Nesters and Investors

A couple of weeks ago, I read a book with the title, House written my Michael Ruhlman. Not a nail-biting-page-turner-can't-put-it-down kind of book for the masses, I suspect.  I, however found it very interesting.   As I was saying in my previous post,  it is the love of houses that keeps me semi-attached to my job as a Realtor. Conversely, it is the dislike of working with crazed buyers and sellers that is accounting for the semi-disconnection to my job.  It would make sense for me to put my real estate licenses on hold in the various states to which I am professionally bound, if for no other reason than not having to deal with their yearly renewal processes.  BUT, the thing is I continue to love to research the market, see all that is for sale and visit homes.   Now you might just think this is me being nosy but it's more than that.  I am fascinated with all things dealing with houses and how people connect with them.

Was there a time that bad floor plans redefined cultures?

In the case of Mr. Ruhlman, he tells the story of why he moved back to his hometown of Cleveland from New York City to buy a 100 year old fixer-upper. The book basically is a memoir of how he, his wife, along with their two small children searched for an historic home, lived in the attic for the better part of a year during renovations and the reasons he yearned to do this and why his wife didn't.  He admits that he felt something akin to  a fish swimming upriver to it's native spawning grounds to get back to the place he grew up in.

Michael had grown up in one home for the 18 years before going off to school, while his wife had moved  numerous times with her parents growing up.   She hadn't really connected to a place that she considered as "her home town".  Clearly these two have different visions of what constitutes a home. In their case, he yearned for a feeling of inclusion to a community.  He needed to know the neighbors, be near extended family, and be part of the continuum of his history into the future.  His wife wanted a decent house that met their needs and she would of preferred it to be in New York City. She conceded that Cleveland would be a good place to raise their kids.

There often seems to be a huge divide between how people connect to a residence. Some people depend on their home to be their sanctuary, while others merely consider it a stop gap from being caught in the rain.  Being emotionally invested  to a home is inherently different that  residing in house where the scope of your commitment is calling it  your "current address".

Often, I can get a sense  of  how emotionally connected a buyer or seller is to their home within a very short span of time. There are times, however, that people are hard pressed to separate the nostalgia and sentiment of their house from the financial and the investment potential. Most buyers and sellers can claim they are being objective but nearly every sales/purchase transaction has at least some emotional component causing someone to emotionally implode.

Removing outwardly signs of emotional attachments from peoples homes seems to be a trend.  When I started real estate, for example, people cleaned their homes, put away the clutter, made some repairs and such to get their home ready to market.  Then a couple of decades ago, STAGING happened.  At that point people started redecorating their homes prior to selling them so they could get top dollar.  To accomplish this they were more concerned  with the aesthetics of their house than either the functionality or the preventative maintenance.  At that point the flow of the floor plan garnered the same amount of value at the quality of the countertops or the size of the master closet.  This process of making homes more impersonal added the extra level of removing personal belonging and any type of personal memorabilia.  Photos became verboten.

Yes..the pendulum swung even farther.  Now homes are being stripped down to the bones prior to sale because there is a trend that says that buyers need to imagine their own things in a home so the seller must clear out any sign of personalize.  Pictures on the wall...heaven forbid!  Rooms painted anything other that subtle, trendy colors, don't even think about it! Even furnishings are being sent to storage to make "rooms appear bigger".  All of this, of course, is subjective.

Beyond the point of buying or selling though...there seems to be the nesters, investors, and dissenters
, .  Sometimes people are both.  The nesters of the world, love their homes and continually make them "their own".  Now "making them their own" is unique to every person.  To a minimalist it may be barren looking to most of us or to a hoarder it may be suffocating to most of us but then it's not really OUR home is it?  They don't care if their home appeals to the masses.  The investors are more cautious and want their home to appeal to the majority of potential buyers.  They make improvements based on possible future buyers than doing whatever they REALLY would love to do to their home.  The dissenters don't care about whether their house is their sanctuary nor do they care what someone else thinks of their house either.

Of course, it really doesn't matter how emotionally invested or detached a person is to their residence unless it is colliding with the point of view of the other people that reside in that same residence.  OR if they need a Realtor to help them buy or sell their house.  In that case. let's try our best to start behaving like investors.

So, my readers...are you a nester, an investor, a dissenter or a combination of two or more of those.  Do you love and cherish your home or is it a place to lay your head for now?  

Is That Your Home or Is That Your House?

Shall I bore you with shop talk today?  I have been working on a few real estate transactions as of late. As most of my regular readers know, I have been a Realtor for a very long time. In fact, I have all but retired from it at this point.  However,  every once in awhile, I get a call and can't force myself to say NO.  I can only attribute this to, perhaps, the first signs of senility.

Every time I dip my toe into a real estate transaction, it reminds me why people should retire at some point from their jobs.  For me it's the blatant reminder how "unfun" the process of dealing with anything linked to banks, large amounts of money and people can be. It could be said that for most people the process of spending or trying to recoup large amounts of money doesn't bring out the best in their personalities.

Plus, a lot of things have changed since I got my first real estate agent's license in the mid-1980s.  Most of it "not for the better" as it relates to working in the real estate industry.  BUT, I have to say, I still find the topic of homes and how people live in them fairly interesting.  I am a sucker for those in our society that still put value in their home for it's sense of well being and security as opposed to just four walls and a roof.  After 35 years of doing this, I can quickly size up the "nesters" versus the "residers".   How these groups buy and sell homes is decidedly different. (More about that later...just a spoiler alert that will be another post)

Anyway, circling back to my current tasks in real estate, some dear friends are retiring and needed to sell their house to "downsize".  This deal was easy-peasy because our friends are sane.  I know one shouldn't have to make that distinction but given that most people lose their minds when selling or buying a house, the fact these folks didn't needs to garner your respect and admiration for them.  They priced their house well, it was spotlessly clean and they were agreeable, friendly people during the negotiations.  Hallelujah!

In one of the other deals  in play, the other agent involved called the sellers "salty dogs".  Does that give you an indicator how well that is going?  But this is the new normal, now.  In most deals there is a contentious environment. It's the buyers versus the sellers versus the agents versus the bankers.  With all that being said, there are sometimes ineffective real estate agents, (load of them, in fact!) crummy mortgage lenders, dishonest sellers, and naive buyers.  There are valid reasons for real estate transactions to be volatile.

As for all of the unnecessary animosity being so common today, it seems to be where society has landed in so many scenarios.   Negotiating just seems to have gotten more difficult for people over the years.  A common theme seems to be that expectations are set high and willingness to compromise is set low.  That  seems to be the current trend.

 In the dark ages when I began working in real estate, people buying homes were evaluating the  "bones" of a house.  Prospective buyers would walk through a house and look past any of the decor and contemplate things like the floor plan, number of bedrooms and bathrooms and (most importantly) if the price of the house reflected the quality and condition of the home. There was less emphasis on everything being exactly fine-tuned to the buyer's tastes.  Buyers weren't so quick to assume that they were being cheated and seller's didn't seem to be so fixated on getting more than the neighbor down the street because that house didn't have the beautiful custom mural of Augusta National Golf Course in the den. Who wouldn't love that?

 Sure there are still some buyers that are willing to take on a fixer upper for the right price. (thank you Chip and Joanna Gains and/or the Property Bros.) but for the most part people want what they want.  What they want currently is for  everything to be perfect  and it probably should include hardwood floors, granite, and stainless steel....oh and they want the house to be a steal of a deal.

Yes, there certainly been a lot of changes in the industry in the 30+ years that I have been involved, Probably two of the greatest impacts would be the Internet and HGTV.  It's changed people's expectations on how buying or selling a house should look and feel.  It's not quite as fun and entertaining as the house hunting TV shows might imply.

Ultimately, even removing my cynicism and the constant drip of nostalgia that reminds me of an easier time, I do LOVE when people find a home.  Not a HOUSE, mind you....but a home.  These are two very different things.


To Be Continued....

Older Can Be Nice

I have always loved seeing different styles of architecture. I, especially, like styles that age well. (This may be a subconscious desire that "older is better"....most outward signs of aging are reaching out to bitch-slap that theory.)

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and went back to our farm for a week.  Our farm is in a rural area about an hour south of Chicago, IL.  The nearest cities of any size are Kankakee, Bourbonnais, and Bradley.  Those three communities are joined to form one urban area that lie just a short distance from south Chicago. 


How  we came to be connected to the area around Kankakee goes back several generations. My husband's maternal and paternal grandparents were among the  Dutch immigrants that settled on farms just south of Kankakee.  Even today, there are about 6 Dutch surnames that seem to appear around every corner...and in one way or another they are  all my husband's cousins.

My family was more complicated.  My maternal grandparents were born and raised Chicagoans.  I had relatives all through the Kankakee and Chicago area as well.  I was born in Chicago but my parents were more transient.  I didn't always live in the area but we moved in and out of the area as if we were homing pigeons returning to our roost.

My grandfather managed the produce department of the Big Bear Grocery store for a number of years. As a little girl,  he would let me go with him early in the morning before anything  else was open to pick out the produce at farmer's markets around southern Chicago. I have dear memories of my maternal grandparents.  They had a bit of land on the Kankakee River that they kept for the sole purpose of gathering all the family every Sunday afternoon.  The men would play horseshoes and drink Schlitz beer, the kids would play while the women set up a picnic lunch.  It was a family reunion every Sunday.


On the bank of the Kankakee River



Thought Number One -  Perceptions

Most of you might be familiar with the name Kankakee  from the Arlo Guthrie song City of New Orleans. The song tells the story of a train ride traveling out of Kankakee going to New Orleans. I especially love that the train would have traveled over tracks that I would have crossed every day on my way to grade school.

Riding on the City of New Orleans, 

Illinois Central Monday morning rail 

Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,

Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail. 

All along the southbound odyssey

The train pulls out at Kankakee

Rolls along past houses, farms and fields. 

Passin' trains that have no names, 

Freight yards full of old black men 

And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.


The town also got some unflattering notoriety from The David Letterman Show.  In November of 1999, Kankakee was ranked 354th in The Places Rated Almanac. David Letterman delivered an ongoing gag consisting of shows that seemed intent on making fun  of Kankakee.  He sent 2 small prefab gazebos and suggested that Kankakee should market itself as the Home of the Twin Gazebos.  While Letterman's intent  more in the vein of getting laughs, Kankakee played along.  The gazebos still stand.  One is located to the north of the Kankakee train station.

I don't believe for a second that Kankakee, Illinois was the worst town in America to live in 1999. In fact, just to make a point...a huge point actually...in 1999 there were 6 murders per 100,000 residents in Kankakee.  Washington DC was named as the 2nd best place in the nation to live, right behind the winner Salt Lake City, according to The Places Rated Almanac.  That year  DC had 241 murders per 100,000. I guess it was a better place to live if you weren't murdered.

Thought Number Two - Kankakee has some interesting history and architecture.

As a kid, I always thought this firehouse was so neat.  I drive by occasionally when I am in the area just to see it. The building was built around 1930 and no longer houses fire equipment.



During the era of Firehouse #2 the one and only fire fighter ever
to die on the scene of a fire in Kankakee died.



Hickox House

Built in 1901, the Hickox House is noted for being one of the two homes in the Riverview Historic District designed by world famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The "Prairie Style" is so named because Wright worked with his clients to develop architectural spaces that were inspired by the natural plant forms of the tallgrass prairie that surrounded Kankakee. Eighty-two of the Bradley House's original ninety  art glass windows survive. Ironically, much of the Bradley family fortune used to build and fit out the house had come from the implements used to plow up the prairie sod that is celebrated by the house

The Prairie style structure still stands at 687 South Harrison Avenue. The original owner was Warren R. Hickox, Jr., who ran his father's abstract, real estate and loan business. In the winter of 1900, Hickox went to Oak Park, Illinois to consult with Mr. Wright about designing homes for he and his sister, Anna Hickox Bradley and land inherited from their father Warren Hickox, Sr. Wright visited Kankakee to look over the ground. He not only designed the houses which became the first designed in the Prairie Style of architecture, but also the furnishings for the houses including tables, chairs, carpets and drapes. Today the Hickox House remains a private home.

Bradley House

Bradley House at 701 South Harrison Ave. is the other Riverview home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The house was built in 1901 for B. Harley Bradley. The Bradley House later became known as Yesteryear, a popular restaurant that did business there for over 30 years. It was
 being renovated by Stephen B. Small in 1986^. The house entered one of the darkest chapters of Kankakee’s history when kidnappers called Small at his home posing as Kankakee City Police. The criminals claimed the Bradley House had been vandalized, luring Small out into the open where he was kidnapped and subsequently murdered. The house remained a private residence until 2010 when it was acquired by a local not-for-profit with a mission to open it to the public as an arts/education center.  The house opened in June of 2010 as a public museum.


llinois, is widely acknowledged as Frank Lloyd Wright's first Prairie design. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places individually and as part of the Riverview Historic District.


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What You Think You Want

For the last several weeks, I have been showing townhouses, condos and villas to a potential buyer that seemingly has no idea what she wants. I am pretty sure that "no idea" isn't overstating it one bit. Clueless...totally clueless.

So far we have looked in 5 cities (4 of those being in the metro area of KC and one in a rural area outside of what any rational person would consider part of Kansas City).  She says she wants a fixer upper but seems to be intolerant of anything that is outdated. She has lowered her upper-budget limit at least three times.

This is where we are at.

She wants this:

For the price of this:

That, in itself, isn't so unusual...so I am trying to be patient and educating her as to what she can get within her budget. With what she now has set as her "optimal" price range, I think I can find a pretty nice refrigerator box but it will be a fixer-upper.

I tend to hold HGTV at least partially responsible for this disconnect.  I hope you don't believe that buyers will look at only three houses and all three will be clean and tidy.  NO.....THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN IN THE REAL WORLD.  People will look at dozens of houses and there are going to be some nice ones and some are more like "are  you seriously trying to sell this dump"?

Since I obtained my first real estate salesperson license in 1986, I have come to the realization a lot of people don't know specifically what they want to buy until they see "it".  Sure...most start out with a working knowledge of the price range they can afford (but not always) and the general area they want to live (but not always). Some may have a general idea of the number of bedrooms and bathrooms needed...or not.  BUT  all of their "must haves", "would likes" and "absolutely requireds" get's tossed out the window when they see something that connects with them. Houses on busy streets will be bought because the closet has a rack that can hold lots of shoes.  Dream homes will be realized because the kitchen is the prettiest color of terra cotta even though there are foundation problems and termites.  (I am not kidding on that one.)  No amount of my telling a buyer about the value, the condition, or inherent problems with a home will sway them because they love what they love.

I absolutely understand the emotional aspect of connecting with a property.  I do, I really do. I have been both the buyer and seller in my personal life. I have represented hundreds of others in the very stressful negotiations of buying and selling houses. Here's the thing. The purchase or sale of a house can veer away from smart investing and steer more toward a perceived ideal for a happy hearth and home.

When it comes to a person's home (or potential home)  there seems to be a very debilitating blindness that sweeps over the buyers and sellers.   Sellers can't seem to see any of the problems, the mess, or the negatives that are attached to their home.  Conversely, buyers see the problems, the negatives and the mess...times two...and can manage to find a few imaginary problems to throw in as well. (No..the pink bedroom doesn't translate into offering $10,000 less!)



There must be a lot of counter space because there
are a lot of things on the counter.



Must of been running late for work this morning. Do
you love the lighting fixture?

As a Realtor, I have seen the bizarre, the strange, the "are you kidding me".  I have dealt with the difficult, the arrogant, the stubborn and  the know-it-all. These are all offset by the wonderful, gracious, practical and they-make-my-job-a-breeze people.

I have shown houses that have been condemned, have been foreclosed or are inhabited by hoarders.

Luckily I have seen others that are beautifully maintained, wonderfully decorated, and  spotlessly clean.  

 
Why did you buy what you bought?  Do you think you made good decisions or were you overtaken with the emotion of the moment?