4 minute read
Q & A
What trends are you seeing today in real estate?
Ooh.. loaded question as that can go so many directions. Trends in selling are shifting to convenience and less about the traditional listing methods. Cash offers.. less Zillow of course – bye bye Zillow! As for new construction trends – in touring the Parade of Homes this fall I noticed a change in the owner’s suite. We’re seeing the bedroom itself going smaller with the emphasis on closet size & storage. One model I saw – 675 Sunset Court by Zawadski Homes had a stackable washer/dryer in the owner’s closet as well as center island & built-in dressers, etc. It screamed “common sense”.
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Is there a “must-have” in preparing my house for sale?
Our approach to selling a home is customized around the seller. So that differs from person to person. However, the easiest & cheapest thing you can do to your home for the most upside is staging, staging and you guessed it, staging. Not to be confused with bringing in furniture & décor which is a high-end staging technique. Basic staging techniques are FREE and take manageable effort. This can be as simple as: moving furniture, removing clutter, clearing out storage spaces, cabinets, touch-up paint, clean carpets, etc.. The goal is to make your home look more organized, create more functional living spaces and flow and clean! We bring in an interior designer for this and have some fun with it. It sounds intense but it’s really not. Think of it this way – everything in your home is going to be packed and moved. Staging is the technique of pre-packing and leaving the best presentation left for us to capture.
What’s on tap for Thanksgiving at your house... Turkey or Ham?
Gobble Gobble Wibble Wobble do a turkey dance. We’ve traditionally been a turkey family for Thanksgiving but last year added a ham into the mix as well. Parker absolutely loves turkey and would be really bummed if we didn’t do one. He’s been asking for Turkey for weeks now and to help him get his fix, we did a Friendsgiving recently and will dive in for more at Thanksgiving. Hopefully that will be enough to satisfy him.
Why is the water bill for my home on the settlement statement for closing?
That’s a great question – the water bill, unlike other utility bills, follows the home and not the individual living in it. So if you don’t pay your water bill, it will eventually end up being paid through an assessment to your property taxes. If you don’t pay Xcel Energy – they’ll send Uncle Guido after you. When selling your home, they make sure the current water bill is paid in full and add a line item on the closing statement for that purpose.
Do you see a jump in inventory from foreclosures ahead?
This one has some depth to it.. so just a little background - the question comes from the foreclosure moratorium ending and if that will lead to foreclosure and then those homes getting listed and boost current inventory. My thoughts on that are no.. no, I don’t think we’ll see that inventory hit the market. There’s a ton of “process” to make that happen and a lot of disruption along the way. The foreclosure process isn’t quick... It takes time and can spin so many directions. Taking a home back, managing it, cleaning & repairing it.. that takes time and Zillow proved recently it couldn’t handle 3800 of them at once.. And let’s talk about the disrupters on this too. If you had 5,000 homes to sell across the country, wouldn’t you talk to one buyer for that inventory rather 5,000 individual buyers and processes. With the advent of Wall Street into residential real estate, it makes me think it’s easier to sell that to one company in the event it even gets to that point. We know that’s not Zillow – but Open Door might be able to handle the volume.
What’s the cost of new construction and do you see this coming down?
Simply put, the cost of new construction is not cheap. There are way too many factors that go into pricing a home that it would be difficult to give a cost per foot basis but here are some concepts to work with: The main floor is always the most expensive floor to finish on a per foot basis. This is where you have most of your finishes – kitchen, mudroom/laundry, fireplaces, windows, built-ins, lighting, owner’s suite, etc.. and that drives up the cost of the main floor. Building up is cheaper because you don’t have the extensive finishes. Beds, baths, laundry, family rooms and so on are the typical finish on a second floor and cheaper to finish than the main floor. The cheapest floor to finish is a basement. However your fireplaces, bar, entertainment areas and so on can have massive range to them. Picture a bar.. you can have a $25k bar or go nuts and have $100k. It just depends on the budget. The price per foot on a home.. the actual structure itself .. not including anything outside (the lot, driveway, landscaping, well/septic, etc) is at a minimum of $200/sq ft and that’s on a very cheap side. Of course, the sky’s the limit and you can spend as much as you like as well. Is this price going down? Simply put – No. The price of new construction is not coming down and we don’t anticipate it ever will. Think of how hard it is to find good labor. Now extrapolate that through the home building process and think of all the materials and human power that go into a build. Nobody is taking a pay cut anytime soon!
