diagnosed with a non-curable, non-diagnosable, non-treatable condition called FIP, Feline Infectious Peritonitis. The fluid around her lungs can be removed, but it will come back. The fluid in her abdomen can be tapped, but it will come back. The mass in her intestines is likely not cancerous but can’t be fixed. She is dehydrated and will need IV fluids. Her breathing is labored so an oxygen kennel will be needed. So IV fluids, oxygen tank kennel thingy, syringes of fluid from her chest and abdomen for this original OG, ‘I’d rather bite you than look at you’, precious little girl who may or may not have kept me alive through the roughest part of my life…  Only to extend her days on this Earth for maybe a week? No thanks, she said. I’m good. I got you through when you needed it. Now you can get me through this. We straight.

And just like that, heart broken.

If you know anything about trauma, you know that healing from it is a very long process. You don’t look at how far you’ve come in 10 years and say that’s that. I, at least, remember every day of those horrible years. Time doesn’t fly when you are being abused and scared. Some counselors have called it PTSD, and I get that. But now, when I remember them I am hurting for what they were and for the little ball of kitty fur that walked me through it. I will miss my little gangster. And I would keep her over and over, even knowing today how much it hurts. Maybe, we are the ones worth it, those of us that save them. We deserve the love and care they give us. Maybe it is their job in this universe to remind us that we deserve love and snuggles and little sandpaper kisses. And maybe we needed to know that. I needed to know that I was worth it.

Is NOW a Good Time?

“When is the right time to sell?”

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that one!

And my answer is often the same. “Right freaking now!” Because, you know, I wanna sell houses! But if I have to be completely honest with you and share some super real estate agent secrets, the true answer is “When you are absolutely ready!”

This business is not for the faint of heart! I have seen $325K homes in Gastonia go under contract in 2 hours. Which is fishy…no way someone viewed that home, wrote a contract, got it to the seller, got signed and returned to the agent in that amount of time. I would wager money on it being held for private showing, which is completely illegal…Zillow! Anyway, I have also seen properties sit on the market for a year without one single offer simply because…wait, I have literally no idea why! Sometimes there is no good reason. Many agents will tell you it’s about price, but sometimes it is not.

So if you are considering putting your home on the market here are some REAL tips for what to do…

#1 – Find an Agent – Don’t try to navigate this chaos on your own! If you pay $5 for coffee  or $20 for someone to wash your car, this is the least of your worries. For-Sale-By-Owners do sell, but it statistically will take longer, require you to have knowledge of real estate law, and you traditionally end up accepting less for your home. Commission Structures in North Carolina are NOT regulated by the Real Estate Commission. We aren’t even allowed to call it an “industry norm”.  If you want professional pictures, arial coverage, and open houses every day, then you are going to pay for it. If you just want me to put the house on the market and hope like hell it sells, there’s a package for that as well.  What other business do you get to pay at the end of a successful 1 – 3 months work?

#2 – Find an Agent You Like – I promise you, as an agent, it is so much easier to explain things to people you like. And to receive constructive criticism. If you like your agent you will know that what she is telling you is the truth. You are the client, at the end of the day, and can make your own mistakes, I mean decisions, but you will appreciate their opinion much more if you absolutely like them.

#3 – Be Ready – When your listing goes live, be ready! If you are in the sweet spot in terms of price or a popular location, be prepared that people will want to see it immediately. There are great techniques that agents can use to build interest, like Coming Soon listings, so make sure that you are ready to show it when it goes live. A good agent will walk you through what that might mean for your home…cleaning up clutter, putting away valuables, what to do with pets, putting personal items away, staging, cleaning, etc.

#4 – Be Flexible – You have to let people view and peek through some intimate parts of your life. Using an agent and the tools we have at our disposal makes the process smooth and safe. We can organize things to fit your schedule and lifestyle. I make it a priority to cater to my clients needs when it comes to schedule. If someone wants to see your house, they will work with your schedule. But people are going to get frustrated if they can’t get to see the home when they want to.

#5 – Clean and Bright – You DO NOT have to redecorate or move things out. You DO have to make the rooms, and maybe even closets, clean and bright. That means cleaning dirty areas, even walls and floors. That means decluttering entry ways, hallways, and laundry rooms. That also might mean changing lightbulbs to brighten the room, placing lamps in certain dark areas, or opening blinds to let in sunlight. Best case scenario is to make a quick run-through of your home before the showing to turn on lights, put out flyers or waters, and pick up clutter. If there is an opportunity that people will want to view your home before you get home from work, create a plan to make it the best viewing possible. Keep an empty laundry basket by the door to collect things scattered through the house on your way out. And, yes, there is a package for me to do all of that as well.

The market that I work in, homes sell super fast because we have so few homes on the market. There are way more buyers than they are sellers. And many buyers are willing to make concessions that you may not expect in order for you to accept their offer. So just because the summer is over, doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to get exactly what you want out of selling your home. Assuming, of course, that you hire the right agent!

Failure

I am a failure in virtually every aspect of my life. Professionally, I have been fired more times in the last 4 years than I have in my entire life. Socially, I’ve failed at two marriages. Personally, I have failed to keep the over-40 weight gain at bay. I am just a literal mess. I was trying to figure out why, or maybe just wallowing in my depression for a hot minute, when I had a thought. Why is it that adults fail but kids don’t?

And then it hit me…it’s about a A Fresh Dose of Perspective!

When I reflect on my life as a child, I equally remember the punishment I received for the things I did wrong and the praise I got for the accomplishments I made. Trust me, I remember being punished. When asked about my childhood, I don’t usually focus on how I got paddled 7 – 10 times in just the 3rd grade, or how in 8th grade I got so many demerits I was almost suspended from private school. I usually talk about being the star of the play at 5, or the first kid from my middle school to go to All-State Band, or being in the Charlotte Junior Youth Symphony, or modeling at runway shows, or being in a movie! When you are young, all of those mistakes are just learning opportunities. The punishment was there to teach me a lesson. But did it??

If I sit and reflect on my adult life, it becomes a spiral of failures and lack. It is less than inspirational and full of suffering. The punishment is no longer adult-induced, though police officers and judges sure try. It is usually a result of natural consequences. If you spend too much money, you don’t eat next week. If you make a bad decision about how to behave, you pay for it in some way. Is it because we forget what it means to learn when we become “adult”? If we learned everything we needed to know from punishment as kids and teenagers, we should never make mistakes as adults. And yet, most adults fail in some way every single day.

I do not regret for one moment the lessons I have learned from both failed marriages. I value the time I get with my husband. I communicate with him my expectations. We work together on life together. Maybe, most importantly, I value the contribution I make to our life together as much as I value his. I am finally a partner in a relationship…not just a “wife”, or arm candy, or a home-maker. We still have plenty of moments when we both fail. And, boy, does it cut through me when some one reminds me I’m on marriage number 3. But the wife I am now wouldn’t have been the same without marriages 1 and 2. I don’t think I would be the same mother or friend, certainly not the same daughter. It took me a long time and a lot of “failure” to understand that I do not have to let people, no matter who they are, walk all over me, make decisions for me, or take advantage of me. It IS NOT my job to give selflessly of myself to get nothing in return.

I do not regret for one moment the lessons I have learned from the myriad of jobs I’ve held in my adult life. My passion for food and cooking as a result of my time in restaurants turns into amazing kitchen creations at home and abroad. My expertise in customer service from both waiting tables and clients in retail or legal matters shows my current clients a type of customer service that I hope communicates that I truly care about the person not just the transaction. I am building a business around relationships and not transactions. My understanding of child psychology and human development through my experience teaching really helps me evaluate the way my kids are growing up. I was good, maybe even great, at all those jobs. And that greatness has made me a valuable human and entrepreneur. The fact that I was fired from a couple of them does not degrade the lessons I learned, skills I walked away with, or connections I made. But, man, was it a blow to the ego and the bank account. Clawing your way back to wealth and stability is so hard. I have this new understanding of success as a result, that the traditional ways of working for a company or person does not fit everyone. I am no longer a person that needs to ride on the success of something or someone else in order to find my own success in the world defined the way that I choose to define it. Today it is defined by my quiet writing time in my tiny little home on my farm just before helping a family write an offer on their new home that will bring them comfort, stability and wealth.

We have to give ourselves a little forgiveness. Which is hard while you are clawing… It may not be that I failed at being a paralegal; it may just be that I’m not cut out for that lifestyle. It may not be that my 2 divorces define me as a person, just that I needed those 2 men to teach me who I was not. That’s how adult life is. We expect “adults” to have it all figured out. And then we throw shame and blame at them when they don’t. The amount of shame and blame tossed at me could, and probably will, fill volumes of books. Working through that pain was horrible. I think I’m going to keep learning! If that means I fail at a few more things in the process, think about how much smarter that will make me.

From FAILURE we learn…from success, not so much!

So what about children, that horrible teenage version especially? I find parenting is a constant self reflection. Did I learn anything from the punishment I received that I didn’t know before I was punished? I knew it was wrong to do all the stuff I did, but I did it anyway and the shame and blame thrown at me from my parents didn’t make we want to not do it again, just made me want to not get caught, and to think they loved me a little less. So when my teenager makes decisions that I don’t agree with, like staying up late on a school night, not going to school, pitching a fit to not go somewhere, or choosing her crapy friends over family, do I confine her to a life of restriction for some arbitrary amount of time or let her learn on her own. Imagine if I had learned at 15 that I didn’t have to let people take advantage of me.

In this season of life, I needed to be reminded that God created both Yin and Yang…the garden of GOOD and EVIL, Right and Wrong, Happiness and Sadness, Success and Failure…it is the way of the world, whether it’s God, the Universe, Mother Nature or whatever. And maybe, if it is the way of the world, the balance of everything that exists, it shouldn’t weigh too heavy on my heart that I possess and exemplify both. Maybe I’m supposed to. Maybe that’s the entire point. You cannot appreciate the success without the failure and you can’t value the importance of failure without knowing it brings success.

Follow Your Arrow…Or Don’t

I have been a parent for many years now. I have many opinions on parenting that could fill books, not blogs, if anyone cared to listen to them. This week I discovered something interesting through my parenting struggle du jour. We really do not want people to be strong or independent.

Take for example my experience this week. Education is, in my opinion, the answer to all the worlds problems. Naturally, as all children are when given the chance to be, my girls are smart. They have had some rough experiences through divorce, dealing with bullies, and hospitalization. Their education has not faltered. They always succeed. When you raise the standard, with the right amount of support, humans will rise. All of a sudden, they have decided that they want to follow their own arrow, not the one I laid out and pointed for them.

I exhibited a range of emotions as we have tried to deal with this latest drama. It started with anger, simply yelling at them that they will not change their course, that they will stay where I put them, that they will listen to me because I know more than they do about education. Then it turned to disappointment over the fact that they did not want the same things out of life that I wanted for them. I found myself calling them quitters and basic in my head and having a really hard time dealing with how those labels made me not like them. I eventually found myself in simple confusion. What would changing course like this do to their future, to their present, to their life?

My realization…IT AIN’T MY FREAKING LIFE!

I want something extraordinary for them because I love them so very much. But what if they just want something normal? Is that so horrible? Worth throwing shame, blame, and guilt in their faces? My own life has been pretty normal, with some moments of extraordinary sprinkled around, and I say time and time again that I would never change any of the decisions that I made because those decisions have made me the person I am. And I happen to love the me that I am.

As a matter of fact, I made a similar decision in school. I had a similar long fight with my mother over that decision. I wanted to follow my own arrow and she did not. My father, a man of few words though they speak volumes when they are spoken, told her to give in. That decision literally changed the course of my life. It placed me in an environment of acceptance instead of judgement, life lessons instead of book lessons, friends instead of bullies, freedom instead of restriction. I absolutely would not be the human I am today, as their mother, as a wife, as a friend, if my mother had forced me to follow her chosen path for my life.

We want our kids to grow up to be strong, independent humans. Have their own thoughts. Make their own decisions. That is what makes them contributing members of society. How can they do that if we spoon feed them through their adolescence? How do they learn the skill of making a tough decision if we make it for them and tell them to just shut up and do it? And isn’t it a sign of being human to want to make your own path in life? Wanting to follow your own arrow wherever it points instead of blindly following someone else is what separates us as humans from the rest of the mammals. So that’s a good thing, right?

The letting go of control is the hardest part of parenting. The commercials and movies show it happening when they go off to college, but it has to happen much earlier in order for you to be certain that they will survive while they are in college or working 80 hours a week making their own decisions every moment of every day. We need to know they can make their own decisions when they have to adult, because that’s what adulting is about. It’s not easy to figure out which arrow to follow. But at least it should be your very own arrow.

Planning on the Farm

To say that 2018 has been a year of changes for me and mine would be a major understatement. And through it all we have grown, molded, bent, and evolved. One of my very favorite things to do is plan. I love figuring out how to make things work to the best advantage of all involved. My favorite yoga teacher says “you have to look back to move forward.” I love that idea of reflecting on the past to move on with your future. I think planning for the future is vital, but understanding that plans were made to be broken is essential for keeping my sanity.

I change the way I reflect and plan every year. This year I learned infinitely more about planning and vision casting than I had ever known before.  Because my new career labels me as a sole proprietor, I chose to start my reflection with my professional goals. Not because I want to be controlled throughout the year by my professional schedule, but because my business plan was a solid, written plan to reflect on. When I started in real estate, my Broker In Charge, whom is a world renowned coach, made me write a business plan ON PAPER, and set goals, ON PAPER. I had the ultimate satisfaction of checking off those that I achieved, and the equal disappointment of revising those that I did not.

For me, it has to be on paper. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer in my soul, or maybe it is my middle agedness. But I have to write it to make it real. Scientifically, they say that the more you experience something using a variety of senses the more it becomes learned. So if it is said, heard, written and read, it sticks in your brain a little easier. [Maybe I need to start smelling money…] This year I have upped my goal planning, vision casting game. I have short-term (6 month), yearly (1 year), and long-term (5 year) goals. This year I added “Action Steps”. It reminds me a lot of Design Down, an education concept I studied years ago, where you know what the end goal is and you plan backwards how to get there. For example, by the end of this year I would like to make X amount of money…now work backwards. That means how much per month, how many homes (on average), how many leads (on average), how many touches per person (on average), and how many hours a week will that take (on average). There’s something very mathematical about it. And when it is written in pretty purple felt tip pen, it is beautiful.

We’ve done the same sort of planning for our family too.My husband and I have a lot in common, but maybe not the planning. What he does have, though, is faith and trust in me. So when I tell him that we are going to set short term and long term goals over a two day period of doing nothing but reflecting and planning and vision casting, he goes in full strength. Our “vision retreat” was just down the road at a local coffee shop, then our favorite restaurant for lunch, then a park. We made a calendar of big goals for the year. We imagined where we need to be in 5 years. We budgeted, time blocked, and dreamed a little. We wrapped it up by the fire pit in our back yard. One day, we will actually take a retreat, but for now we got things accomplished. And, yes, it was all on paper.

I have huge, high, impatient hopes for 2019. I am extremely thankful for all the lessons I learned about myself and my family in 2018. So now I look forward to all the crazy good things we will do this year. And I wish the same for your family! Email me, and I will send you our vision retreat plan to use on your own family!

 

Open House Blues

The Real Estate world is split on the Open House debate! Who knew? Before I got into the industry, not me! Probably like most of America, I just assumed that was part of the job. Then I heard horror stories of sitting in an empty house for hours and nobody showing up. I thought, “but you see those signs all the time.” About two months ago I got my first listing client and discovered first hand the debate on open houses. After hosting a few for my listing, as well as some in my area for other agents, I have made a few executive decisions.

Decision #1 – Open Houses are for the client’s benefit.  And I don’t mean because their house is going to sell on that day. I mean that it makes them feel like you are earning the money they will pay you when their house sells. Literally every client has a hard time with paying an agent that percentage of the sale. Everybody wants a deal today. They don’t understand the amount of hours it takes you to gather all of the required information and enter it into the Listing Service. But when you hold an open house, they can physically see you doing work. So if it makes my clients feel like I’m earning the money that I deserve, then so be it.

Decision #2 – Planning is helpful.  It may only last three hours, but so does a toddler’s birthday party.  And they are about as equally important (and draining). So with all the pieces and elements and moving parts, I have to plan the best way to use it. Instead of flying by the seat of my pants, like I did for the first few Open Houses, I decided to sit down and plan each one like all the events I had ever planned in the past…Budget, Food, Invites, Activities. It may just be my slight obsessive compulsiveness, but thinking about things ahead of time gives me the ability to execute them more effectively.

Decision #3 – Marketing is key.  Once I know what I am going to do, when, where, and why, I can create a marketing strategy. I like to pick three ways…because if you’ve read any of my other posts, good things come in three’s…and I like to vary those three ways depending on the market I’m in and the client I’m working for.  I’m a huge fan of social media advertising, so I usually start there. If the house is in a neighborhood, I like to use signs and flyers. There are tons of options and budget can very easily be the deciding factor.

Decision #4 – It is not a waste of time. When you are sitting alone in a house for 3 hours, it may certainly feel like it’s a waste. But it is not. I have chosen to make valuable use of that time. I shoot videos, take pictures, plan my week, create social media posts, anything that is work related that can be interrupted in the event some human actually shows up. At my last Open House that only human was a mortgage lender trying to solicit my referrals, but it was a human.

To date, I have hosted 6 open houses. None of which have been hugely successful. But I can see the potential. And as my process improves, so can my success. After all, you can’t be successful at something if you don’t actually do it.

The Adventure of Showing Homes

Y’all this market is crazy!  I have a friend currently preparing a home to sell on the complete other side of the country, and she is seeing the same thing. Homes are going on the market one day at a high list price and selling the next day after multiple offers for well over that already high list price. Because of the chaos, interest rates are rising to adjust the market, making it more difficult to get loans and taking away some of the demand. But that virtual guarantee that you are going to sell your home in, what recently market averages have calculated, less than 30 days, does not give you permission to slack off in the presentation of your most valuable asset.

Since getting my real estate license and showing a few homes, I have seen some things that would make you blush or vomit. In one instance I was showing a home that was currently being rented by a tenant. That is  a difficult thing to do. Our laws in NC are very specific about not disturbing tenants. But with proper notification, it is possible. However, after this experience, maybe it shouldn’t be. The home was an absolute wreck. huge stains on the carpet, some liquid substance spilled down the wall, dust 2 inches thick on doors and baseboards, trash and dirty clothes in the floor, but my favorite was the pornographic statues on display atop the bar in the kitchen. Needless to say, we got out of there pretty quick.

I have often wondered if the tenant of that property did it on purpose. Maybe he didn’t want the owner to sell the house. So if he destroyed it no one would buy it. And as a property manager or owner, that has to be a difficult thing to police. But if you are listing the house for sell on the market, it should be your duty to make sure it is showable. I can assure you that I thought worse of the listing agent than I did the owner or the tenant. That is the name you see associated with the property in MLS.

When you place a home on the market, even in this crazy time, you have to take a few steps to prepare. Here’s a list of things to consider before you open your doors to agents and potential buyers:

1.  CLEAN – It may be beneficial to hire a cleaning service to do a thorough job to begin with so you can simply maintain. Consider floors, baseboards, ceilings, windows and doors.
2.  DE-CLUTTER – I don’t believe you need to take all of your personal items out of the home. BUT I firmly think counter tops and tables should be empty. Take a laundry basket and collect everything on top of a surface into the basket. When the showing is over, you can put it all back. Some people are emotional bothered by clutter. Clean and Clear is the safest way to go.
3.  OPEN – Make sure there is a way to get into all of the spaces of the home. If there are outbuildings, they should be accessible either by a key or already unlocked. If there are storage spaces, they should be accessible. It is not a bad idea to leave instructions about how to access those space, either through the showing software or just a little note. Potential buyers want to see storage spaces.
4.  SAFETY – There are stories everyday of real estate agents being put in scary situations. Demand that your listing agent use the appropriate tools to keep people safe. State Real Estate organizations offer showing scheduling software that tracks who is in your home and when. Lock boxes that use Bluetooth technology instead of a four digit combo make sure only agents with the same respect for safety aceess your property while tracking who came and went and when. The dues to these organization and the cost of equipment are not cheap, but if the public demands it, agents and open homes will be safer all around.
5.  WELCOMING – Do something a little above and beyond to welcome your guests. Agents always do crazy, fancy things at open houses, but not during regular showing times. Why not? Putting some brochures and a couple bottles of water on the counter you just cleared as you leave might make a substantial difference in the offers you receive.

I tell potential buyers every day that you have to see a house in person to truly get an understanding of it. It doesn’t matter how much money your agent spends on pictures, videos, brochures, talking houses or advertising. Until a person walks in the space, they will not be able to decide if this is the right home for them.

 

Winter #farmlife

I am not a fan of winter.  As you may be able to guess from my page title, I am a born and reared southern girl; therefor, I enjoy humidity, sunshine and a little sweat coming from my pores.  It’s almost like that is how I feel alive.  Humidity makes my skin feel healthy. Sunshine makes my heart and soul happy. Warm air is like breath in my body.  So for the small amount of time during the year that all of those things disappear, I struggle.  Maybe this year more than others.

Not really sure about the rest of the US, but we were hit this year with a huge snow very early in the winter season.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful, as the picture clearly shows above. But with this beauty came record cold temperatures…I’m talking 18 degrees and lower.

When you live on a farm or homestead and personally care for the land, animals, and humans that live there, life has to be conducted a little different on days when the thermometer doesn’t rise or the animals walk timidly because of the unknown depth of all that white stuff.  I feel like city and suburbian Americans may have put on their thick coats, scarves, and gloves, grabbed a warm drink, and headed on about their day.  Here, going out at 6AM to feed animals involved 4 layers – long-susies (leggings, cuddleduds, whatever you can find to fit under jeans), clothes (like jeans and sweaters), winter coat (I like the thick, bubble kind), and onesie (my dads old cover-alls, loving referred to as the “burnt marshmellow” suit).  The daily activities have to be completely rethought because water buckets are frozen or water doesn’t come from the spigot or hose so warm or hot water has to be carried from the house.  Animals may have to spend the entire day or a portion of their day indoors, completely rearranging the very strict schedule we try to stick to around here.  Even the calculations done for feeding have to be re-evaluated when the weather goes cold because there’s no grass to munch on and eating generates heat in enclosed spaces like barns and coops.  And all of this is done before we step foot out the door at 6 AM.  Heaven forbid you do this part time like me, and still have to consider how to get to your “real” job and your kids to school!

But all of that is fine by me for a little while.  I appreciate the importance of winter to make dormant all the things of nature that will wake in the Spring.  Except for my fingers. This winter I have discovered that they DO NOT make winter gloves worth a hoot for farm life!  I need them thick or thermal, because I’m old and my extremeties get the coldest, but I need them waterproof because I am constantly stiking my hand in frozen water buckets or troughs to fish out ice.  There is no solution currently manufactured. Maybe I will manufacture my own!  Fur or wool lined on the inside, completely waterproof on the outside, and thin enough to maneuver a buckle or latch!

At the end of one of these cold, long days, its the hot beverage that I’m really looking forward to.  Some days its a cup of tea…my favorite is Tazo Chocolate Chai or Bigelow Vanilla Chai.  For the kids, its a home made hot cocoa.  This year, we discovered a new adult version of something warm and snuggly!  We made 2 separate thermoses on a few occasions this winter.

For The Kids

Warm up your favorite milk, slowly on the stove, not in the microwave.  Our fave is vanilla almond milk.

Mix in homemade chocolate syrup (1 cup sugar, 1 cup water, 1/4 to 1/2 cup cocoa powder combined over low heat, stirring constantly until dissolved).

Top with whip cream and/or a candy cane.

For The Adults

Warm up spiced apple cider, like RW Knudsen Cider and Spice, or make your own with you favorite spices.

Mix in 1 – 3 ounces of your favorite spiced rum.  We are big fans of Cruzan, not spiced, but Capt Morgan Spiced gives it a greater flavor.