Adventures of showing homes

Showing properties to clients in rural El Dorado County is the most interesting part of my job. Even after ten years of living and working in the county, I am continually fascinated with new discoveries of places where people choose to live. While showing homes for sale, I often wonder how the sellers originally found such secluded places to build their homes or found them in the first place. They must have been real pioneers to venture so far out into remote areas of the country before GPS systems or MapQuest.

After 30 years in the business, I have experienced unusual, embarrassing and occasionally frightening experiences while showing or trying to locate properties for buyers. I was reminded of how startling some property showings can be while reading an Associated Press article last week about an agent, who while showing a listing, discovered the owner of the home dead in her bed. The prospective buyers actually discovered the three-week-old body, since the agent was too lazy to go upstairs with her clients and open the bedroom door and turn on the lights. The listing agent in the interview said the house “had been up for sale for a while.” Talk about a slow market! This poor lady expires in her bed and stays there for 3 weeks before anyone notices. It gives a new definition to an “expired listing.”

Opening doors for the gentler sex and allowing them to enter before me had become a habit until my first year in real estate. Early in my career I had made an appointment with the listing agent to pick up a key to show the property since the owners would not be at home. Before lock-boxes and electronic key boxes, picking up and signing out for a house key was a common practice. Upon unlocking and opening the front door, I stepped back to allow my lady client to enter first. I can still remember her screams as she was met with two very large and loud Dobermans charging the open front door from a back room.

Protecting clients is becoming an important part of showing homes. Once when showing a home I interrupted a burglary in process. Another time I was met with a shotgun held by a very distraught seller facing a pending divorce and foreclosure. He thought I was the banker foreclosing on his home. I have learned to be cautious when showing homes where sellers are under extreme emotional or financial pressure. Years ago, it was a common practice to note in the remarks section of the MLS listing why the sellers were selling. Today, that information is considered inappropriate for general knowledge but many listing agents still include the information: “foreclosure forces sale”, “seller has already purchased another home” “short sale” and “divorce.” I think divorces cause more loan defaults than do subprime loams.

With too many homes to choose from, agents can be more selective of which homes to show clients. In making my selection, I pay special attention to the published listing agent’s remarks about the property and showing instructions. Here are some remarks that will cause me to pass on showing some listings: Dogs will bite, alarm system, no lock-box, appointment only with owner, listing agent must be present for all showings or tenant occupied 24-hour notice. The easier a home is to show, the more it will be.


Showing land or homes on acreage this time of year requires a little extra caution. I consider poison oak more dangerous than rattlesnakes. Walking the rural foothills is no place for flip-flops and cut-offs. Once while attempting to locate the monuments on a 40-acre parcel off Sand Ridge Road, I stumbled upon a small crop of very tall green leafy irrigated plants. Although the listing made no mention of the well-concealed garden, I suspected the crop wasn’t included in the selling price of the property.

I think spring is the best month to be showing homes. The weather is temperate and the hillsides are lush and green. Most homebuyers will begin their home search on the Internet but pictures and virtual tours have their limitations. Previewing homes while sitting in front of a computer monitor isn’t nearly as adventuresome as trying to find some. It’s another beautifully weekend in El Dorado County and a great time to go exploring.

Cycles

The great American Philosopher Yogi Berra once remarked that “when you come to a fork in the road, Take It.” This is actually more profound than it appears.

When the road forks, you can choose one way or the other, or you can decide to remain there at that point, stopped in the road. Dynamic markets, like real estate, do not stop at the fork. They continue on their way influenced by basic economic principals of supply and demand.
Past real estate moves can help us understand where the market will go from here. For example, when older towns have been revitalized after long periods of decay, they tend not to develop along straight trend lines. Visionaries see the potential of the dilapidated real estate and start to buy. New activity spurs new commercial and retail development and traffic.

Others, including speculators, see this early bloom and follow suit, and prices rise quickly. They rise based on the anticipation of what will be instead of the practical issues of how much income can properties generate. Existing tenants are forced out as their new landlords increase rents based on the costs of acquiring the buildings instead of the rent that can be supported based on existing retail traffic. A new group of retailers starts to move in, replacing the sleepy original tenants; but all struggle, as the town economic activity has not kept pace with the price appreciation or costs.

After a growth spurt, the market needs to pause and take a step back, permitting a new alignment of real estate prices with the underlying commercial activity to support it. The further and faster the real estate appreciation gets in front of the commercial development, the longer and steeper the re-alignment back to a sustainable long-term market.
The residential housing market is at this point of retrenchment. The rapid run-up in prices could not be sustained by the incomes earned here. Further, the “other expenses”, i.e. Insurance and Taxes, exacerbate the affordability problem. It will take a while for the market to adjust itself. It cannot happen overnight, but it will eventually. Prices will come down, expenses too. That gets us through the next few years. After that, we will have to see how fundamental issues play out. Issues such as: How our officials develop growth plans, infrastructure and taxes; and insurance. Those hard choices will help the market determine whether it takes the path of long-term economic health at the next fork in the road.