Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason: …man, there isn’t anything to do in Raleigh.  You do not want to be in Charlotte. Take Charlotte out of your GPS.  You are home. Just stay right here. There is no need to go. There is nothing to see in Charlotte.  You want to go to Charlotte, you can do that on a day trip. You do not want to get caught up in all that mess.  Life is short. Do you want to spend it on I-40, 77 –

Mikell:  No. Not at all.

Jason:  No. Not at all.  No way. Forget it. No chance. Spend it here. Go take a drive today.  Go checkout Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point. We cover those. We talk about you guys all the time.  Let’s talk about some of our other fun places. Have you gone over there and checked out Lewisville? How about Mocksville?  Mocksville and Lewisville have some pretty cool little downtowns actually. You can go over there and just, I do not know. They are just kind of Mayberry-ish.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason:  There is not a lot to them, but that is what is cool about it. Right?  It is just relaxed. Go to the park. Walk down the street. They actually have sidewalks.  Those type of things. Oak Ridge, Summerfield, Pleasant Garden. You got all these great little towns.  Sophia. Some people were like I did not even know there was a Sophia. We have got some great new houses coming up in Sophia.  You need to check out our website. Hit Jason Bramblett dot com. How about Wallburg, Ramseur, Julian, all those places?

Mikell:  Never heard of them.

Jason:  Never heard of them?

Mikell:  Never heard of them.

Jason:  They are a nine iron just south of Greensboro all around.

Mikell:  Really? Okay.

Jason:  So there are lots of great little towns here.  Advance, Bermuda Run, you got Burlington, obviously.  Mebane or if you are from the North it is Mee-bane, but we do not say it like that here.  Phonetically, it is Mebane in North Carolina. But how about we got Blues Creek, Walnut Cove. We have got Brown’s Summit, and Brown Summit because they cannot even decide up there how to say the name.  And so, it is either way. What is crazy is you can get there with the S or without the S. It does not matter. Everybody knows, but there is still an argument whether it is Brown or Browns Summit unless you are from there, and then they are emphatic about what it is.  But you need to go there and ask them. Go up there and hang out in Browns Summit and see what happens. But it is interesting. So we sell in all those, and we have a great time getting to meet the local people. All these great cities and towns that we have around there.  We are your full-service, one-stop shop buying, selling. We cover 36 towns and cities, located all over the Triad. And I know I have left off some of you. I did not forget you, King, do not worry about that. Walnut Cove, Wallburg. Who else did I miss up there? I am sure somebody.  Send me the email and I will make sure I mention you next week. I promise you. Most of you guys know we are all over the place. So come over to Jason Bramblett dot com. Send me a message. Get on that email link up there and we will get you on our mailing list because we have some interesting things and things that people are looking for that pop up, and sometimes we have to reach out to people in our database to say hey, you have what somebody is looking for.  Have you thought about selling it? Because maybe you attempted to sell your home 3, 4, 5 years ago during the dark ages of real estate when nothing was going right. No appreciation was happening, and we were just stuck in the ditch pretty much in the Triad for, oh I do not know, about a decade. It just took a while to climb out. Now, we are finally climbing out and some of you actually have not got the thought back in your head of maybe I can move now. Actually, you may very well be able to. You have been paying down the mortgage for 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 years now. Real estate is actually just starting to tick up just a little bit so we have some appreciation. So between you making payments and paying down the mortgage, real estate ticking up a little bit, now we have this thing called equity created. You may actually have enough equity to be able to make a change.

Mikell:  There you go.

Jason: You just do not know.  What do we have to do? We have just got to do the math and take a look at it and see is it a good decision for you.  And that is what we will check out and take a look at. Hey, Jason Bramblett dot com. Put in your city. Let’s talk about it. How about that?  Let’s do it. What else do we have coming up today?

Mikell:  All right. So, we talked about that the spring market has kicked off.  Is it too late to get a house on the market?

Jason:  Oh absolutely, no.  You are good. You are good.  I say that. Some of you, some of you, you are going to need some help and some love, but that is okay. Actually, here is the deal with selling a house. A lot of times everybody is trying to figure out the exact time to hit the pinnacle to get the best, to get the most. Here is the truth of the matter.  The right time to move is when you are ready to move.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  And that could be October.  That could be December. It could be (indiscernible).  The benefits of selling now, well you have more buyers hitting the market now because of the time of year more than anything else.  The downside to selling now is you also have more houses hitting the market. Therefore, you have more competition. So if you are one of ten that are hitting the market in your price range, and nine of your neighbors have outperformed you in cleanliness, upgrades, updates, all those things, they have been listening to the show for the last 12 years. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  They have taken hold of all the wisdom and knowledge that I have dropped on the Triad real estate market.  Right?

Mikell:  The gems.

Jason:  The gems.  That is it. Yeah, they jumped right in there.  And so, they are way ahead of you because maybe you just tuned in last week and the only thing you got last week was something about the ACC tournament that I was ranting on.  But anyway, they are ahead of you. It may be that now that that competition is there, you house does not look quite as good as it used to. Whereas, maybe if you had put the house on the market in December when nobody was on the market and people had absolutely no choice, all of a sudden, hey, the bridesmaid became the bride.  Right? It was like wow, there is not anything else. This is what we will have to go with. So there is a downside to selling in the spring market. It is what most of us will consider the peak, yes, and most of the houses do sell in this cycle. But here is the thing about looking at trends and cycles. With real estate especially, the only way you can know if you were ever at the top is you have to look backwards.  So it is not a trend in which you can forward, you cannot see it coming forward. In order to know that you were at the top it is what we call it is in arrears. Everything happens in the past. So when you put a house under contract, that sale is not recorded that day. That sale is recorded in 45-60 days when it closes. Therefore, the buy trend is always in a lag of usually 45-90 days. So we will not know what the top was until probably we are 45-90 days past the top.  And now what do we see is the ski slope it is heading down the other way. So now we have people chasing the market down, which is never fun. And if you need a visual of that graph, just google anything over the last ten years in the Triad real estate market, and you will look like you were on Beech Mountain headed down really quick because that is what it looked like. It looked like you were skiing Black Diamond. This was not bunny slope, tow ropes, gentle, little rolling meadows.  This was a cliff that just went straight down. So this was double Black Diamond, holy smokes, here we go. That is the visual.

And what you do not see is that lag.  So when it is perpetually for nine years, you see it, or nine or ten years, but the bottom line is this. Real estate in general is all about timing.  It is all about your timing. If everybody could pick the winning ticket everybody would be winners. Right? It does not work that way.

Mikell:  Of course.

Jason:  Another thing we have got to look at is most people when I get a question like timing is they are trying to maximize the investment.  They are attempting to squeeze as much as they can out of that. But by definition, an investment is something that is earning you money for effort that you are not having to do and potentially, like in the case of real estate, other people are paying for your debt.  That is a win. So I have a rental unit, house, condo, townhouse, apartment, whatever it is. If I owe money on it, the tenant is actually paying that money back. The difference between what I owe and what the tenant is giving me is profit, or at least income of some kind.  It may not be profit, but it certainly could be income.

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  And to qualify this real quick, your 40-year-old deadbeat son living in your basement paying you rent is not really investment property. Okay?  That is a parenting issue. Right? That is not income property. Put all things together equally here to understand what is, just because somebody is giving you some dollars does not mean you have got an investment property.  The house you live in is technically, under that definition I just gave you, not an investment. Why? Unless the kids are paying for it, I cannot get rent out of mine. I have tried. They just do not go for that. They are still hopefully on the we-work-for-food program.  Right? If you can get them to do a little something around the house.

Mikell:  Just a little bit.

Jason:  Just a little bit. Just lean into it just a little. Right?  But by definition, the home you live in, if no one else is paying for it and you are, it is a liability. It is actually not an investment property.  Could you make money off of the home that you are living in? It is possible. It is rare, but it is possible. Typically, what it ends up becoming is a really, really horrible savings account. And the reason why is we actually always over-improve our own property. Why did you do that?  Why did spend $14,000 on your kitchen? Because I liked it.

Mikell:  My wife told me to probably.

Jason:  There you go.  That is it. That is it. That is not investment logic.  That is keeping everybody happy logic.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  Which is more important.  See there is a return of value there. It is not monetary.  Money. But it is lifestyle. I did this. Mama happy. Everybody is happy.

Mikell: Everyone is happy.

Jason:  It is priceless.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  You cannot put money or put a money factor on that. Now, we look at houses all the time that are over-improved.  Why did you that? Why did you put that there? We loved it. This is what our family does. Our family is an outdoor family, so we put a $60,000 outdoor kitchen in. Okay.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason: Okay, great. You can do that, but you may never ever, ever get that money back and probably will not because there are not that many people.  Now, people will take it all day long –

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  -- but they are not going to pay you what you paid for it. But I like the fact, I like the $60,000 outdoor kitchen.  It is awesome. I just do not really want to pay $60,000 for it because I could take it or leave it. Right?

Mikell:  Leave it. Yeah.

Jason:  It is kind of like a horse barn.  We sell horse properties. A horse barn is an awesome feature to have if you have horses.

Mikell: If you have horses.  I was going to say.

Jason:  If you have no horses, it is absolutely a useless building on your property.  So it has different value for different people. Same principle with your house. And typically, we get in the situation where we over-improve our house.  But real estate investing is great to do, but it is investing when other people are paying you money for what you either own and or they are helping you pay it off.  That is when it becomes an investment. That is when it becomes good. That is when you start making sense of those things.

Now, all that to say, is it the right time to sell.  The right time to sell, what I am getting at, the essence of this is do not spin your wheels attempting to time out a market in which no one can predict and or no one has ever really timed out.  Because it is always in arrears. You never know where the top is until you are past it. You can get close. You can kind of get in the window. You can do whatever. The right time to sell the home that you are living in is when you are ready to do it. That is the bottom line. Because all of those factors. Because even if I sold my house seven years ago when the market was horrible, but I sold it in order to take a new job in Tennessee that was paying me 40 or $50,000 more a year and I lost money here, it was probably still a good decision for the family.

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  It was a horrible decision as far as real estate goes.  Maybe I should have never bought the house to begin with. But the fact of that new opportunity, me being able to get rid of the home, I was able to take advantage of that opportunity. So lots of different things out there. Mikell, let’s take a quick break. We are going to come back. We have got something coming up you might be interested in.  Have you ever thought about, I do not know, sticking your toe in the real estate world? Well, we are going to talk about our career night coming up in April. So stay tuned. We will be right back in just a minute. Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show live right here. (in/out music)

Mikell:  All right. We are coming back from the break.  We talked about our rental properties and investing.  

Jason: Absolutely, and then we kind of well, we threw out that little teaser out there of have you ever thought about well, what it takes to actually be in real estate, be in sales?  Have you wanted to stick your toe in the water, kind of check it out? Well, we are doing a career night coming up in April. Actually, it is April 10th, 6-7 o’clock, and I am going to walk you through what it takes to, well, an opportunity if you will.  I guess. We are going to talk about what it takes to be successful, but also the opportunity we have created within our company that you could potentially come in, take a look at what it is, and everybody has got their own opinion of what real estate sales really is.

Now look, I am not talking about order taking. Okay?  There is a difference. Okay? If you have been to a really nice restaurant and you had somebody take your order and you have been to a really nice restaurant where somebody has given you concierge service and served you well, and or hopefully you have bought something in which somebody did not just say, what you want to drink?  That is called order taking. All right? When you have a great experience, and that is what we want to create is the experience of real estate, not just sitting back, taking orders to either buy and or sell. If you are the type of person, your whole experience is doing open houses, eating chips and cookies, that is not what we are talking about here either. We are talking about selling at high level, but really here is what I am talking about.  We are looking for leaders. I am looking for people who understand that serving their clients, what it is like to do that, and to do it at the highest level possible. People that pick up the phone and make things happens instead of waiting on the phone to ring and reacting to what is happening. There is a big difference in the two.

Mikell:  Taking initiative.

Jason:  Yes. You might want to rewind that later and listen to that again.  That is the difference between you taking ownership of your life, your sales career, and or your sales career happening to you. There is a big difference.  The other big difference are the zeroes at the end of your paycheck. Okay? There are definitely different levels of compensation in all of sales, and the people that serve their clients the best offer the greatest service, provide the best concierge-type service, and do it at a very, very high level earn the most money. That should not be a big surprise to anybody. And I know some people will say that is not fair.  Well, guess what? We have a fair in October. It is called the Dixie Classic Fair, and you can go there and ride the rides because that is what a fair is for.

Mikell:  Bring the family.

Jason:  That is it. Life is not fair.  Get over it. If you have not figured it out by now, I am sorry.  I do not know where you have been hiding. But it is not fair. It is not fair to all the young kids that got snowed in to going out and getting a higher education, $80,000 in debt and they are working at the big box store with the circle and the pretty dog at the checkout counter. Right?  Sorry for you, but it is about taking initiative for yourself and getting out there and making it happen. Okay? And you cannot just go through the motions.

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  That is what we are finding out.  That is what this generation is finding out. Going through the motions.  Well, sometimes going through the motions smacks you right into a concrete wall, and it is no fun.

Mikell:  It is not.

Jason:  I have hit a few concrete walls in my career.

Mikell:  I have, too.

Jason:  And guess what?  They are hard.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  And you have got to move through them or over them. Right? But you just cannot sit there and just stare at them and talk to them.  Right? They are not going to move. You have to make the one making the move. So April 10th from 6-7 at our campus here in Greensboro. We are going to dig into that.  Get in touch with my office. You go to Jason Bramblett dot com. You know the deal, drill.  That little email icon in the top right corner. Shoot us an email. Put in there career night.  My team will reach out to you. We will get you an Eventbrite sent over so you can register. There is no cost to this event.  We actually paid all the handling charges for you, so there is no cost to take a look. We will get your money later. No, I am kidding.  Just relax. It is not one of these sales pitchy things. You cannot buy anything when you come there. I have a couple houses for sale if you want to buy one when you are there.  That is fine. But really what we want to do is we know this. In the Triad, there are an extensive amount of phenomenal, great sales people that are looking for the right vehicle and the right opportunity, and where they are at now, it is not there.  So real estate can be it. The wonderful thing I love about real estate is that you have a lot of control in your destiny. I have had in the last 90 days four really good friends that work for pretty large companies for years, one of them well over 25 years, and at that age where they are making pretty good money.  So they are probably making anywhere between $80-90,000 a year, making a great living, been at the company a long time, and all of a sudden, they wacked the whole division.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason: So when you are 55 plus and you are in the job force looking to replace a $70, 80, or $90,000 income, that is very, very difficult to do.

Mikell:  In today’s society, it is very hard.

Jason:  In today’s corporate workforce, like 41 is hard.

Mikell: Yes.

Jason:  So when you get up to 55 plus, one of my friends, 61 years old, and you just cannot touch, there is nothing.  Nobody that he found, I should not say nobody. Few, and nobody that he found was hiring a 60-year-old person at the income level that he was at.  And what do you do? Here he is. He is too young to retire, too young for Social Security. Most all the retirement benefit cannot kick in. Right?

Mikell:  No. Yeah.

Jason: And you are stuck in this abyss until you reach those years. And the real thing that stinks is usually with Social Security, my understanding of it is, what you make in your last few years is kind of the most important part.  Right?

Mikell:  Yes, it is.

Jason:  That is what establishes some of the tables as to what you are going to get.

Mikell:  True. It is kind of hard to downsize your life before you really want to.

Jason:  That is right.  Yeah, well yeah, think about that.  It is like here I got this great plan. It is awesome, and everybody set the timeline, whoever did that decided it was 65.  I do not know who. Or 67, I guess it is. They move the cheese a little bit every year out there a little bit.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  So 67, I have got my plan.  I am working my plan, and all of a sudden, my plan does not work anymore.  And that is out of your control.

Mikell: Yeah.

Jason:  The great thing about real estate is you have control. We actually had a couple times I have known, I have been around a while, so I have known agents who are up in their years, and we actually had a really, one of our top agents in the Triad pass away a couple of years ago.  The interesting thing about that was when he died, he had multiple homes still under contract. So there was actually money coming in even after he was not with us anymore.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason:  So all the way to the very end, you could actually be in control of your own destiny, making money.  That money could go to your family, your estate or whatever it is. But my point is you have the control of that and not maybe somebody with a pencil out of state in a different part of the world that does not really, I will not say they really do not care about what you are doing, it is just that they are not living in your shoes.

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  The only person I want living in my shoes is me, and I want to be in control of them.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  Real estate career night, come check it out.  It is going to be April the tenth, 6-7, get in touch with our office. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com. You can get all the information you need there.  The last little thing I just want to throw out. We have new homes popping up all over the Triad. We get this question all the time, especially in the spring because they seem to pop up like the tulips and the daisies and all that stuff.  Should I buy a home directly from the homebuilder? Interesting enough, I had lunch this week with one of the area’s top homebuilders, and I was pleasantly surprised, not surprised, encouraged that their team, they really push the fact that they want people to have representation.  They actually want another set of eyes there. So there is a perception that you can save money by buying direct and not having a real estate agent. And with this particular builder, and they sell a lot of homes, and most of them out there, that is simply, it is a myth. It is actually not the truth.  You are not going to get the house at a cheaper price. The only thing you are going to get is no representation. So think about that. We are going to do a show on that coming up next week. You can stay tuned there and stay tuned obviously to WPTI. We have got great stuff coming up like basketball –

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason: -- all day, and of course, I do not know. I am sure Duke is going to win –

Mikell:  I am sure they will.

Jason:  -- but that is my bracket.  It is not totally busted yet.  Everybody have an awesome, awesome weekend.  We will be back here next week. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com to sign up for career night, and we will see you then.  Enjoy the weekend, guys.

Mikell: Enjoy the weekend.

Career Night

 Jason:  Good morning, Triad.  I hope everybody is doing great today. It is another fantastic day here in the real estate world, and we hope that you guys are out here having a good time, enjoying your day, getting ready to go out and get into whatever it is you do. Maybe, just maybe, you are going to tear up something.  Before you do, we are going to walk you through the things that you may or may not want to get involved with in reconstruction and selling of your house and all those things. We all have got those honey-do lists, and sometimes those honey-do lists are with a sledgehammer. So before you grab that, let’s sit down and let’s talk. Grab some coffee. Get a pen, get a paper.  We are continuing on with our walk through the house.  We are digging into what to do to sell now, but also what to do if you are selling in the next one to two years. So getting a game plan together, getting something prepared so we are ready to go.  Go to Jason Bramblett dot com.  You can always shoot me an email over there. If your email is something that we believe will benefit the communities that we serve, all 37 of them, we will absolutely share right here on the air. So go to Jason Bramblett dot com.  Click on the email icon in the top right corner.  Shoot me an email.  I love reading all your attaboys and all the other comments.  I read those, too.  Anyway, so joining me in the studio, Mr. Mikell Montgomery, pushing all the buttons, making everything happen.

Mikell:  Yes, sir.

Jason: And we welcome your calls.  You can give us a call.  We are live in the studio.  It is 882-7874 or at the office, 553-0796.  Mikell, what do we have lined up today, man?

Mikell:  So last week we were talking about outside of the house.  Of course, we were talking about selling your house. So we are going to talk a little bit more about the mechanical part of selling a house.

Jason:  Yeah, yeah, the mechanics of the actual house and the mechanics of actually going through what do I do, what is the next thing to go.  So moving parts. Moving parts always create an issue. The thing with moving parts is eventually they stop moving, right, and so these are the wear and tear things that we have on a house. What we see is with the heating and cooling systems, your HVAC systems, when you get somewhere in that 15 to 20-year range on those, this is where we run into some problems where it actually will affect the people that potentially would consider buying your home. You will also typically see this consideration in the offers that they make on the house. Okay?  So if you have a 15 to 17 to 18 to 20-year-old heating and cooling system, do not be surprised if your offer that you received on the house is somewhere between $4-6,000 less than where you want it to be or where you think it should be.  Why?  Because this person knows 100% guarantee pretty much that they are the guy that is going to replace the system, and nobody wants to do it. So they are factoring into their numbers hey, I am the guy that is going to be writing the check for 4 or 5 or $6,000 to fix one, two or three of these heating and cooling systems depending how many you actually have. So do not be surprised when you see offers that reflect this.  Now, I know many of you guys out there will say well, Jason, my heat pump is 38 years old. Congratulations.  You have won the lottery.  Right?

Mikell:  You definitely got your money’s worth. 

Jason: You definitely got your money’s worth.

Mikell:  And then some.

Jason: You do not see that often.  We do not see that happen very often.  There are times though when we do see that with the proper maintenance and the proper keeping up with the systems, you can actually get extended life.  For some reason, mentally though, the public, the consumer, the people buying the home, they have this 15-20-year block in their mind, and regardless of what you have done to keep it up, and it may last another 20 years. They are not going to plan on it, and they are going to speculate that they are the ones that are going to replace this, and therefore, you will see that reflected in their offer.  The same with the roof.  If you get a house where the roof is anywhere between 15-20 years old, we see the same type of thing.  Now, there are some roofs obviously that have 30 and 40 and 50-year shingles, and or whatever the material may be to give it a little bit extra life.  Again, it comes back to that mental thing, and the only way that you can go through that is with the proper education. With the ability to prove that you actually have maintained the product, maintained the actual system.  How?  Through documentation.  Right? I have a contract. I have got somebody that comes out to the house twice a year, and here is what they do.  That could give some peace of mind, but psychologically, these folks still for some reason will have in their mind that 15-20 range.  One thing you can do, we are blessed in the south with great weather, but it also comes with humid weather, and that grows stuff.  Like we are in a big petri dish down here.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  So if you end up with black streaks on your roof that is like this mildew mold thing that happens, and I have talked about Chris and his team over at Whitman Home Renewal many, many times because they deliver some of the best return I have ever seen. The biggest bang for your buck. A clean house always sells better, faster, and for more money.  There is no better time and effort you can put into your home other than cleaning it.  I do not know why Febreeze does not make a bleach-smelling scent, but if they did, it would probably be their top, number one seller as opposed to whatever the other fragrances they have out there because if the house still stinks, to put it nicely –

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  -- eau to flower and cover-up smell is not too good of a scent.  Right?  Something about bleach.  Bleach is just magical.  It always smells clean and people like it.  Now, it does not need to be like a chlorine pool. Right?

Mikell:  No.

Jason: But think about, use it wisely.

Mikell:  It gives you that confirmation like oh, someone cleaned.

Jason:  Absolutely.  It is just a good thing.  It is just a good thing.  So water heaters. That is another one that comes up.  We have seen that quite a bit.  Water heaters, depending on who you talk to, somewhere between that 8-12 year lifespan, and these are things that you will see folks that will ding you on.  So if your water heater is 10 years old, you are thinking about selling your house in the next 2-3 years, it might be a good idea to consider replacing the water heater.  You will get about 80% return is what we typically see.  It is one of the higher things that you actually get a return on.  So if you spend $1100-1400 on a new water heater, which is about what it costs, you could get about 80% of that back.  One thing that I will caution you with. Heating and cooling, water heaters is when you replace them, in every single municipality that you can hear me in, even probably in Virginia if you hear me there, the code is that for the City and or that municipality, a permit is required to change these things out.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  And so, you can hire a contractor, and they will change them out, and they will not get a permit.  And then what will happen is you will reap the benefit of this action down the road when you go to sell the house because your house was built in 1984, and it obvious that it is not the original heating and cooling system or the water heater, and the first thing that a good real estate is going to ask is where are the permits?  Meaning who did this.  Darryl and his other brother Darryl? Or did you hire an actual person, a real company to do this. Now some municipalities may have different rules as to where an owner can do certain things and changes those out without a permit. But if you are thinking about selling your home, the consumer wants the protection knowing it was done by a professional, not you Mr. Homeowner.

Mikell: Absolutely.

Jason:  Spend the $100 to get the permit.  It is money well spent. And it will reduce a lot of headaches down there.  So if you have an irrigation system, make sure it is in working order. If you do not use it, and you do not know or recall the last time in which it was ever used, you either want to get it up to par or you want to just go ahead and dissemble it and get rid of it if you are not willing to make it operational. Because these are things people are going to see and they do not know that it has not worked in seven years.  They will assume that it broke last week and you just do not want to deal with it.  All right? So if you have a pool, it needs to be open and running, and people need to see it. They want to see what the pool looks like.  I know we winterize a lot pools here in this area, but if you are going to sell your home, you need to go ahead and invest in and plan on the extra money it is going to cost you to run the pool and the pump during the winter if you are selling in the winter.  People want to see the pool. They do not want to see green sludge and have to deal with all that.  Pools are not very common in our area, and so if you have one, show it off.  That is what people want to see.  They do not want to see a big hole with a tarp over it. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  That is what a swimming pool is if it is not open and clear and beautiful that people can see it.  It is nothing but a hole in the ground with a tarp.  What are you hiding?  What are you covering up?  What is the problem?

Mikell:  Are there dead bodies?

Jason:  Are there dead bodies in that?  Right? What do you have in the pool? And people want to see that.  So obviously, especially if it is in summer, that is an easy time.  If you have a pool, I would highly consider selling your home in the summer if you can actually control the time and the plan and all that. Summer is a great time to sell a pool especially when it is 98 degrees and they are melting on your deck and they are like wow, that pool looks really good. Right? Hey, you might need to come over on Saturday and take it for a spin.  Right? Give it is a shot.

Appliances. Appliances are huge, huge, huge in selling a house.  They need to be consistent, and they need to match the quality of the home.  I have seen way too many homeowners get real cheap on replacing appliances for their $300,000 house. It is a $300,000 house. The quality needs to match. Right?  So do not put in a, I will pick a brand, do not get mad at me Whirlpool. You are just the one I was thinking of.  But do not put a spin dial Whirlpool 3-setting dishwasher in your $399,000 house. Right?  There is an expectation that the quality of the features in appliances are going to match the price of the home.

Mikell:  I guess you would expect the black appliances as well.

Jason:  Really, they just all need to be consistent.

Mikell:  Gotcha.

Jason: Sometimes what we see is a white dishwasher, a stainless steel refrigerator, and a black wall oven. No.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  The consistency. Pick a flavor.  Every color of the rainbow is not good in the kitchen.  Right?  Pick a flavor.  Pick a color, and stick with it, and make sure that the quality matches the price point. It is an amenity, but it is five levels below the standard.  So it is worthless.  You spent money that is absolutely worthless because more than likely, they are already planning in their offer hey, we are going to have to replace all these appliances because they do not match the expectation. Right?

Mikell:  True.

Jason: Just because it is new does not mean it is the right fit.  So make sure that when you are going to go through the trouble and aggravation and all that of switching appliances out, buy the appropriate appliance for the price point.  And wow them. And if you really want to one up your competition, buy the next level up.  Buy the next best thing. You do not need a TV in the refrigerator and all that crazy stuff that is out there now, but something that is of top quality, if you will, for your price point, and if you one up it a little bit, that helps you one up your competition.  And it is a few hundred bucks.  The great thing about appliances is once you hit a certain level, you can step up a model or two for just a few hundred bucks.  You are not talking about double the price.  You are talking about maybe $3-400. So money well spent.

Now fixtures.  It is where it all falls off the rails. Right here. Fixtures.  You have got to make sure that the fixtures in the home definitely match the quality of the house.  The good thing is most of the big box stores are selling the quality and colors that are out there now that most people want.  That most of our buyers are looking for. If you have time and you are out there and you are one to two years out, the great thing is you can take your time.  You can look for the deals.  Right?  You can check out the sales, and you can be patient.  We overpay when we are in a hurry.  When it is the last minute, we overpay. Right?

Mikell: Yeah.

Jason:  Hence, fast good.  Hence, convenience stores.  I am in a hurry.  I do not want to go to Sam’s and buy 48 bottles of water for $3.  I will go in the gas station for $2.59.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  Think about the ratio.  It is 40:1 ratio almost. You are overpaying a lot.  Same situation in houses.  When we get in a hurry, we overpay.  Make a plan.  There are things that come up that we cannot control.  Job transfer and things like that are maybe you got transferred out the door and you were not expecting it.  That is another transfer like here, we have a joke at our office is here your white box.  Right?  Go fill it with your stuff.  It is your packing box.  So those are the things that a lot of people experience.

Mikell:  Well, there is a new term that most people use now.  You get promoted to customer.

Jason:  There you go.

Mikell:  That is the nice way of putting it.  You are were not terminated.  You were just promoted to customer.

Jason:  You are a really lousy employee, so we are going to promote you to a customer.

Mikell:  To a customer.

Jason:  Yeah, I like that.  I do not know that that actually will fly. I do not know if I want to do business with you, but it might make them feel a little better.  But anyway.  So the type of fixtures you are choosing.  Satin nickel, oil-rubbed bronze are still top of the food chain, if you will. Top market. This is what people are looking for. I am sure most of you that have been listening to me for 12 years on the radio know that brass is not anything that anybody is requesting.  Okay?  If you have brass, all it does is scream 1990. All right?  Unless you are playing Bruce Springsteen in the kitchen, nobody is really going to, it is not what they are looking for. It is not a desirable product.  Make the change.  And here is the thing.  If you have got a couple years before you are going to sell, just do a door a night.  Pick a weekend.  Like this weekend, this Saturday, I am going to change out these two doors. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason: You do not have to do it all at once. If you have friends over and they are not impressed because three of your doors are oil-rubbed bronze and the rest are brass, then you question to yourself is are they really your friends.  Right? Because if they did not like it, you would say, hey, I have got 16 more sets in the garage.  You want to help me?

Mikell:  You want to help?

Jason:  You want to help?

Mikell:  Chip in.

Jason:  It is called will work for food. Right?  I will feed you dinner. Come help me change out my brass here.  So think about those things. Get a plan. Brass in the master bath is another one that we see more so than anything.  Brass fixtures in a master bath always get reflected in the offer. So if you want to invest in one thing to start out with and yes, it is not cheap, especially when you have garden tubs and shower heads and all this stuff and all the little knobs and all those things that are brass and you want to make the change over. It is not cheap.  So budget.  Put it, look at it, and do it over time. People do not want fixer up homes today. They want move-in, ready-to-go homes.  So think about that as you are going through it.

Now all this is assuming that you want top dollar for your house.  If you want the lowest price, just well sell what you have got. Right? Do not worry about it. These are tips and ideas to get you the most money for your property when you are ready to sell. So we are going to take a time out. Go pay some bills.  We will be back. We are going to dig into a few other details of the house. This is Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. We will be right back in just a minute.

Mikell: All right, Jason, so coming back into it, we got an email from Steve and Joyce. I am going to read that for you.

Jason:  All right. Very good.

Mikell: It says Mr. Bramblett, we intend to sell in the next two years, and yes, we will be calling you.

Jason:  Of course, you will.  Absolutely.  Thank you.

Mikell:  My bathroom has a garden tub and a small shower.  I am considering taking out the tub and replacing it with a larger shower only. Is this a good investment?

Jason: Okay.  It is a great question.  This is a question we get that is a very popular question because a lot of homes are designed this way. So it is something that we are very, very familiar with, Steve and Joyce, and what we typically see is this. Here is the big factor in all that.  Where is the window in the bathroom? And the reason why that is the biggest factor is most of the time a lot of times these garden tubs are placed, there is a window placed over them or above them. And so now we have got, not only do we have an interior issue or interior project, we have an exterior project.  So it can be done.  It absolutely can be done, but really what we have got to do is look at that modification. How are we going to match the exterior?  If we just say that window is 4x4, and we have a 4x4 hole on the outside of the house, how are we going to be able to blend the materials to match to where that does not look like a big eyesore.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  One thing that is a challenge with a lot of materials like let’s just say that the house had vinyl siding.  Well, if the vinyl siding has been up there for ten years, the sun has faded the siding. If you go buy new, it is going to stick out like a sore thumb. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  Brick.  Brick is colored and dyed, and the dye lot is going to be very, very impossible to match.  You can get very close, but it is amazing the human eye can pick up just a small distinct color difference can really stand out. You see this sometimes in new construction where some guys did not buy the brick all at the same time. And you look at a house and you are like is that two different colors?  Why does the brick look that way?  Well, they did the foundation so they did the crawl space and then you stop. Right?  You get inspections done and you brick it up to a certain level. And then you put your band board on and then you build the house. And then the last thing you do, or the close to the last thing you will do, is rebrick the rest of the home.  If the brick was bought too far apart, you will see a distinct color difference. You can actually look at it and specifically tell where the crawl space is at because of the color variation in the brick.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  The same thing will happen with this window.  Now here is where it really benefits. If you planned on painting the exterior of the house. So if your house was hardy board, wood, or even brick, to get the home ready to sell, you plan on repainting the exterior of the house, well, this is a perfect time.  Because now you can put the brick back, makes no difference. It does not even matter what color brick it is as long as it is the same size and it has the same finish, and then once you paint the exterior, you will never know that there was a window there. The same could be true with wood if you are going paint it.  Where we run into issue are products that are not going to painted.  How do I camouflage?  How do I make this window not appear on the outside like there is something really odd about the house?  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  Now the other thing is you may have a garden tub that is in the corner or now window at all. Let’s just assume that it is in a location where there is no window. So this is a great thing to do.  Yes, getting rid of the garden tub, which is the least used feature in a home, most people, most of the time when I go to a house, the garden tub is full of plants. 

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  People do not even use it. And so, if you do not use the garden tub, you may relate to that, and you are like, yeah, that is exactly what it is. Or it is a big dust collector, if you will, and so a lot of people do not. Now, one question that we do see, is it bad or is it going to be a negative not to have a tub in the master bathroom?  Typically, if you have a nice 60” shower with multiple jets and those types of things, no. Most people in today’s time do prefer the shower over a tub.  However, you need to make sure there is a tub somewhere in the house especially if you think a family with small kids is going to buy the house.  Most moms do not like to baptize their babies with a shower. Right?

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason:  They like a bath, and the kids like a bath, and they play in the bath and they splash water all out of the bath, and it all ends up on your dining room ceiling.  Right? And or downstairs.  If you have a two-story home and small kids, you probably know exactly what I am saying. Usually when I go into a dining room and the sheetrock is messed up in the ceiling, I look up and say kids? And 100% of the time it is yes.  Kids.  Kids are amazing, amazing at destroying things.  No, I am kidding. They are good for other things, too, like cutting grass.

Mikell: Changing doorknobs.

Jason:  Yeah, changing doorknobs.  There you go.  Changing out doorknobs.  Good call. Yeah. So holding stuff.  Right.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  So, anyway, but if you are in the situation where that is a question, but a 60” just step-in shower with multiple jets is a very good upgrade and I would highly consider that. The other thing is the kitchen, and we will run out of time.  We will pick this up next week.  But the kitchen can really make or break a sale. The biggest thing you want to figure out, again, goes back to the appliances and make sure the updates and upgrades match the price point. Okay? 

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  Granite is kind of an expectation in certain price points.  If you are over $300,000 and you have Formica countertops and your home is maybe 15 or 20 years old, that is going to be a real problem when you go to sell. Once the big box stores started selling the granite, it really became an expectation.  We sell $80,000 condos that have granite countertops.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  There are $150,000 houses out here now that have granite countertops.  Now, some of you first-generation granite folks may argue and say it is not the same quality. It is a rock.  I am pretty sure nobody cares.  It is hard. Okay?  I know that is hard to hear when you paid extremely ridiculous amounts of money for your granite 15 years ago, but do not shoot me. I am just the messenger. I did not go to the place and dig it out of the quarry.  So we are going to dig in next week to the kitchen specifically and then talk about basements. Everybody’s mysterious space that we do not know what to do with. So we will dig into that next week.  You can go to Jason Bramblett dot com.  Shoot me your questions, and we will share them on the air.  Everybody have an awesome weekend and thank you for listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  We will be back here live next week right here on 94.5.

JASON BRAMBLETT REAL ESTATE RADIO SHOW PODCAST

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Jason:  Good morning, Triad.  I hope everyone is doing well on this, well, it started off right. It looks like it is going to be an awesome, awesome day. Hopefully, we will dodge any of this crazy weather coming in, and hope everybody has got some fun plans.  Well, what else would you have to start your Saturday, but getting some real estate knowledge right here?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Why not?  So joining me today, Mr. Mikell Montgomery on the board, pushing the buttons, making it happen, making sure I stay on track here in good time as always. Right?

Mikell:  Yes, sir. Good morning, Jason.

Jason:  Good morning.  Good morning. So a couple things I want to dig into today. We are going to get you ready to sell that house. I am going to break it down room by room and how you can evaluate each one of your individual rooms as you go through the house.  Actually, we are going to start outside the house today and dig through that. We will not get through the list today, but we will continue it next week as we work through each step and come up with an action plan to get you prepared to get top dollar for your house.  This is one question I have never had, Mikell, is I have never had anybody come in the office, Jason, we hear you talking on the radio and see your TV ads and all that stuff. Can you get me the lowest price possible? Do not have that one. No. So we have developed a plan to get not only what the market will bear, but to squeeze out every possible ounce that we possibly can out of the market.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason: So some of you guys are now.  Some of you are a year, some of you are two years down the road and beyond.  And the things that we are going to talk about, there is a timeline for all of it, and what we want to look at is what makes sense for you.  So really timeline dictates how fast you are going to move on these things. The actions are really going to be the same. It is just the amount of speed in which you move through the process. So if you are two years out, you will not need to go as fast, but you have more time to plan. If you are two weeks out, it is pedal to the metal, lightspeed and you have got to get going today.  Like as soon as we get off the radio show you are headed to the big box. Right.

Mikell: There you go.

Jason:  To get your Jason-Do list done in addition to your Honey-Do list.  Grab a pen. Grab some paper. Let’s get started. We are going to hit first off with the curb appeal.  Curb appeal is not only, it used to be back in the day when folks drove around looking for properties, it would be they drove around.  They see something that catches their eye. They call the sign and say we like the outside. We would like to see the inside, and now, with the day of technology, internet, 3-D virtual tours, everything that there is in the world, I can actually get all the curb appeal I want about your house from the comfort of my Lazy Boy. Just relaxing. Got the phone.  Heck, you can even put it on the TV now. You can just stream right up on to the TV --

Mikell: You sure can.

Jason:  -- and do the virtual tour, walk through the house.  So lots of things have changed. The amount of physical time that it used to go out and find a home is really reduced probably by about 70, 80%.

Mikell:  Like we always say convenience.

Jason:  Convenience. That is it.  Absolutely. And we love convenience. So we can go through.  Now the good and the bad of that is sometimes you see homes at their absolute best portrayal online and then you get there, and it is a little different song and dance.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  It is kind of like the movie trailer. You saw all the best of the movie in the trailer. Right? And then you watched the movie and you are like well, that is two hours of my life I will never get back. I could have watched the trailer again. Right? Because that is where all the action was at, and then everything in between is just kind of eh, whatever. Well sometimes, in real estate, that can be the case, too.  The other flip side of that is sometimes a home that is not represented well actually when you go into the property can wow you in a different way. So we are going to walk through this. A timeline, the things that we are talking about that your timeline kind of dictates the priority and or the plan that we are looking at here. If you are now seller, then when you look at the outside, one thing you want to do is make sure you have got some color, make sure you got some things that pop and give the house some appeal. So the closer you are to selling, the more mature these plants you need to buy.  Do not buy the dollar-forty-nine little flowers the size of your finger because it will not really do anything. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  It is too little and too short amount of time.  So you want to get something that is going to pop, something that is a little bit bigger, more mature, and something that adds color to the house.  Whether they are annuals or perennials, you will have to decide there. Remember annual makes it one year, and that is it. So if you are three years out and you are planting annuals thinking man, I am good to go.  No, you are not until next year. And then so, be careful with some of your perennials because well, they are great and they look good, but they only look for a short period of time. So you need to gauge if you are going to perennial planting gauge the time of year when these things are all in bloom and budding and all that.  That is when you want to sell a home and or at least get photos. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  And so, if you have, just a little side note from my notes that I have, if you have great pictures of your home in the spring from different times, as long as all the plants are still there, we can use that.  So if you are selling your house in December, everything is dead as a doornail. Right?

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  You may have some phenomenal photos of what the yard looks like in the spring.  Well just because it is winter does not mean we cannot use those. Right? So we can show that story or tell that story. We just need somebody to capture that. So if you are thinking about selling with us, we are happy to send our photographer out at any season.  So if you are thinking hey, my yard looks awesome and I am going to sell in the fall, well, give us a call. We will come out, take photos right now, and get it captured. Get it professionally done and that way in the fall when everything is kind of leaning toward the end of its life, we have got great photos of the spring.

Mikell:  And you said that you, your company takes those photos?

Jason:  That is right.

Mikell:  Wow. That is great.

Jason:  So we will send somebody out there to capture the best.  I have a friend he is like whatever we do, let’s always put our best foot forward.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  And that is what we want to do.  We always want to make sure that we are leaning toward the best.  The other thing with colors and schemes and all that, primary colors appeal to the most people, so you can get some exotics and stuff, but just be careful.  I have had some folks that have had amazing yards, but they are a little intimidating to the novice. Obviously, it is easier to kill stuff than it is to keep it alive.  Like do not water it. It is one of those things where you can go a little bit overboard so be careful with the types of plants and or the colors. Because if you get a little weird, I will not say weird.  Weird is not the right word, but if you get a little eccentric, a little exotic, it just does not appeal to everybody.

Mikell:  A little creative.

Jason:  A little creative. Yes. A little creative. You guys are definitely creative. I have been over to your houses.  You are definitely creative. Some of you guys are creative not only in your décor and your repairs and your painting especially.  It is all great, and you did it for you and it is awesome, but remember when you go to sell, you are not doing anything for you because you are leaving.

Mikell:  It is not about you anymore.

Jason:  It is not about you anymore.  You have got to think like a retailer.  You have got to think like somebody that is putting something on display that wants to appeal to the most people.  You notice when you go in certain stores, some stores they have mannequins and whatever they are pushing for sale is dressed, is properly, accessories are right and all that.  And that is a certain price and certain premium they get for telling the story. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason: This is what you can look like if you lost 35 pounds and you were six-four.  If you went to the gym every day you could fit in that Under Armour shirt, but nonetheless, this is the story we are going to tell.  This is what you could look like in this suit, dress, whatever. And then there is a different price for stores you go in and stuff is just kind of folded over laying on the shelf and kind of tattered because everybody has kind of rummaged through it. That is different price. Right?

Mikell:  That is.

Jason:  Is it clothing?  Sure. Does it serve its purpose? Yes. Is there a different price in the product?  Absolutely.

Mikell:  I suppose different quality as well.

Jason:  Could be. Absolutely. So make sure what you are portraying, you want to think like a retailer if you want to get top dollar. And that is all I am talking about.  If you do not want to get top dollar, then I do not know. Go back to bed. This is what we are looking at is how to get as much as we possibly can out of this. If you are thinking about selling, any time you are getting ready to within that 90-day window is when you really want to start to concentrate on that outside. And I highly recommend, no matter what time of the year it is, pine needles, bark, mulch, whatever it is you are putting out there.  Within 90 days, hit the front yard and make it look good no matter the time of year. You can get it pretty much anywhere 365 days a year here in the Triad. But there is nothing more that just gives that curb appeal and that pop than freshening up. So if you do it in the spring and you are not selling until the fall or you are not selling until December, it loses some of its pop. The fresher it is, the better. I like within 90 days. Tease up the front yard. Getting it looking good, and I found that more people in the Triad prefer pine bark as opposed to pine needles or pine nuggets they are called.  I think some of the places call them. But those tend to be the preference or the décor of choice, if you will.

If you have some lights outside, obviously make sure they are working. Make sure they are bird nest free, hornet nest free, spiderweb free. All these things.  Realistically, most people spend more time at the front door than they almost do at any other place in the house just waiting on the real estate agent to unlock the door, and they have nothing to do but to sit there and stare at the lights, the door, the whatever.

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  So you want to make sure that front door is freshly painted, clean. Clean goes a long way.  We talk about that all the time. You have got to make sure that the property, no matter if you are going to update it or not, a clean house will outsell any house on the market always. And so, eau to bleach is a good smell.  Okay? It is smells fresh. It smells clean. It smells crisp. Now not overwhelming, but you get the point. So if you have got the black and mildew stuff, we are still talking about curb appeal, if you have got that black mildew or that streaks that get on the roof, this is where you want to reach out to my friend Chris over at Whitman Home Renewal.  He can get rid of all that stuff. Makes the roof look brand spanking new. It makes a huge, huge difference. They can also take care of your driveway, your sidewalks, all that stuff. And remember as we have talked in the past, if you do not know how to pressure wash, do not do it. You will create a mess. Although I know it seems like a simple task, you take the machine, you point it at what you want to clean and it works.  But remember, it is only clean two to three inches at a time.

Mikell:  Right.

Jason: Divide your driveway by three inches.  That is a lot, a lot of time. And what happens is we start out good for about the first ten feet and then it gets boring.

Mikell:  It gets a little sloppy.

Jason:  And then we start moving it out a little further and a little further, and we end up with this tiger stripe driveway or sidewalk, and it looks, well, you might have just left it dirty.  It looks that bad. The proper companies and they are not that expensive. Invest in this, and they make a huge, huge difference. These things make a huge difference in getting that curb appeal, getting those things that you want to really stick out and pop and make look good. So reach out to my friend Chris. You can go to our website.  All his information is there. So windows. We like to remove the screens because it makes the windows look cleaner, but in order to make the windows look clean, they actually have to be clean.

Mikell:  They have to be clean.  Yeah.

Jason: You are going to have to do that ahead of time.  So we want to make sure that the windows are good. If there are broken seals, where they have that kind of cloudy, milky-looking haze to them, you want to get those replaced. They range anywhere from $110-$160 a window to get that glass replaced, and it makes a huge difference. Every single buyer out there will ask for this.  So go ahead and address it up front. And it makes the house look a hundred times better. Imagine going to a store. You want to see what is in there, and you cannot because the windows are fogged. That is not what we want to do. Same thing with a house. Mikell, let’s do this. Let’s take a quick timeout.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  I can get through my little allergy condition I have.  So we will grab some coffee. Get a pen. Make some more notes. We are coming back, and we are going to get inside the house. We will back here in just a minute. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

Mikell:  Good morning.  We are getting back to it.

Jason: Right.

Mikell: So we were talking about the outside and the curb appeal.  Now the question I have for you is it seems like, not really a question, but what you were going over, it kind of sounds overwhelming.

Jason:  Right.

Mikell: And I guess it is just really important to make sure you are constantly investing in your property.

Jason:  That is right.

Mikell:  Even if you are not selling. You do not want to basically rush all this in one to two or even three years.

Jason: That is right.

Mikell: My suggestion if you see the cloudy window, if you see the driveway, go ahead and save up some money for that.  Do like a yearly investment. That is how my parents did it.

Jason:  Yeah, absolutely.  It is the only tale.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time. Right?

Mikell:  One bite at a time.

Jason:  And so every year, yeah, you need to have a maintenance schedule.  If you are really a planner, and unfortunately, a lot of people are not, but just even if you just took one thing once a month and said okay, this is what I am going to concentrate on or this is my goal to get this particular thing done, it really it makes a heck of a lot easier to sell down the road when somebody like us comes through.  The team comes through the house and we look at all these things. It is easier when you have had a maintained home. No question.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason: And we have the whole gamut of people that are so meticulous that their house is five years old and you thought they bought it last week.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  To people that bought their house five years ago and you cannot even recognize what year it was built depending on how it has been maintained. So maintaining, this is why, and some people do not agree with me, but I still believe that not everyone should own a house.  Just like a lot of other things in life, people should not do. Like maybe have children, but that is a whole other show on a different channel. Not here because we talk about real estate.

Mikell:  Real estate.

Jason:  And we keep between the lines except for when I go around in circles sometimes. It is.  Have a plan, and that is what I want to give you, and then obviously it is a lot to go over in a short amount of time on the radio.  Especially we cannot see things, so this is where our team comes out. We do an evaluation. We walk through the house. We give you advice.  We give you tips. We give you ideas to enhance your property. And some folks when we come out are pleasantly surprised and they are prepared and they are happy and they are excited, and some people get very defensive.

Mikell:  I can imagine.

Jason:  And it is kind of all over the place, but the ultimate goal is to get you the most money.  If you do not want the most money, it is fine. Not everybody needs the most money. They just need to sell.  And your equity position will dictate that. Some of you have to get the most money because you borrowed most all the money, and therefore, we have got to get you top dollar because there is no other way to get you out of the house other than mailing the keys back to the bank, which is not necessarily a good business plan. So we want to make sure that we do these things. So as we walk through the house, we find all your lovely art and colors and stuff and your tastes and these things.  We more than likely are going to mellow those out some. Although I have sold a home with every color in the rainbow in every single room and depending on the location and depending on the demand of the property is going to dictate whether or not you can get away with that. Some homes have such a high demand that there is more flexibility in what you can do. But if you have a very unique home that has very little demand, then it is going to be a much different thing. It is going to be a much different strategy than we have.  Homes that are in high desirable areas can get away with more. That is just all there is to it because the demand is so high people will put up with the inconvenience of fixing your problems.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  If your house is not in a high demand area, all that expectation is going to fall on you.  And especially as that price gets higher. The higher the price, sometimes the higher the price, the more eccentric the house, and we really kind of have to change some stuff.  And some of the owners do not like that because it is their taste and they do not care. And that is fine. If you do not care, just understand that there is a different price for I do not care as opposed to the price you are going to get to appeal to the masses.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason: So every one of those is different.  Every single person, we look at every situation, and we give our opinions and our advice based upon what you need to accomplish.  Because there are some folks that just a need a fire sale and they have got to go, and maybe we do not have time to do everything that we need to do. And then there are folks that make a plan that hey, I am not moving for two years, but I want to have a step-by-step.  That is what we can help you create. So demand is going to dictate that. But you want to get as neutral as possible, and my recommendation is just Google most popular colors 2019, 2020, 2021. They are all going to be within that same kind of trendy hue even though it is 2021 years away. The color palette is already kind of established.  It does not usually go from purple, red, green, yellow. It migrates slowly. Like we went from grays to now we are kind of blue-grays.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  We will probably be green-grays, and everything is kind of in the same family and a little bit changes slowly over time.  We do not usually typically jump from one extreme to the other. I highly recommend you go to model homes. Go to builders’ model homes.  Go to open houses. Go the Parade of Homes. You can get an idea of what the taste is, the flair, what is up and coming. Greensboro just had its Parade of Homes.  I think Winston is coming up or maybe it is even this weekend. Go out and check them out. Just go to a builder’s home that is kind of your price range and go in there and look and see what they have done. Look and see what they have, the décor they have put in and the colors. So outside of the driving force of location, these are the things that you can fix. These are the things that you have impact over, so choose your colors wisely.  If you are moving in two years and the house is nine different colors, slowly bring it to a more neutral palette in the next 24 months.

Mikell:  Let me ask you this, Jason. So a person, I am really big on finances. For a person who has to see the numbers, say if I am moving in three years, what is the budget I need to save?  What is the monthly budget I should put aside to do these investments?

Jason:  Sure. And some of it is going to be based upon the size of the home, the quality of the property.  The big things, the big ah-ha’s, the big things that get you and that is kind of where we are headed with some of the mechanical things that we are going to talk about on a house, just look at the replacement cost.  You can get a quote on a roof and most, let’s just say the average in the area is $7000 –

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  -- and it lasts for 25 years.  Somewhere around that. So just divide it out.  Seven grand, 25 years. That will tell you how much you are going to have to set aside for the roof.  Let’s just say it is $30.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason: Whatever that number is. And then save $30 a month.  So I am saving, let’s just say, every single month, I have got $250 –

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  -- in my budget for house maintenance of which $30 of it is for the roof, $50 of it is for the heating and cooling or maybe even $75 because it lasts a shorter amount of time. $15 is for a new water heater.  And these are all things that are going to happen, but what we typically do is we do not save at all.

Mikell:  No.

Jason: Zero. We have no plan, no budget, and we just deal with the emergencies as they come, and we hope that it was hail damage, or a tornado came through so insurance covers it.

Mikell:  Yep.

Jason: Because otherwise we do not have any clue how we are going to get a new roof. Or you end up with no plan, no budget, and no financing, and you need a new roof. And you call a roofer and they are happy to do it, and they will happily finance it --

Mikell: Finance it for you.

Jason:  -- at 15%. So you bought your roof and your neighbor’s. So having a budget and setting aside some money every month, you do not want to spend 100% of your housing allowance on the principal and interest and insurance. Set aside a portion of it for these maintenance things.  Set aside some money to make sure that you have got these ah-ha’s. They are going to happen.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  That is just the way it is.  It is going to happen. Lightening is going to strike in the field next to you, and your well pump is going to get fried. Your septic tank, when you got the new deck put on, your contractor ran over it and you did not know it broke until whatever, a year later. The pipe came undone underneath the house and you did not know it, and you end up with a swimming pool in your crawl space. These things happen.

Mikell:  An unwanted swimming pool.

Jason:  Yes, and so think about the age of the systems that you have.  Think about the age of the products that you have in your house and create a sinking fund in which you could sink some money away to head off any of these surprises. Grandma called it a rainy-day fund. Right?

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  Set it aside for a rainy day. We have got an entire list of things, and we did not even make it in the house yet.

Mikell:  We did not.

Jason: And so next week, we are going room by room.  We are going to stick with this to give you a plan. So come back.  It is Jason Bramblett Real Estate. You can go to Jason Bramblett dot com.  Give us a call at the office, 553-0796, and we will look forward to seeing you here next week.

Mikell:  Have a good weekend.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

Click here for link to podcast 

Jason:  Good morning, Triad.  I hope everybody is doing great.  What a beautiful, crisp spring day out here.  Spring morning. That is just what you need to get you up and going in the morning is a little crisp air, and we have it served up for you today.  Power-packed show coming at you. This is Jason Bramblett live in the studio, and of course, my man Mikell Montgomery running and pushing all the buttons like he does every week.

Mikell:  Yes, sir.  Good morning.

Jason:  Good morning to you, sir.  And then you, all 1900, well maybe no, let’s go back. How about, I think the numbers the last time I made up was just like, let’s go with like 190,000.  Yeah, I like that number, Mikell.

Mikell:  I like that.

Jason: All 190,000 of you out there listening today.  It is an interesting thing radio. You never know who is listening, but I can tell you this.  When I get back to the office, my email is full. Our voicemail is full. We have got great listeners, great questions you guys send to us every single week.  And if you have a question, go to Jason Bramblett dot com, and you could shoot us an email. Just go up in the right corner. Click on the little email icon, shoot over a question, and if it is something that we feel will benefit the community of the Triad, we will share your question on the air.  We will hide your name to protect the guilty, so you do not have to worry about us divulging too much information about you out there. But we do have some great listeners, great questions, so please send those over to us anytime. Jason Bramblett dot com or you can call the office 553-0796. And today, we are just looking at all kinds of different things, but the real estate game is how to get into it. So many times we get questions, Jason, hey, I want to look at getting into real estate. Well, that is a big category, and so how are we looking to get into it. Is it the buy and hold?  The flips? Multi-family? How about just buying your first house? All that stuff plays into the real estate game and what you may be attempting to do out there. So we are going to dig into all those things today. Burn through as many of them as we possibly can, and of course, you can always fire a question over to the office. Should I not answer it on the air here. And again, that is Jason Bramblett dot com. Shoot it on over. Real estate is the greatest wealth-creating vehicle on the planet. How about that? More wealth is created through investing in real estate than any other venture out there.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason: And it is one of the top things.  If you look at the wealthiest people in the world and the United States and North Carolina, and then you dissect it down by city, you will find that they all hold considerable amounts of real estate.  And this is not just the house that they live in. Remember, Warren Buffet did not become a millionaire because he got a good deal on his house. Okay? Just understand. So when you are out there negotiating this weekend and you are squabbling over $500 and the seller will not come down or the buyer will not go up, just buy the stupid house.  It is $500. It is not going to change your life. I promise you. Heck, if it is $2,500 it is not going to change your life, and a lot of you get caught up on these little nuances, and it is more of a game. Then what happens is we hear some frustrations in the market place. I travel all over the place talking to different real estate agents, and one of the things they will, the frustration is they have got a buyer hung up on $2500, and they did not buy the house.  But they won. Yeah, you showed them by not getting the house. Real good. Okay. The only thing you got was nothing, and you might have a very unhappy spouse depending on who really wanted the house.

Mikell:  Yuu do not want that.

Jason:  You do not want that.  I will promise you. You will triple down on that number next time.  I promise you.

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason: The next house will not get away no matter what. Do the right thing.  Just buy her the house, man. Come on, $2500 over 30 years is nothing. Just buy the stupid house. It is going to be okay. Again, you are not going to get wealthy off of it anyway.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  $2500 is not going to change your life.  Get out there, buy the house, make her happy. But let’s dig in, Mikell.  What do we got lined up? What is our first little topic here we are going to jump into?

Mikell:  We want to start with buying a house and what that plan actually looks like.

Jason:  So just like the first one.  Like walk us through that. Is that what we are going to do?

Mikell:  Yes. Yes.

Jason:  All right.  Let’s do this.  So, first time house, where or where do I start?  Especially if you are looking at it from long-term investment, and that is what we want to talk about is I want to get into the real estate game.  Well, the first way to get into it is to buy your first property. Now, if you want to be a real estate investor long-term the way you need to look at this is you need to look at this I want to buy this property for future cashflow.  Not for cashflow today, but for future cashflow.

Mikell:  So start some passive income there.

Jason:  Yeah, to start some passive income, but I am not worried about it, the now.  I am worried about it 10, 15 years down the road.

Mikell:  Of course.

Jason:  So the first thing we are going to look at is buy your first home because everybody needs a place to live. Right?  And then this is what you want to convert into your first rental, whether that be a condominium, a townhouse, or a single-family property.  And you could look at your duplexes and quadplexes. We just do not have a lot of those in the Triad, but you could look at those as well. Condo, they are great first rentals. I suggest you look at all different types and all different things. But here is the key. You have got to find one that does not have a ridiculous HOA fee.  Because the HOA fee is what kills your cashflow. So you want to make sure that you buy one that has the lowest HOA you can find. A low HOA tells me it is properly managed. A high HOA tells me that whoever is managing it does not have a clue, and or you could have this issue where you have got a lot of vacancies in the complex, if you will.  So say there are 200 units. If a large proportion of those are in bankruptcy, foreclosure, short sale, or vacant, the question is maybe nobody is paying the HOA.

Mikell:  Sure.

Jason:  When nobody pays, guess what? All the people that are paying get to share, to carry the weight of the people that are not. Right?

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  That is just how it works. That is what you signed up for. My break number is $180 a month. So if it is $180 a month or more that tells me it is not being managed properly.  Now, that is not for all properties, so if you are paying more than that and you are the HOA president, do not send me an email screaming at me. This is a generic statement. But it is a guide in which I look at $180 or more a month typically tells me that it is not being managed properly or it was not being managed properly.  I know you, Mr. New HOA President, are going to fix it. I am on your side. Get those HOA dues down and what will happen is it will also increase the value of the units. The interesting thing about condos and townhouses, the higher the HOA you actually will see a drop in the valuation. That kind of shows you, this proves a theory that I have talked about for years and years on the radio here.  You do not see it as much in single family because it is disguised and it is hidden, but it is real obvious on townhomes and condos where you have a set number of units. So say we have 200 units, and what I see is if that HOA creeps up, the values push down. And the reason why is people buy what they can afford per month.

Mikell:  Exactly.

Jason:  The end price really does not matter.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  Whether it is $18 million, $180,000 or $200,000, people buy based on what they can afford per month.  So if you have $1000 a month cap, and that is your audience, if you will, and a proportion of that, $200 a month is going toward the HOA, that is $200 less that can go towards principle and interest.  Right? And when we look at the compounding effect of what that $200 looks like in borrowed money, it is a big number. It also squeezes the value of the properties down. So if you want to time it really well, you look for one that is climbing out of that, and you can pick up a property there. But condos, townhouses are excellent ways to get started.  The other nice thing is when your tenant moves out, well, you do not have to worry about cutting the grass. Somebody is doing it for you. Right? That is why you have the HOA.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason: And so you have some of that maintenance that is being taken care for you.  Whereas, if you own a single-family home, there is a lawn, there is grass, there are all these things to deal with, and the tenant moves out.  If the tenant was taking care of them, then you either are as the owner or the property management company. Somebody has got to step in and do that.  Otherwise, you are going to end up with a forest around that. So what I am looking for condos and townhomes and that $125 a month HOA tend to be really nice properties, or well-managed, I should say. And that is what we are looking at. Single-family homes, only buy three-bedroom, two-bath or four-bedroom, two-bath. That is it.  And you want them to be in the best schools. The best schools drive the market in rentals. Okay?

Mikell: Absolutely.

Jason:  So people do not say hey, where is the absolute worst school system.  I want to make sure that I invest in my kids’ future by putting them in the worst schools possible, and I want to live there.  It does not happen that way, guys.

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason: Everybody wants to be in the best school. And here is the other thing.  I have found in Greensboro and Winston-Salem both there are families that will rent and not buy because maybe in that best school district the price point has exceeded their budget, and or they just simply cannot afford to purchase. But they can afford to rent a smaller home in that area, and they will choose to do that.  They will choose not to be owners to actually get their kids in a better school system. They will actually sacrifice that in order to do it. That is what you are looking for. Those are the best tenants ever. Especially if they have two or three kids and you catch them on the way through middle high school and you end up with ten years of an outstanding tenant in a property.  You are looking for that longevity. Tenants, flipping a property every year is not the best way to make money. You want tenants that are going to stay. I have sold a lot of homes over the years and some of the rental properties that I have sold for some of our investors, and I am just amazed. I remember selling one for a gentleman. The tenants had been in there for 33 years.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  They paid for that house.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  33 years. They paid for that house.  He was a generous man, and when they moved because he was getting up in age, he actually helped pay for all their relocation, moved them out of the property, helped them get into another property. And that is the type of landlord you want to be when you have got somebody that is committed to you for 33 years. I would argue to say that if you have got somebody how would commit to you for ten years, you probably ought to treat them that way as well.  So positive cashflow is important. Do not get me wrong, but it is not what I am looking for right off the bat. I am not trying to retire based upon the first house that I buy simply because, well, let’s face it. You are not going to be able to retire off one property’s income anyway.

Mikell:  True.

Jason:  Unless it is an amazing property. So what I am looking at is I am buying cashflow for the future.  Now I want to make sure that I have a little bit of money coming in to cover incidentals. Right? To cover things that come up.  Let’s face it. Homes have moving parts. Right? They have got the HVAC system, water system, dishwasher, appliances, all these things have a life expectancy, and they die eventually, and you have got to replace them. And so, I need to have a little bit of cashflow there to put into a nice little fund that I call a sinking fund that allows you to reach into your pocket and pay for those things as they come up and they are not a huge big surprise. That is the key to this particular aspect of buying.  Buy a property in which you can turn it in or convert it to a rental down the road and take that money that you are making and set it aside. Sinking fund is basically like insurance. Right? You do not really want to have it, but it is nice to have when you need it. So if you are making $100 a month or $1200 a year on a property, take that $1200 set it aside. Forget that it is there. Hide it, get it away from you. Do not spend it. Do not go buy stuff, and you keep it, and that way when the hot water heater goes out and it is $1350, you are covered.  Right? And after 3, 4, 5 years of dumping that 12 or $1300 a year into a fund, you have got 4, 5, 6, $7,000. Leave it alone. Because the next thing that is going to come along eventually is going to be the roof.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason: And it is going to be five to six grand, and guess what? Now you have the money. And here is the cool thing.  Guess who just paid for your new roof? Your tenants.

Mikell:  Your tenants.

Jason: How awesome is that?  And if you get a good roof, you will not have to deal with it for another 30 years. So that is what we want to do.  So do not touch that money. Put it to the side. The other thing that you really want to consider is hire a professional management company.

Mikell:  I am sorry, Jason. Let me ask you a question. So from the money that you make from the tenants, what percentage would you say should you invest back into the property or save for the property?

Jason:  I am going to save 100% of it.

Mikell:  Really?

Jason:  100% of that money I am going to put in the sinking fund.  And the reason why is I do not need the income now. I have a job.  

Mikell: Okay.

Jason: Everything I am looking at, I am looking at 10-15 years down the road.

Mikell:  All right.

Jason:  So my goal is I am going to buy this property. The tenant is going to pay for it.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason: And if something goes wrong, I am going to use the cashflow that is there, maybe just a $100 a month or whatever it is.  I am going to use that money to improve the property that the tenants gave me over time.

Mikell:  Gotcha.

Jason:  All right?

Mikell:  Gotcha.

Jason: Now the best way to secure your asset to make sure that it is being taken care of is to hire a professional management company.  Here is why. Using a third-party mediator has proven over 100 years now that they always do a better job than you do. And the reason why is they are not personally vested in the deal. This is why a real estate broker can always get a better price for you on your house.  Do not shoot me. It is the national statistic. Poll the data. Get it from, go to Google. Google knows everything. Right? You will find that the stats are 16%. Well, if most agents are charging between 6-8% to sell your property, and they are getting you 16% more, you are money ahead. Here is why?  You have an emotional tie to this property, and you do stupid when you have an emotional tie. When I am negotiating your house, I do not give a rip. It does not mean anything to me. It is a box with windows. Right?

Mikell:  Yikes.

Jason:  And so, it does not, I have no memories there.

Mikell:  True.

Jason:  I have nothing vested in it other than my time.  I have not lived there, dwelled there. I do not know all the nooks and crannies.  I do not know that the grandkids were playing in the backyard and have that emotional thing.  The first baby was brought home to the house and all these things that factor into this emotional, illogical decisions that we make.  Here is the thing. I am in the real estate business. I sell real estate. I am the worst person to sell my own properties as well that I have lived in.

Mikell:  Wow. Okay.

Jason:  Because I have that emotional tie. Right?

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason: Now, I have trained myself and taught myself over 22 years to get unemotional about that in my own personal thing.  But if Mikell is selling his house, I will assure you, it has no emotional dwelling in me at all. Zero. It is nothing more than sticks, bricks and shingles. But what that does is give me the power to hold firm when we need to because I do not have that emotional tie, and I can make clear, good decisions.  Good business decisions for Mikell because Mikell cannot because his head is swimming in all the emotion of this house that he bought.

Mikell:  Exactly.

Jason:  And I have no emotion to it whatsoever.  And this is why third parties can not only sell for more, but also they can manage your property better as well. We make poor decisions based upon emotion always.  100% of the time.

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  100% of the time. So having a professional management company is going to be key. So we have got a lot more stuff coming your way.  Stay tuned. We are going to dig into several more aspects of investing in real estate including multi-family and then the all amazing thing of flipping those houses.  So do not go anywhere.

And welcome back. This is the Jason Bramblett Real Estate show. Live in the studio.  We are diving into all things real estate. Mikell, what else we got on the list today?

Mikell:  So I did have this question for you.  Some people give me advice on real estate.  So when buying a rental property, I do take the equity from one rental property and use it as a down payment for my next rental property.  Is that correct?

Jason:  Well, most people look at it as this is the trade-up theory.  So a lot of folks will buy their first home.

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  And they are there, and here is normally what we do. We get married. Everybody is happy. Right? Carry the spouse, she carries you across the threshold. Right? You get in the house, and then these little critters show up called kids. And then all of a sudden, you need more space.  Normally, what we do in America is instead of keeping the house we bought, condo, townhouse, or single-family home as our first rental, we sell that, and we take the equity from it to buy the bigger, better house.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: And then we do it again and again and again, and then the downside is we end up with a 3-$400,000 house a lot of times, which is a horrible rental should you ever try to rent it.  Right? So if you ever got into a situation where you needed to rent a $400,000 house, the problem is a lot of times they will not even, you cannot rent it for enough to even pay the mortgage.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  And so somebody is going to make up the difference. The other thing, too, is you are not diversified. You have all your eggs in one basket.  So if you could train yourself to keep your first home you buy and never sell it and do not use what they call a HELOC to buy your next house.  So you would actually save your down payment for your second home and use and keep the first house as your first rental. Now, really disciplined home investors will buy the same type of property. So they will go from a three-bedroom, two-bath home that they purchased as their first house, and then they will buy another one, a three-bedroom, two-bath in the same school district, and they will keep building that up.  And then they will end up with an inventory of 5, 6, 7, 10, 15, whatever it may be over their lifetime of paid for real estate in which they have got, let’s face it, if the average rent in our area is $1500 a month, and you have got ten of them –

Mikell: Wow.

Jason:  -- and you did that over 20 years, if you have no debt and you can’t live on fifteen grand a month, you have got some spending issues.  Right?

Mikell:  You really do.

Jason:  Yeah, so you can build a really amazing portfolio. Now, I would argue and say that ten is probably not enough to be diversified.  You would want more, but it is a real good start.

Mikell: What I was going to say when you were speaking about it earlier, especially with the houses in the great school districts, it seems like those are goldmines to have.

Jason:  They can be for sure.  It is something, sometimes it is hard to duplicate.  If you got that property, let’s face it, if things are going right, then real estate is going up in value.  Right? So if you bought it for $150,000, in ten years it should be $200,000. Right?

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason: If we are just playing the real estate game. Here is the thing.  If you kept that, and your basis is $150,000 and you get it to zero, you get it down to where it is paid for, and now you have got great tenants in there paying you $1500 a month, man, I want to buy every house in the subdivision that way. Right?

Mikell:  Exactly.

Jason:  And just keep going.  Because if it is close enough to the school, now school districts do change, and you need to think about that.  The only way I know for sure that you are going to remain in the same school district, I guess, is buy the house next door to the school because they probably will not move that. But those are things that do change, and you need to think about that as you are investing in real estate, if that is your goal. But here is what I want to say.  Do not cash out all the time and keep growing the house. That is kind of the tradition in America, and I am not saying it is wrong. But if you want to be a real estate investor, use the first property you buy as your investment. So use your condo, townhouse and those things. Right? And speaking of those, if you have a condo, we are in the market of buying those. Actually, we are in the market of buying anything. So if you have got any kind of real estate, we want to take a look at it.  You may see our billboards rolling around town. Offer on your house in 72 hours. That is because we are buying stuff. We want to take a look at it. So if you are struggling to sell your home, and or you just do now want to deal with putting it on the market, give us a call. 553-0796 or go to our website, Jason Bramblett dot com. I would like to take a look at your property to see if it something that we could potentially add to our inventory as well. So you go to Jason Bramblett dot com for all your questions. We will be back here next week live in the studio. Everybody have an awesome, awesome weekend, and do not forget.  You are buying future cashflow, not now cashflow when you are buying real estate. So think about that. Put it in your plan. Next week. Flip or flop, and we will be back. See you then.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason:  And good morning, Triad.  I hope everybody is having a great day. It is a little brisk, a little chilly. Slid in some cool weather for us, but all in all, the sun is shining, and the rain is finally gone, which is awesome. So I hope everybody had got great plans and some fun stuff planned for the weekend.  At the top of that list should be, as always, buying a house and or selling one. Right?

Mikell:  Of course.

Jason: Absolutely.  Actually, joining me in the studio today Mr. Mikell Montgomery on the board doing what he does best.  Keeping me out of trouble.

Mikell:  Yes, sir.  Good morning, Jason.

Jason:  That is right.  That is right. So we are going to dig into some stuff, but first of all, Happy Easter to everybody.  If you are in the area, we did serve up some pretty good weather for you. I think there are a couple of Easter egg hunts out there.  Other than needing a jacket, you should have fun. Plenty of loot. I saw several churches out there already spreading out the joy.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason:  They are getting ready for their Easter egg hunt.  Actually, I think Calvary Church out there on Pleasant Ridge Road, they have got about 25,000 Easter eggs they are doling out today.

Mikell:  Sheesh.

Jason:  I do not know what you guys have been doing all week, but the Easter Bunny has been very busy.  That is for sure. So Spring market is here. It is looking great, and if you have thought about selling your home, we need to talk. It is that time. Interesting this particular time of year, it is kind of like the kickoff to the home selling season, if you will. But this year is a little different.  The inventory is a little lighter than most. We did such a great job selling all these wonderful houses in the past I guess nobody wants to move right now, Mikell. They are all just kind of hunkered down and enjoying life. So we have got to get some folks out there to raise their hand and say hey, I want to take advantage of this.  It is time for me to maybe downsize, and or, well, if somebody is downsizing, somebody had got to upgrade. Right?

Mikell:  There you go.  

Jason:  It takes the pendulum swinging both ways. If you are considering buying a home actually you do not go anywhere.  We have pretty much dedicated this whole show to buying a house. Now a lot of times when I say that people that have bought homes are like I got this.  You might want to stay tuned because several things have changed. We did have this thing called, I do not know, a housing crash, and when that happened, a lot of the banks changed some of the procedures. The rules definitely were changed, and how you went about buying your last home is going to be a lot different than it is today for sure. You want to stay tuned. Grab a pen. Grab a paper.  Obviously, if you are driving, do not do any of that stuff. We are going to have this posted up on the web for you. You can go back, hit the podcast anytime. Go to the website Jason Bramblett dot com or you can always give us a call at the office, 553-0796. So we have got that coming up. If you are buying, do not go anywhere. Even if you have bought many, many homes, you want to stay tuned.  Plus a few of your email questions that came in this week. We are going to hit those and kind of dive into that.

So this week, the sponsor of the show is our awesome, awesome group of folks out there in Summerfield, North Carolina. Tabitha’s Furniture Nook. New little place.  It is a fun little place. They have got gently used and new furniture. So if you are in the market to buy some furniture for your new home or the home you are in, go check them out.  Cindy and her team they have got a great group of folks there, and 100% of the proceeds go to support the Tabitha’s House, which is a ministry helping women getting back on their feet that have basically suffered the experience addiction, abuse, and homelessness.  So it is a wonderful, wonderful thing. And if you have furniture that is gently used, not your junk, not your sofa out on your porch, give them a call. You can get in touch with them. But the address there is 4547 B Highway 220 in Summerfield. You cannot miss it. It is right next to the second only intersection in Summerfield. So it is easy to find. No problem. It is very simple to find. But go check them out. Tell them that Jason and the crew sent you up there, and they can really help you out. Get some stuff either offloaded or, if get rid of stuff, you need more.  Right?

Mikell:  That is awesome. That is awesome.  Getting back into it, so you know that I am interested in buying a house.

Jason:  Yep.

Mikell:  So tell me where to start.

Jason:  It is a process in which takes a plan.

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  And like all things in life, if you do no have a plan, well guess what?  You still have a plan. It is like zero. It is still a number. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  Which most people do not want to get to.  So if you do not have a housing purchasing plan or selling plan, no plan at all is still a plan. It is just one that you do not know what the result or the outcome is going to be.  So we would like to set folks up to succeed. So if you are in the market to buy, then you want to make sure you listen to up, especially, as I said, if you purchased in the past because things have changed.  Everything is kind of different than it was. So five years ago, a lot of different things started clicking with the real estate market and the lenders out there and the mortgage and the banks and those guys said okay, we have got to redo things differently this time.  Some of that was directed by our government. They had no choice. Right?

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason: You pass laws and say this is the way we are going to do it. But qualification has become a bigger deal than it has in the past. So as you can imagine, the days of fogging a mirror and getting a home loan are gone.  You just existing, breathing, and saying hey I have got a job, that is not going to be good enough anymore. You have got to do some more proof, if you will. The banks want to dig in a little bit further, and so you really have to make sure you have your ducks in a row especially if you are self-employed. Self-employed people, by nature, are creative. They are creative in all things, their businesses and their taxes. So we need to make sure that if you are self-employed you really want to be making sure you, one, filed your taxes, and two, you have got great, you have an accounting system.  You create a P&L, a profit and loss. Hopefully it is just a profit. I do not like P&Ls. I like P&P. Profit and Profit.

Mikell:  I like that.

Jason:  That is what we want.

Mikell:  That sounds good.

Jason:  Loss is no fun.  Loss is not something we want in business for sure. So they are digging deeper.  The banks, the mortgage lenders, and they are asking more questions. So here is what you want to do. Things that you may have forgotten, Mikell, when you put on your application, and this is where diligence comes in and you want to make sure you have got a good coach or somebody working with you.  An agent that is there to guide you through that, and also a good loan officer. Things that people just pay all the time, they kind of forget like student loans.

Mikell: Oh wow.

Jason:  Alimony.  Received and paid out both.  If you are getting money, that is probably a good thing. You should hopefully if you went through that scenario. But if you are paying out child support, that is a debt. That is something that they look at. That is something they are going to reduce your housing allowance by.

Mikell:  I can see a lot of people withholding that information.

Jason:  Some people –

Mikell: Not on purpose though.

Jason:  Absolutely. They just kind of forget about it. And so there are things out there like that new car that you just bought. Ooops, forgot about that.

Mikell: Yeah.

Jason:  Oh, is that already on the credit report?  I just got it three days ago. But those are the types of things. So you need to have all that out in front of the bank.  Why? It is going to come up, folks. There are no secrets. There is no hiding it. There is no way to get around it. It is going to be there just like your job.  They are going to verify it. They are going to verify right before closing, so when you get the loan, you want to make sure that you still have the same job two or three days before closing because if you decided to switch careers in the middle of getting a mortgage, you might be staying where you are at.  Unless you moved into the same field, different pay, something like that. But if you totally shift directions in your career, then they are going to want these lovely two years of verification that you are actually going to keep your job. Right? And so two years seems to be the benchmark that they are looking at.

So just slow down a little bit.  Think about what you need to get brought together.  A good lender can help you with that. We have multiple lenders that we work with, so if you need a good recommendation, you go to Jason Bramblett dot com or give us a call at 553-0796.   The thing that the, you just want to be clear in this picture. You want to be clear in what you are giving the bank. And remember, the bank is in the business to loan money. So when you walk in the door, the answer is yes. We want to do the loan.

Mikell: Awesome.

Jason: And so, the only thing that gets you to no is some of this missing data, some of this missing information and or well, some bad history. So you want to make sure that you are current on your payments.  I had a young lady call the office one year, and she was telling me all about this house. She wants to see it. It is great. I love it. I want to move in it. It is my house, my dream house, everything and all this.  I said, well, you qualify for a first-time homebuyer’s loan, an FHA loan has a little down payment. You do not have to have a lot of down payment. Everything sounded great. And I said well, one of the conditions is you have to be in your job for two years. She said I am good.  I said great. I said okay, the next thing is you have to be current on all your payments for the last twelve months, and her next response was all of them?

Mikell:  Oooooo.

Jason:  And yeah, just optionally the ones you want to pay are not, it does not work out that way, guys. So yes, you have to be current on all of them. I get this question a lot.  Why start with the loan? I want to start with the house. The house is the fun part. But remember this. The key to being successful and getting what you want is proper preparation. So you want to make sure you start out with the right reasons to buy, and you also want to start out with the right product.  And there are lots of loan products out there. Most people just assume the 30-year mortgage. But maybe a 15-year is really in your best interest, and it fits your budget, which is a phenomenal loan to get.

Mikell:  So are you saying basically see what your allowance is before house shopping?

Jason: Absolutely.

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  The thing of it is the money an important piece.  You need to know how much upfront and you need to know how much per month.

Mikell:  Got ya.

Jason:  Just because you are paying $1500 a month in rent or $500 a month in rent does not equal out always the same to that is what I can afford in a mortgage.  Other things that mortgages have and when you own a home have that you do not have as a renter are these things called taxes. And these things called insurance. So insurance, taxes, homeowner’s association dues, all these things factor into your reoccurring payments and reduce the amount that you can borrow. So with rent, it is rent. One payment, one deal. That is it.  And maybe you have some renter’s insurance. Hopefully you have some renter’s insurance. But with a mortgage, you have other factors in there. Not only do you have the principle and interest of the loan, if you are buying in a subdivision, you may have that HOA, and of course, you are going to pay the government because you love those sidewalks that we get to walk on. Right?  And they are not free. They do not fall down from the sky. They actually, somebody had to put them there and somebody had to pay for them. But we, as humans, just do not make good decisions when we start out with excitement. The excitement part is, go find the house. That is fun. That is exciting. That is what we all want to do.

Mikell: Yeah.

Jason:  The problem is we get too excited and we do not make good decisions. This is where the hold my beer videos started on YouTube.  People got excited, and they are like hey man, hold my beer. Watch this. Right? And you have seen those videos. Usually something very bad is going to happen after that (indiscernible)

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason: We do not want you to have that kind of experience when you are getting ready to purchase your home.  So making good, solid financial decisions that are not emotionally charged, puts you in the right place. And remember, the mortgage is the most expensive piece or part of buying a house.  The house is the little number. You will not see that in full until you get to the closing and you look at the disclosure, and it has in there principal and interest and a total. The total is a little different than what you are paying for the house.  Depending on your interest rate, it could be significantly different. When I started selling real estate, interest rates were probably 9%, and so, at 9% it is almost three times the amount you paid for the house when you look at the interest over 30 years.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason:  So you did not think you were buying a $300,000 house, but when you got to the closing table and looked at the interest over 30 years, holy cow, it adds up quick.  So rates being a little better than they are today. It is not quite that shocking. We do not get people about fainting or passing out as we used to, but it is something you need to pay attention to. Looking at the money is the key to making a good financial decision when you are buying a house.  We are going to make a good financial decision right now. We are going to take a break. Go pay some bills. Got to go pay the Easter Bunny for all the eggs he is slinging around the Triad, but we will be back here in just a minute. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

And you are back live listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  I hope everybody is having a great weekend. So we have been talking about that whole home-buying process and why it is important to get that loan, get that pre-approval and start with the best foot forward.

Mikell: And you were talking about it and I think that now that I think about it, it is actually important because beside the taxes and the mortgage, you also want to have money for maintenance as well.

Jason:  Absolutely.

Mikell:  I was just thinking about that during the break. That is an important part.

Jason:  Absolutely.  Even though your home could be made of brick, it does crack and there are things that do happen and there are maintenance things.  There are moving parts on your house like your heating and cooling. In July, you will really want to have that air conditioner working.

Mikell: Yes.

Jason:  I can assure you.

Mikell: Yes.

Jason:  Just like heat is important. It is all about setting yourself up for success.  One of the things that our team is doing to win this market and winning some of our buyers are getting homes that are very competitive is because we are doing the due diligence up front to make sure that they are ready to go, to make sure that they are well, we could easily prove to the seller that our buyer can actually do what they say they can do.  They can actually make this offer and close on your home assuming you have presented your home properly and it is exactly as you represent. But so many times we see people go out there and they want to just do the house thing first. And this is not really for first-time homebuyers. This particular issue has probably more to do with ego than anything else.  We have folks that will call our office and are like well, I bought three houses, Jason. Well, that is great, but you did not buy them this week. And things change and qualifications change, and debt-to-income ratios change and the way that banks look at your credit profile has changed. So lots of different things. Here is the big one. You go out and find the house.  Right? It is the one, and you are not there. You are not ready. The only thing you know is you like it and you want to make an offer. But it showed five times today, and the other four people are ready to go. Letter in hand, approved, money in the bank, ready to take action, and you are not. Now, if you are the seller of a house, who are you going to look at? You are going to look at the guy that says I can actually buy your house or are you going to look at the guy who can actually prove?

Mikell: It is that expression money talks.

Jason: Money talks, and the fact is that it is backed up by a third party. This is what we call paper ready.  You are ready to go. Those are the ones. Those are the buyers that are winning it over. And the seller does not want to wonder about if.  If is not the word you want to hear when you are selling your home. Right? If I can do this. No, you show me you can do this, and then we will agree to the price and terms, and then as a seller I will start packing my stuff.  Right? But if buyers are getting beat out left and right in this market because it is a fast-paced market. In my opinion, if you do not have an approval, you really do not even have an offer.

Mikell: Right.  Right.

Jason:  You might as well just call them and say here is what I think I can do because that is basically what you have done.  The only thing you have done is you have put it in writing. No seller is out there looking for the if kind of maybe, kind of seem, sort of, might be able to do this buyer.  No. I am not packing a box for that person. I want to know when you come and bring and offer that you are backed up by the bank. You have it in writing, and they said hey, as long as your house appraises for X, we are going to move forward with the loan. That is what the seller wants.  They just want to be able to back up what you said you are going to do. That is it. Pretty simple. That is what they are looking for in today’s world, if you will.

Mikell: Let me ask you something. Is there anything else I can help get my offer to the top of the pile for the seller?

Jason: Yeah because there are, in this day in certain price ranges, there is a pile.  So there are competing offers. Yeah, one, obviously like we said, be ready to go. But there are several other things that we utilize are tools to help our clients get their offer accepted is tell them about yourself.  Tell them a little story about who you are. Most sellers out there have built amazing memories in their house. They have either got the kids growing and they have got all the little heights marked off on the door. And Johnny was whatever, four feet tall when he was this age.  Or Grandma does if it is Grandma’s house. And the grandkids and they built this legacy kind of thing in this house, and they want that to continue. They want it to go on to the next folks. We were just in a multiple offer situation, and the couple that we were working with has two small kids.  They wrote a great little letter about what they do and where they are from. Two small kids and the listing agent called me and said well, it worked. Nailed it. Not even considering anybody else.

Mikell: Wow.

Jason: It was not even really about the money. It was about they wanted to carry on all the joy, love, all the fun times that they had in that house for 30 years.   They had owned it. They just wanted to share that with somebody else.

Mikell:  So if I have kids I should use them?

Jason:  Use them.  Absolutely.  Absolutely. Not only do you use them to get the house, you use them to help clean the house.

Mikell: Awesome. Awesome.  

Jason:  Absolutely.  You have got to earn, you have got to put a little elbow grease into that thing every now and then. But the thing about it is people want to do business with people.  And they like to know a little bit about you. Now there are sometimes when that does not work. There are some sellers that are very transactional, and they are just like look, I do not care who you are. I want the money.  Okay, so it is not going to work in those situations. It is pretty few.

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  This is a very emotional decision on the seller and the buyer’s part, and most all of them are going to actually want to know, it is almost one of the first questions we get from every single seller after they get some feedback on the house. Well, what do you know about them?  Who are they? Well, you are not going to be living there, so what do you care? But they do care. They do care who it is. They do care who is going to buy their house. Why? I have no idea. It is a psychological thing. It is something that is just in us, and usually it goes back to the great memories.  The great memories that we have had, we want to share those. We hope that whoever buys our home actually shares in that same benefit that we had. The other thing you can do to get ready or get your offer may be pushed to the top is consider letting the seller stay after closing. This is not a popular thing in North Carolina, but it is in most every other state in the United States.  Buy the house and let the seller stay for two weeks and give them that time to move out.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  It gives them great confidence in that hey, I do not even have to, if I can pack my house in two weeks, just what do I not have to do?  I do not even have to do anything at all until I have that check in my hand. And when I have that check in my hand here is one thing that I do know. My house is sold. I do not own it anymore because I have the money. Right?  And so there is great peace to a seller especially if they can get out of the house in two weeks, and a lot of can. Even starting from zero. They do not even have to do anything until they want to. Because the biggest frustration in real estate is when you have got a deal put together and all of a sudden you get a week out from closing. The seller has already made an offer on another house.  They have already packed up their entire home. Everything is moving forward, and then all of a sudden, we have got a hiccup.

Mikell:  Oh.

Jason:  And then the whole deal blows up unfortunately.

Mikell:  Yikes.

Jason:  Because something changed.  Sometimes something changes and it was not the buyer’s choice like hey, I went into work today and they said guess what, nobody works anymore.  We closed the department. We closed the company, and or we sold it.

Mikell: That would definitely be your worst nightmare.  

Jason: Yeah, especially when you think you are staying there for the rest of your career and you just put an offer on a house and everything is rainbows and unicorns and all of a sudden, somebody ate all the fruit out of your Lucky Charms. Right?

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  And it is not fun anymore.  Lots of moving parts to buying a house.  So in the Triad, if you are thinking about moving, you need to reach out to us.  Jason Bramblett Real Estate. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com. Give us a call at the office at 553-0796.  That is 553-0796. And head on up there to Tabitha’s Nook. Get some furniture or drop some off. Make sure it is in good quality, and we will see you back here next week.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Podcast 

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Jason:  Good morning, Triad.  This is Jason Bramblett.  You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate show, live right here WPTI 94.5.  And joining me in the studio, Mr. Mikell Montgomery running the board and pushing all the buttons, making stuff happen.

Mikell:  Good morning, Jason.

Jason: Good morning, good morning. Hope everybody is doing well.  Not a terrible weekend. A little rain last night, but hey, whatever.

Mikell:  We had some sunshine a little bit last week.

Jason:  Thursday was –

Mikell:  Awesome.

Jason:  It was great. I could redo that.  If we got stuck in Groundhog Day that would be the one.

Mikell:  That would be awesome.

Jason:  That was not too bad.  So I hope everybody got their yardwork done because that was your opportunity. But we have got some good stuff coming up.  We are going to talk about inventory today and some of the struggles that we are facing with that whether you are selling. So we have low inventory, so if you are a seller, you are scratching your head going hey man, why isn’t my house selling? Well, we are going to let you know.  Don’t you worry. And then, of course, if you are buying, you are like hey man, where are all the houses. And so we are going to talk about where they may be hiding and what we may have to do to go find those. So you want to stay tuned. And of course, if you are in the Winston-Salem/Greensboro/Jamestown/Oakridge /Summerfield/Advance/Clemmons, those are our top five, six markets we are looking for inventory in ourselves. If you are considering selling your home, let us know.  We have so many people relocating from out of state that we are doing all we can to service our local folks, but we have a load of people that are retiring, coming to the great area of the Triad. Actually, I am leaving Monday, flying up to Jersey, New York, and headed to Michigan to go see all of our relocation partners, talk to them about how we can serve them and entice them and convince them and sell them on come on down to North Carolina.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  It would be nice if we could get the rain, I used to be able to say hey, it never rains here. It is just like always awesome. Carolina blue skies. Carolina basketball. March Madness.  Great weather. What more do you want? Now it just keeps on raining. So I will have to omit some things from my schpeel that I normally give. But we are going to bring some in. We need some homes in that $2-700,000 range. $200-700,000. We are looking for you.  So we have buyers ready to go there. They are qualified. They are looking for house just like yours. The problem is they do not know about it because you have not called us yet, so you just have to do that. It is 553-0796 or go to Jason Bramblett dot com. Shoot us an email. One of the team members will reach right out to you, push you right to the top of the list.  I can assure you if you say hey, I have got a $300,000 house and I live in Clemmons, you will move to the front of the line. Okay? Guaranteed. We will get to all of you, but there are certain areas and certain pockets within the Triad that we do have a high activity on the website. We need to be able to serve those folks coming in, and we have got to do all that before, well potentially, the prediction of the next crash.  Can you believe it, Mikell? It is already here.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason:  Nostradamus has come back. He says the real estate market will implode in 2021.  I do not know. We will see. Time will tell. What is that? We got 2, 3 years to watch? But supposedly, as all good and bad predictions, I guess at this point you have got a 50/50 on that.  Right?

Mikell:  There you go.  Got to just hope for the best.

Jason: That is it. So we are going to do everything we can to prevent it by giving you the proper real estate education here to make sure that you do not do anything foolish like over-improve your property and or borrow way too much money.  We want to keep you in that groove, in that area where you are safe. Safest way to ensure that you do not get killed in the real estate market? Do a 15-year loan? Twenty-one years, my bad, 22 now. Twenty-two years last, on the 3rd.

Mikell:  22 years?

Jason:  22 years. So in 22 years of real estate, I have yet to see anyone have any financial struggles, short sales, foreclosures, loan modifications needed or anything on someone that did a 15-year loan. Not the smartest guy on the radio, but definitely this. If I can change just one thing in my life that I do not have to worry about, that would be one of them.  Do a 15-year loan and you are going to have so much equity built in as fast as you can. Well, it would really, really, really have to get bad in order for you not to be able to sell your home, have some options or something like that. So think about that. The last little thing we are going to get in to is talking about some competition. So there is some competition out here.  There is some one-upping going on. I have got some sellers that are one-upping the neighbor and the neighbor is getting mad. Neighbor is sending them mails. Hey, would you quit doing all this stuff? I am having to keep up with you. I am like that is right. You are. You haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until you see what we have coming out next week. We are always doing whatever we can do to one up the competition because remember right now in the real estate market you are in what we call a price war and a beauty contest.  You have to have the best price and the best looking home otherwise, you are, well, the bridesmaid. No offense to the bridesmaids out there. You guys, your turn is coming. Do not worry. We have just got to get you in line.

Mikell:  Gotchas.

Jason: So that is what we have got going on today. You can give us a call here at the studio, 882-7874. At the real estate office, 553-0796 or go to Jason Bramblett dot com.

Mikell:  And you did talk about home buying and you just mentioned competition, so let’s talk a little bit about that.

Jason:  Everybody loves a good competition.

Mikell:  Of course.

Jason:  Especially when you are down to the Final Four.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  Even when you do not have a dog in the fight unfortunately.  The Blues let us down this go around.

Mikell: They did.

Jason: Carolina and Duke, come on, guys. Well, there is, as they say, next year, I guess.  Here is the interesting thing about the market. So, something that is unusual that I have not seen in really the past 10, 12 years, and it has a lot to do with just the market that we are in.  We are seeing a lot of multiple offers. The key thing that we are seeing though is I dissect everything. So when we have something that is repetitive it is why. Okay? And when we have a cause of something that is repetitive, why, and we have a result of something that is repetitive, why.  Do we want to do more of this or less of this? Right? So we are always analyzing numbers. What we are seeing is well, the homes that are showing the best are getting the most offers. Okay, that seems almost like common sense.

Mikell:  Yeah, it does.

Jason: In 22 years of real estate, yeah, it really is just that.  It is common sense. It is doing the simple things. We are not talking about brain surgery here.  Rocket science. This is just providing the public, the people looking at your homes, with the product that they want.  What do they want? They want something that is clean. They want something that is updated. They want something that has a nice flow and presentation to it.  And anybody can do that with any floorplan.

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  What is happening though is what we are seeing is we have got some houses that are in that 250-450 range that have not kept up with the pace, kept up with the time.  They have run into an issue. They are getting crushed with new homes, new home competition, and or their neighbors that have kept up with the times. So they made the proper improvements. Unfortunately, this is where we are.  This has changed a lot. So the demographic of folks that are 40 years and older, this is a hard thing for you to wrap your mind around because this is not how it has always been. This is not how it was when you grew up, came up and started buying homes. When you bought a house, you bought a house just because holy smokes, we were able to buy a house. It is amazing.  You know what? It is ugly. It is not pretty. It has got hideous wallpaper, but it is mine. And you took pride in owning in that and you took pride in fixing it up.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Younger folks, not so much.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  You also took your TV to a repair place.  Younger folks do not do that. They take it to the dumpster. Okay?  You had a computer that you paid ridiculous, anybody remember Gateway computers like $18,000 for a 32 megabyte, take 4 ½ days to download something? Yeah, right.  They were not that bad. But a couple thousand bucks for a computer that did nothing that your cell phone actually has more technology than that thing did. What do we do?  When it broke, we tried to figure out how to fix that thing because we just made a couple thousand-dollar investment. We were not going to get rid of that. Right?

Mikell: No.  Not at all.

Jason:  It just was not the way it worked.  VCR repair people. Some of you guys are like I do not even know what a VCR is. You are speaking foreign to me now.  So things have changed, and what we see in this generation now is they are also not the generation of fixing things.  So this is generation, I guess, X and below or Y. I lose track of what they are. X, Y, Gen, Millennials, something. Anyway. How about this?  40 years and younger. We will just do it that way. That is easier. What we are finding is they are just into that convenience mode. They are willing to pay more for convenience.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: I do not want to paint the wall, but I will pay more if somebody else does it for me.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Or if is it prepared.  Hence what we are seeing is we are seeing multiple offers on properties.  I will give you a prime example. We had a townhome in High Point. Completely redone, amazing looking property, and it sold for $26,000 more than it is worth in today’s marketplace if you just looked at the comps.  If you just looked at the area of the neighborhood. Why? Phenomenal. It was brand, spanking new. You could not duplicate it. You cannot find that property for $170,000. It does not exist. It is one in the whole area.  It took the price to a different level. I think we had eight offers on that property. But the key, first part of it was it was amazing, showed well, everything replaced like new. The other thing was just supply and demand economics. There was not any of them.  So when you have something that is rare and have a high demand. I think we had an open house one day and 18 couples come. 30-some people walking through the property.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason: Yeah, so when you have numbers like that, price really does not matter because somebody is going to be willing to pay whatever the price is to get it.  Right? Because the demand is there. Is that every property? No, it is not. But it is becoming more and more in certain types of real estate and certain price ranges.  But had that home shown lesser, let’s say, maybe with the brass that we told you to get rid of that, with the carpet that we told you to get rid of, with the whatever those countertops are that we told you to get rid of. Right.  The white appliances that are 16 years old. All those things, it will not demand that high of a price. Why? For whatever reason, these buyers today want a ready-to-go product. And this is why you are seeing new construction take off. You think that the resale market is hot, just go to some new construction neighborhoods.  They are probably going to have to start doing lottery drawings again for vacant lots. That is where it is going to get to.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason:  Because they cannot get them off or they are choosing not to get them off the ground at a fast enough rate to keep up with demand.  So they release 10, 12, 15 of them at a time, and they are sold out in 24 hours or less. They are going that quick. Why? Because the buyers want new. That is what they are looking at.  They do not want to acquire your headache as we have talked about many times. I know. You guys have been listening to me for 12 years on the radio and you are like yeah, I know, Jason, but man, I do not want to have to do all that. I understand.  There are two different prices in real estate. Right? There is the price you get when you give the consumer what they want, and then there is the price you get when you try to sell your house the way you like it. That is a different number.

Mikell:  Oh, okay.

Jason:  That is a different price.  Right? And I realize that there is a certain number of people out there that have the opinion of well, if it is good enough for me, it is good enough for them.  And then all of the folks in Mikell’s generation said yeah, have a good day, sir.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Have a good day, sir.  It is just the way that it is. So we have got what, how many millennials are there?  30 million? Is that right?

Mikell:  That sounds about right.

Jason: So about 30 million of them getting ready to hit the home shopping season, home shopping network, if you will. They are coming. Be ready.

Mikell:  And you are right, Jason. Of course, I will be purchasing a house pretty soon in the next few years. I want one that is ready to go. I believe that the generation before me or even my grandparent’s generation was the generation where I want to put, I want a do-it-yourself type thing.  I want to do the cabinets. I want to do the carpet and everything myself. We are not that generation. I just want it done and that is it. I just want to move my stuff and that is it.

Jason:  Absolutely.  And well, it is even, I see it in, I have been doing missions work in South America and Central America for 20-something years, and I even see it now.  It is getting more difficult to, we go down and do construction. It is getting more difficult to get folks to come. The guys that are my age and older that know how to do it are well, the problem is they are my age and older, and it is hot down there, man.  It is hot. Really hot. So we even go in the winter and it does not matter. It is still hot. But the young recruits that we are attempting to bring along beside us is, there are not a lot. There are not a lot. There are not as many. It is just something that has changed in America.  It is just the reality of where we are. Anyway, lots of good stuff. We are going to dig into some more specifics. We are going to take a quick timeout. We are going to be right back, so do not go anywhere. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com. If you have a home in Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point, Clemmons, we want to talk to you. Give us a call at the office 553-0796.  We will be back in just a minute. (in/out music)

Mikell: All right.  We are back, and you were talking about how to help sellers out.  So what tips can we give them right now?

Jason: Yes, absolutely.  There are all kinds of, we have got twelve, we are a plethora of information here.  

Mikell: Yes, we are.

Jason: Remember, you can always go to Jason Bramblett dot com if you do not get to tune into the whole show.  You can always go back and listen to the archives. Just do a Google search for a topic. Actually, that should come up, and if you go the website, you can search a topic and then you can pull up a show that may have something of interest in there.  Then you can fact check me and see if I have said the same thing for the last 12 years, too. That is kind of fun. So far, pretty consistent, but there is always, you might find a zinger in there every now and then. Right? It is possible. Things change sometimes.  My mood. I am just a little punchy on the radio some days, and you never know what might slide out by mistake. But here, let’s get to some truth. Oh baby, this is where it gets fun. Many of you guys just truth here. You have not got a prayer of selling your house.  I know you have a sign in the yard. I know it is on the Internet and I know that you believe that you are actually going to get it sold, and I am just here to tell you, what you are bringing to the table is not going to work. It is not what people want, and here is a good test.  Have you had anybody come through it without any offers? Have you had 6, 7, 8, 10 people come through and not had an offer yet? If you have, that is the market telling you something. Here is another tip for you. If you have not had that many people come through in the last two weeks, that is also telling you something.  You are offering something that the public does not want, and you have to find the happy medium. And you need a coach. You need somebody that can walk you through and match, it really is what we are. We are the matchmakers of real estate.

Mikell:  I like that.

Jason:  We find what the general public is wanting and what they will pay top dollar for, and then we coach you to offer that product to them.  Now the less that offer, the less they will like what you have. Hence why nobody is knocking on your door. Right? Okay. So but if we can get you, we do not need to be perfect, and we do not have to be new, but we need to get you in line to where we can get you the most money in the shortest amount of time.  Remember, two prices in real estate. The price you get on day 16 and the price you get on day 190. They are two different numbers I can assure you. So think about that. What are we seeing? We have got a gap. We have got people pushing toward new construction, and then we have a lot of homes selling right now that are 5-8 years old, and they are great.  They are still new. They still have some warranty left. They do not have all the wear and tear on them. Where people are struggling is in that 12 to 17-year-old range home and you have done nothing but live there. Ouch. That is the tough one. You have not changed the paint styles. You have not changed the fixtures. You have not changed the lights. You have not changed whatever, and some of you say, but Jason, we have only been here 12 years. I mean, geesh. This stuff is not cheap to change. It has cost a lot of money to get everything. This is not a new house after all, Jason. Come on.  What are you doing to us? And you are right. And here is the truth. Nobody cares. And that is just the hard reality of it is the buyers do not want it. And so you need to budget and put into your day-to-day life thinking about selling down the road in 10 or 12 or 15 years. You need to start thinking about well, I am going to have to make changes or I am going to have to sell my home for a different price than what the person down the street or my neighbor across the street did to offer the buyer exactly what they want. Right? Simple.

Unfortunately, real estate has become somewhat of a commodity in that it is not what it used to be.  And home ownership, yeah, there are people that love to own homes and those things, but this younger generation is more mobile. Think about 60 years. Most people did not move more than 10 miles away from where they grew up. It is just the way it was. Nobody thought about leaving home or town.  And now, we have got kids international, everywhere, going all over the place. And careers are much more mobile. People are much more mobile. Anyway, just certain things to think about as you are making changes to your house. But one thing that we see is the folks that keep up the pace, and you do not have to be perfect, but you need to keep up the pace with the modern trends. What do those look like? Well, go to some home shows. That is one thing you can do. You can also go look at some new construction homes.  There are phenomenal ideas. And just take little bits and pieces and do a little bit here and there. Most trends in real estate they last about ten years. Somewhere around there. We are still about 8-10 years of bandwidth. But if you have not done anything to your house in 40, I can assure you, you missed the mark. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  I do not have those homebuyers knocking on the door saying hey, you got anything with paint from like 40 years ago?  No, I do not have that. Anyway, just something to think about. Now one question that comes up. Where in the world do I even begin because all of this sounds very expensive.

Mikell:  It does.

Jason: It can be done all at one time. It can hurt the pocketbook. That is why we just say ease into it.  That is why we would love to talk to you. If you are thinking hey, Jason, we are not going to sell for three years. Awesome. We want to meet with you tomorrow because now we can take the next 36 months and get you to what we believe will be the perfect position to sell for top dollar in the shortest amount of time when you are ready to sell. The worst thing, the toughest conversation to have is Mikell comes over, knocks on the door, says hey, I need to sell my house.  I just got relocated and I need to do this in 13 days, and you have not touched your house in 14 years. That hurts.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  That is a big change. It is a big shift.  It is a big transition. So what we want to do is we want to get with you and we want to walk you through the steps to make it as easy as we possibly can and also help establish a budget. One question we get or we ask a lot is what is your budget to sell, and most people look at us like what?  We want to sell. The budget is on the buy side. Right? No, you do sometimes have to have a budget like 99.9% of the time to sell the house. Whether it could be hundreds of dollars, and it could be thousands of dollars. Everybody is different, but yes, you do have to have some money set aside.  Again, we are pushing always towards top dollar. If you have no money and you have no budget, we hope that you have another word that we use in this business. It is called equity because then if you have equity, if you cannot beat your neighbor in looks, well then you can beat them in price. Remember it is two things.  It is a beauty pageant and a price war. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  That is what is winning. So your neighbor may have done all the updates and fixes and the house looks phenomenal, and you just do not want to go there.  Well, you can probably beat them in price if you have been in the house a while. Maybe your house is paid for. The greatest thing about having a paid for house is you can sell it for any price you want. You can sell it for a dollar.  There is no rule about what you can sell your house for. The good thing is if you have lots of equity, like you have listened to me for 12 years. Let’s just say you bought your house 12 years ago. You are like down to almost nothing –

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason: -- if you listened, if you started out with me on the radio and you did a 15-year mortgage, you got three years left, you are pretty good. You are feeling good about things. As a matter of fact, you are probably so close to the end, you are like yeah, I am just going to dump this thing this year.  I am going to do, we are not going to go on vacation. We are going to have a mortgage-burning party. That is what we are going to do. And that is a great plan. Do that. Then when you go to sell your house, you either have the equity to not even have to fool with it and you can just say you know what, I do not want to deal with.  Or you have the equity, you can go out and make it happen too. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  Because if you paid it off, there is another thing you have. It is called money.  Right? You have got that every month. Anyway, as go through all these different things that we are looking at here (recording ends)

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Announcer: And now you can talk to Jason Bramblett live.

Jason: Good morning, Triad.  This is Jason Bramblett, your host, and you are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  Sitting in the hot seat with me today is Mr. Mikell Montgomery, pushing all the buttons.

Mikell:  Good morning, Jason.  Everything good, sir?

Jason:  Everything is great.

Mikell:  Awesome.

Jason:  Making it happen as we usually do.  23 minutes of absolute real estate radio bliss coming at you live right here, and well, it is back.  The rain.

Mikell: The rain.

Jason:  It is back.  It is here. But that is okay. We are going to do our thing.  We are going to dig into all things real estate today. We are going to dig into you, your questions, what is going on.  What is going on in the Triad? We have got some good stuff happening, so there is a shift taking place that we are going to talk a little bit about today. I have been reaching out to some of our brokers throughout the state and different folks that are in our network and just chatting it up to see what is going on in your neck of the woods.  What do you see? Do you see anything different? And here are some things we are starting to hear. Starting to hear about some upside-down homeowners, which is not something that is news to, not great news for anybody. Certainly, we have had our share of it right here in the Triad. But interesting enough, this conversation was coming out of the Triangle. It is coming out of the Raleigh markets, which has been one of the hottest real estate markets in the last decade in the entire United States, but all things will hit a peak.  Right? Everything eventually gets to the top, and that is kind of what we are seeing in Raleigh.

Mikell:  Now, when you say upside down homeowners, exactly what is that?

Jason: Well, upside down is a term for uh oh. Upside down is not where we want to be.  Upside down it is also known as underwater or my favorite new one, this is a generational thing is what the what. I learned that the other day from one of our millennial newbies at the office is what the what.  I do not get it, but I am going to try to get it.

Mikell:  You used it correctly.

Jason: I did.  Okay. Good, good, good. I hope that does not mean anything really, really bad.  I guess I should have asked that first. It is kind of like some of those little texting whatever, what do you call those things, Mikell, when you text, like the little short –

Mikell:  Like a text Ebonics, I guess.

Jason:  Yeah, I do not know, but I do not know there are certain things that you do not want to put out there.  Right? They might what you might not think they mean.

Mikell:  Very true.

Jason:  Like LOL.  I got that one down.  One thing, too, talking about this generation, I actually spoke this week at UNCG to some of their, the college athletes over there, which is always awesome.  I enjoy it. I love kids that want to win. I love kids that want to push themselves, and they even volunteered to come, which is amazing. So they actually showed up and I was not there by myself, which was even better.  But it was good. It was fun. It was interesting to see kind of where their thought process is at because I do not hang around a lot of college kids. It is neat to hear their questions and how their brain is working and how they are thinking and just a different way of looking at things, and boy, optimistic.  Very optimistic. They have not been jaded by society yet. Have not had that door slammed in their face.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  So we talked about sales and professionalism and sales professionals and all these different things.  So UNCG, probably most colleges, you cannot get a degree in sales. It is actually not a curriculum in which they offer.  But I asked everyone who was majoring in sales and of course, no one raised their hand because they are like no, not me. But in actual reality, and what I shared with them is everyone is in sales.

Mikell:  Correct.

Jason:  All, all little wheels in the cog are in sales because you may be a CPA, but if there is not a sales department behind you, you are what you call an unemployed CPA.

Mikell:  Unemployed.  Yes.

Jason:  Sales is in all things.  And if you are a smart CPA, you are going to support your sales people and help them sell –

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  -- and tell everybody you know how wonderful the company is that you work, and make sure, even though you may not be the title of sales person, you do not want to have the title of unemployed CPA –

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  -- bookkeeper, door opener, whatever it may be.  It does not matter. We are going to get focused back on real estate, but it is just fun to get out there and hang out with some young folks and different things.  But real estate, upside down, underwater, all these terms that nobody wants to hear. We are going to dig into that. The other thing, too, is do not forget about the Greensboro Home Show.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  Wow, we gave away, so I announced it on the air.  We gave away a little over 200 tickets.

Mikell: Wow, that is amazing.

Jason:  If you do not get one, I am sorry.  We are out. There is nothing I can do.  You will have to spend your ten bucks instead of my ten bucks at the door.  It is a great show. Lots of vendors. Lots of stuff. You can go to the Greensboro Coliseum website. It has a vendor list on there and what booth they are at and all that stuff.  I am sure they have got maps once you get there as well. But I think it is ten bucks to get you in the door today. We will do it again next year. We had a great turnout. I appreciate everybody who raised their hand and said hey, yeah, we would like to go check it out. We will be there, kind of cruising around today.  Hanging out. You may run into me, may not. I do not know. We will see. I may hide. I have not decided. But it is raining. There is no better place to be. Go figure out what you can spend money on to spruce up your house because there will be just a couple hundred thousand ideas you will get there, I am sure.

Mikell: Wow.

Jason:  It is a pretty cool event, so you definitely want to check that out. All right, so you mentioned upside down. Let’s dig into that.

Mikell:  So are we really back to that upside down term?

Jason:  Yeah, let’s –

Mikell:  Is it that bad?

Jason:  Let’s hope not.  Let’s hope not. It is interesting.  There is something happening. There is something I am starting to see.  I am starting to get more and more calls from not only people listening to the show, from folks that are in the community.  I did short sales during this downturn. We helped and assisted a boatload of banks and credit unions in the Triad with their short sales. Doing the best we could do to salvage as much of the equity and or as much of the loan as we could for the banks.  It was rough. I do not even know how many of them I worked with, but they all still remember because they all still call. And so, we are getting referrals from lending institutions again. It like hey, Jason, can you help this person. Hey, can you help this person out?  Which is good, yes, we do like to help people. It is a tough, tough battle with short sales. I hope it is one that it does not become its own little cottage industry as it did once before. Basically, here is what happened. We slipped right back into those lovely 100% loans again, and the banks needed to peddle their product.  What is their product? Money.

Mikell:  Money. Yep.

Jason:  Who likes money?  Everybody. And so, it is an easy, easy sale.  Let’s see. There are the terms. We are going to give you exactly what you want. You will have to come up with absolutely none of this stuff yourself, no money at all. We will do a 100% loan, and here is what our agreement is.  You will just pay us back as agreed, but then something happens. And something that is agreed does not happen, and now we have got this problem because there was no down payment. There was no nothing. Unfortunately, gosh, like it makes just about as much sense as the lotto, in my opinion. Me and Mikell were talking about that before the show.  But it is just, the math does not work. Here is the thing. And part of it is because it is government math, and government math really does not ever work. Here is the deal. When you are getting a house, getting any type of loan, you need to look at your length of ownership. How long are you going to be there? That is such a key and vital thing.  And it is something that we do not look at. When you have got banks pushing money at 100%, why, they have government pressure. Make more loans, get people in houses because it is your right as an American. It is my right to own a house. No, it is not. It is your blessing?

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason: That is what it is. I was going to say privilege, but that is the wrong word, too.

Mikell:  It is.

Jason:  Actually, it is just a good old-fashioned blessing to own a home anywhere.  One of the things that, so I am going to get on my soapbox for a minute because I have got the microphone, and nobody is shutting it off right now. But one of the things that I think we should, really all the money and things we look at for schools, we used to do field trips, right, and you would go do something.  I think everybody ought to go to a, let’s go somewhere where it is a little different living than it is here. Maybe let’s go to South America or South Africa or Zambia or let’s go see what it is like when you live in a 8x8 tin, I cannot even call it a house. It is just a –

Mikell:  Like a hut?

Jason:  Yeah. Maybe a hut is the right word. With a dirt floor and no running water, and one light bulb for the entire street.  And you are subject to all elements. Where your shelter is the squash bush plant –

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason: -- that you have grown over the top of your hut to try to keep some of the rain out.  Right? So it is a huge blessing to own a home. I think if we got more people out of the country to see what it was like everywhere else, it would change a lot of things.  It is interesting. The greatest number of people that are succeeding in America are not from America. Not from here.

Mikell: That makes sense.

Jason:  Very interesting. Some of the greatest sales people I know in real estate, some of them have been in the country less than three years.

Mikell:  The reason why though is because they have the experiences that you just talked about.

Jason:  That is it.

Mikell:  And, us as Americans, we compare our lives to social media.

Jason:  Yeah, that is right.

Mikell:  That is what it is.  

Jason:  Or even compared to your neighbor.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  I will not even go there.  We will save that for another show. Opportunity, and we have lost sight of that in this ridiculous word called fairness.  When you have come out of a very unfair environment, and you see the opportunity that is here, man, Katie bar the door, buddy, because I am telling you what.  They are wide open, and they see that opportunity and they jump all over it. We need to look around as citizens of our great country here and get to work. That is another thing that some people could do.  Just get to work.

So we are going to get back to the real estate show now. Here is the thing.  It goes back to length of ownership. Okay? It is key. How long you plan on being in the house really needs to dictate how long the terms are.  Just because the bank said yes does not mean the math works. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason: And here is the thing.  Most people are doing broke people math. It just does not work, and you have got to either learn the math, get counseling, get wisdom. Okay?  And that may, more than likely, be from somebody outside of that is trying to loan you the money.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  One of the things our company does, we have a third-party system in which we price check all of our homes. Why? It is a big deal.  The price that you get for your house is a big deal. 60%, maybe not exactly, within 5%, 60-something, 55 to 60% of the houses that are on the market do not sell the first time.  Most of those prices were brought up by two people. Either the owner or the real estate agent. Well, why are they so wrong? Here is why? The worst thing you can do is get the price of your home from the person that is trying to get your business.  

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  Right?

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  Kind of makes sense?

Mikell:  It makes sense.

Jason: Which number are you going to like better, Mr. Mikell?  You want the $400,000 number or the 375 number. I like the guy that gave me the $400,000 number. He seems smart, and so I will hire him even though he is clueless, and your home is not anywhere near worth $400,000.  And then what happens? It does not sell. It expires. You hire somebody else that tells you the truth or gets you the right number or you get an appraisal, or you do something to justify the number other than going on a whim, and lo and behold, it sells this time. Why?  It was not because number two agent was not any smarter than number one. It is just number two agent had the right price. Right?

Mikell:  Gotcha.

Jason:  It is just simple math, and it is simple terms, and so one thing that we do is we always get a third-party opinion.  Why? We want it to be right. I do not want any of my agents, I want them to be skilled and be able to look and see and come up with a number, but I do not want them making the final decision.  We are going to fact check it with a third party to make sure that we are in line because the last thing we want to do is fail one of our clients with the wrong math.

Mikell:  True.

Jason: Because they are the ones that ultimately pay is the seller.  Because one thing that you will never ever get back on the market is the first month, which is the most critical month.  You always get more for your house on day 17 than you do day 190. Period. Because you cannot get back the first 30 days, no matter what. And something new hitting the market and that energy that is behind that, you cannot re-duplicate it 45, 60, 70 days later.  Day one is day one. It is like I said. Zero is still a number. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  Day 17 is still day 17, and you will get a much better price for your house if it is sold quickly. Things that sell quick usually bring a really good price. Things that sit around and kind of like scummy water on a pond, not too attractive.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  Not too many ducks floating in scummy-water ponds. Right?

Mikell:  Very true.

Jason:  There is a reason why.  So the same thing can happen with your house. It can get stale.  People can look at it. What is wrong with it? What is going on? Why is it sitting here?  All these different things. Sometimes it is not price. Sometimes you can have your house priced right.  It is just ugly. And that is a whole thing we have got to work through, too. And that is a different conversation that we have got to have.  So lots of different stuff. But we are going to dig into this. Here is what we are going to do. We are going to take a time out, go pay for, I have got to pay for all these tickets we gave away. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  Let’s do that.  We will pay some bills. Take a quick time out.  We are going to come back in just a minute. We are going to continue the upside down, underwater topic and some of your emails when we get back. (in/out music)  And welcome back to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Your host, Jason, here live. Sitting in the hot seat is Mikell Montgomery pushing all the buttons, making stuff happen today.

Mikell: Yes, sir.

Jason:  So we were digging in.  We were talking about financing your house, potentially being upside down, under water.  All these amazing terms. So here is the deal. The longer you finance, the longer you need to stay in the house. Okay?  That is the A number one key thing you need to figure out. In the Triad, in my opinion, if you are going to finance a home for 30 years, you need to make a 10-year commitment, and the reason being is because if you look at the math on a 30-year mortgage and you make the minimum number of payments on time as agreed, it is going to take you about 10 years to get to zero. To get to zero meaning when you go to sell it, you will not have to write a check.  Okay?

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  Now, I know there are some real estate expert that says, Jason, no, no, no, no.  Wait a minute, man. You forgot one important factor. Appreciation. Yeah. Right.  Go back ’06 to ’16. You do the appreciation on that decade. Right? Appreciation in my opinion is like buying lottery tickets.  There is no guarantee. There is absolutely zero guarantee. There is no law. There is no nothing that says your house is going to go up in value.  There are lots of reasons why. One, economics (interruption) – that will wake you up.

Mikell:  Sorry about that.

Jason:  That is alright. Going back into the timeframe and going back into here is the reason why you have got to look at the timeframe.  The shorter amount of time you are going to stay, the more money you have got to put down. And the reason being is because of the interest on the house calculated. You have got to look at that amortization schedule. This is where you sit down with a professional.  This is where you sit down with someone in the mortgage business that can walk you through and walk you through that. And you cannot hedge your bets or look for guarantees of appreciation. Think about what has happened in the past. People that bought a home in the last cycle, if you will, in that 2002, 3, 4, and 5, they paid the most that they could possibly pay, and then from ’06 to ’16, they grudgingly got back some of their equity.  And some of them, we still have properties that we are looking at from ’06 that are still under water.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason: And it is 2019.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  And some of them are just maybe to zero.  Maybe. If you do not look at that, it is kind of like you are dead before you even get started.  You do not even know what hit you. So you have got to look at the math. So if you plan on being in the house, and this is what we teach is five years or less, man, we really have got to scrutinize this thing.  Okay? If you are three years or less, do not even buy a house.

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  That is coming from a guy who sells them every day.  But I am telling you, if you know you are going to be in a house for less than three years, just rent.

Mikell:  And you were saying this last week saying do not put yourself in a predicament where you are going to have to write a check just to get free.

Jason:  That is right.  Absolutely. Here is something interesting. I talked about short sales at the beginning of the show. I have done a lot.  Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. I have looked over every type of situation, mortgage that there is. Every type of bank. Every type of loan. Here is the interesting thing that if you even track foreclosures at the courthouse, in all the years of a decade that I did short sales essentially and helped folks in their situation, not one, not one out of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, maybe even close to a thousand, not one of them was on a 15-year loan.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  Okay. So think about that. They were all on a 30-year payback schedule.  Some of them were interest only. Some of them were adjustable rate. Some of them were fixed, but they were all on a metric of a 30-year amortization schedule. Zero were on a fifteen.  There is a lesson right there. If you can swing it, and as cheap as money is right now, anything and everything you can do to refinance your house to a 15-year loan, you ought to be jumping all over it because it is, one it is half the time.  Half is good. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  And the interest savings is unbelievable. It is going to be for most people, if you just bought your house in the last couple of years, you are probably going to save $100,000 in interest.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason: That is a pretty good lick.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason: And your payment is probably going to be somewhere, obviously, it depends on how much was borrowed, but it is going to be, I would say on a $250,000 loan, you are looking at a 3-$400 more per month payment.  And you are like well, Jason, that is 3-$400 per month. Come on. I know. So get your bank statement and your Venmo and all these other cool little gadgets we have got that we spend money with, and write everything down that you are spending money on, and I will bet you most people in this country can find 3-$400 a month of convenience, lifestyle things that you may want to consider cutting out. Like convenience stores. $2.99 for a bottle of water, and you can go to any big box and buy 50 of them for three bucks.

Mikell:  True.

Jason:  Right?

Mikell:  It is very true.

Jason:  A soda at the gas station.  Whatever. It adds up. We pay a lot for convenience. Why?  Because we do not plan anything. Hey, guess what? You are going to be hungry tomorrow. Promise.  You might want to go ahead and think about what you might want to pack for lunch. Right?

Mikell:  True.

Jason:  Oh you mean you could pack a lunch and take it to work?  What? Yeah. You actually could. You could make a sandwich a lot cheaper than you can go anywhere else in town and buy one, and here is the really cool thing.  If you do that long enough, you will not have any bills and you can just go eat anywhere you want all the time, any time, and it is not big deal.

Mikell: I feel bad.  I just did delivery yesterday.

Jason: Well, hey, you have got to splurge every now and then.  Look, let’s do this. We got an email in, Mikell, let’s see if we can dig into that real quick. We have got a minute and a half maybe.  Let’s see if we can answer Joe’s question.

Mikell:  Okay. It says from Joe Moore.  It says I have a 18-acre farm estate, and I have a few people that tell me my land value is too high for the size of the home.  Basically, I may not be able to sell the property because it may be too hard to finance. Is there any truth to this?

Jason:  Oh yeah, so Joe is in that wonderful situation where he has probably got a house that is an old farm house of some kind. Maybe 1500-2000 square feet, and he is in the area where land values went up because they put a brand-new school over there. Spent about $100 million, and lo and behold, land values go up because people want to be in that area.  So what happens is you can get upside down a little bit in your home, your land value can exceed your home. And the banks look at ratios and percentages, and this percentage is a little out of tune. But we are out of time, unfortunately Joe, so you are going to have to get back with us. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com. Give us a call at the office, 553-0796.  Hey we hope to see you at the home show today, guys. Everybody have an awesome, awesome weekend. We will be here next week, live ready to go.

JASON BRAMBLETT RADIO SHOW PODCAST

Keith: Good morning. Welcome to the Jason Bramblett Show. I am Keith Allen with Jason Bramblett. Looks like a busy show. What do you have lined up for the guys?

Jason: We do have a busy show. It is always a busy show. It is 23 minutes of radio bliss coming at you in 23 minutes actually. We cannot even make it any faster than that. But it is amazing how you can take a 30-minute show and condense it down to 23 minutes of, well, just do not go anywhere. You are going to find out what is going on. It is the spring market. It is the time that is like a kickoff. Right? We are headed to the Super Bowl. Everybody has done their prep. Now it is time to crush the spring market because it is go time. This is what everybody is waiting on. This is what everybody is talking about. This is, if you were a deer hunter, you could not sleep right now. Right? Because you would be ready to go, and that is kind of how a lot of real estate agents are. We cannot sleep because we are getting prepared, anticipated, ready to go, and it is fun stuff. So, we have got an exciting time in real estate. We are actually off to a record-breaking year, which is always awesome. So, with breaking records comes the opportunity for we need some help. We need new people. We believe, I believe, and I think the team does believe we have created a system in which many people that have considered real estate as a career or a second career or just an opportunity have not been able to take advantage of it because the, well, let’s just face it. It is not the easiest industry to get into. You do not really even have to know much about real estate. Just the rumor mill of that kind of keeps a lot of people from even opening the door and attempting to get started in real estate.

So, what we are doing is we are starting or launching a new program. It is our career incentive program. Essentially, we are going to walk you through the next 36 months of how to start in real estate and how to successfully succeed and become a broker in the real estate industry. So, we have our first career night this Tuesday, the 12^th from 6-7:30. You will need to go to our website to register. It is Jason Bramblett dot com. Just click on the email icon or the email link, if you will, and that will get you registered in or at least get you into our database so we can send you the registration. So, you are going to get an actual Eventbrite confirmation that you will need to sign up for, so we need to know how many people are going to be in attendance. I will tell you we have had an overwhelming response just with some other meetings that we pushed this out on. So, if you want to get into the first one here, seating is limited. So, you want to sign up as soon as possible. It is Tuesday the 12^th, coming right up right around the corner from 6-7:30. It will be an action-packed, very informative. We are going to walk you through every single step of what you would need to do to get started.

Here is the thing about real estate is everybody needs a place to start, but not everybody can go from paycheck to zero. It is a tough place to get, at least by choice. A lot of you go from paycheck to zero, but you did not have a choice in that game. And so, your employer made that decision for you, and it amazing what happens. I have had folks that have walked through that and it was the end of the world, and in a year, it was the best thing that ever happened to them in their life because it pushed them out of the comfort zone to go out there and make something happen. Make something happen on their own.

Well, we have created a way that you can make something happen. Maybe not without taking the plunge. Here would be a really cool thing. Let’s walk you through real estate. Let’s get you making some money. Let’s get you replacing the money that you are making now in your current career, and then you can walk into the office one day and you can tell your boss exactly what you think about his company maybe. No, I am kidding. You would never do that.

Keith: No.

Jason: But it at least would give you the opportunity to say hmmm, I might consider something different. Because at the end of the day, it is about doing what you love, and taking, there is some chances. So, we are going to walk you through being a goldfish. The great thing about being a goldfish is somebody, you are just swimming around in your little bowl, your little tank and somebody is dropping the food in. The problem is when they forget you and they quit dropping the food in. You ever seen Nemo? Do not let me go belly up. We do not want you going belly up. Unfortunately, a lot of people in real estate go belly up because they go into a company where there is no, there is nothing provided for them. There are no leads. There is no opportunity. There are not systems. Most real estate companies say hey Keith, come over here and let’s see what you can do. And Keith is like hey, I was just working in radio last week.

Keith: Like throwing you out of the nest.

Jason: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, right? It is like why is the eagle the biggest bird? Probably because it is in the biggest tree. Right? It is long way between there and the ground. Right? You hear about soaring like an eagle? The first 100 feet was not soaring, baby. It was hanging on for dear life. Right? Grasping at everything, and then they figured out they had wings. Right?

Keith: Right.

Jason: So, it is the same kind of situation. You have got to have somebody dropping a little food in the bowl to get you started. And that is what we are going to do. 36 months is going to take you from goldfish to shark. One thing about a shark when they swim around. They really do not worry about the goldfish. The goldfish definitely worry about the sharks though. So, when you become a shark, when you figure out your territory and how to go out and make things happen through meeting people, creating relationships, working your network and bringing value to people, you never have to worry about selling houses. You do not have to worry about selling anything as long as you are bringing value. It would not matter if it is widgets, coffee cups or whatever it is.

So, the really cool thing is to take you from not knowing anything, and we have got a fast track of 36 months, and for some people it may be quicker than that. We have kind of dreamed it out, or believe it is a 36-month path to get you from goldfish to shark without going belly up. Because you know what happened to Nemo, well it was not Nemo, but you know what happened to the fish in Nemo that went belly up. Right?

Keith: It does not work out well.

Jason: All things lead to the ocean. Isn’t that the way the song goes, right? All things lead to the ocean. So, if you are interested again, go to Jason Bramblett dot com. Click on the email icon, right corner. Just put something, hiring, career night, anything like that, and it is going to go to our team. They are going to reach out to you. They are going to send you the Eventbrite confirmation, which you do need to sign up for in order to ensure that you have a seat there. You can also call the office at (336)553-0796. If you do not get anyone, leave a message, and we will get right back to you. So, lots of cool things.

Here is the thing that we have created is the opportunity, the system, and where most real estate, I say companies fail, but it is really just people. They jump into something with no path. And they jump into something that most real estate companies have. What can you do for me attitude as opposed to here is what we are going to do for you. Right? The teaching, the coaching, the training. And it is fun when you are doing something that is exciting. You are watching people step into their dream house for the first time. Or their first house. It is an industry that is interesting to me because it is never the same. It is never the same people. It is never the same house. Circumstances, you have got good and bad unfortunately with why people sell. Unfortunately, we do not have the highest success rate of marriages in America. Right? And usually when that happens, when you do get a divorce, most of the time you do not still cohabitate in the same building. Right? So, people are leaving. Right? Which does create opportunity to sell more houses. Unfortunately, it is not really the way we want to do it, but it is something that happens. The other thing, too, is you want a system that works when the economy does not. That is one of the things that I have worked, it is 21 years in the making, but we have created an economy within our real estate company that does not matter what the economy in the United States is doing. It does not matter. If real estate is going up, great. If it is going down, great. It does not matter. We are going to make it work either way. Now, part of that is you cannot know what to do unless you went through it. I have had the fortunate and unfortunate part of going through its multiple times, so I am not on the learning curve on that deal. I have already been there, done that, got the t-shirt, the whole nine yards. We have set up systems and plans and protocols that if the market goes down, that is okay. We are actually in a better position to win if it goes down. If it goes up, great. That is fine. But if you fall in the trap of all ships rise with the tide, when somebody pulls the cork out of the bottom of the boat, you have got a problem –

Keith: Yeah.

Jason: -- if you do not know what you are doing. Right? If you do not know what to do when the water is going down, that is a bad place to be. One of my favorite quotes is from Mike Tyson. He is like everybody steps into that ring and they have got a plan. They have got a system. They have role played out in their mind what they are going to do, where they are going to beat me, my weaknesses, and everything. And then I punch them in the face. And everything changes. Everybody had a plan until I punched them in the face. And it is the truth. That is life. Right?

Keith: What I think is cool about this is it gives you an opportunity to come in and kind of find out the inner workings of what goes on in your business, and you can decide if it is a good fit for you. It is one thing to just walk in and go I am going to a real estate agent and find out six months later is it is not for you. This way, you can kind of get an understanding, get a feel for it, and then decide if it is the right fit for you, which is better for your business and for the individual.

Jason: Absolutely. That really is exactly what we wanted to create there, Keith, is come in, test the waters without, stick your foot in before you jump in the deep end. And the downside with most people is that they burn those bridges and they are like I really should not have burned that bridge. I wish I could have gone back to –

Keith: I should have done this.

Jason: Should have done this. Right? And what we want to do is this. I am a rip the band-aid off fast guy. I want to know quick is this going to work for me. So, we are going to jam like Real Estate 10.0 down your throat fast, and in three weeks, you will be like man, I am this, I love this. This is amazing. This is what I was born to do or do not ever show me another house ever again. Right? You are out. You are going to go live in a tent you hate real estate so much. Right? Why suffer over a year? Why suffer over a long period of time? The downside with real estate, our national association says this. Most people get into real estate with a dream, a plan, and a hope. And after 18 months they are on the other side and they are broke, busted, and they have got $20,000 in credit card debt because they used the credit card to make up for the lack of income, and then somebody said oh hey, you have got to spend money to make money. And then they came up with this really great idea called Visa, and Visa is like yeah, man, we will let you do it. We do not even care if you sell houses. We will take your money all day long. Just swipe that card. Let her rip. We will send you some leads, and then you do not even know what to do with them. And then all of a sudden, you have used Visa, Mastercard and whoever else to prop up your lifestyle or keep your lifestyle going. Not even prop it up. Just keep bread, food on the table, make enough for the shortfall, not having the job.

Keith: Right.

Jason: And then you are going in debt because you are investing in marketing, which you do not even know if it works or not. And believe me, all these companies, they will take your money. They have no problem whatsoever. Most of the stuff within real estate is a 12-month contract. So, you are signed up for a year. There is no clause in there that says oh, if you do not sell a house, we will give you your money back. Never seen that one before. I do not have it. And then you have got the other issue is let’s just face it. Most people do not go all in on the first hand. Right? That is not how Vegas works. You win a little, you win a little, and you build up that. Right? So, you spend $2-500 a month on your credit card buying leads. The problem is you have got other guys in the game like me that are way spending more than that. Way investing more than that.

Keith: Yeah, the odds are not in your favor.

Jason: The odds are not in your favor. I will assure you. It is much wiser and better to join with someone that is doing it than it is to try to go out and compete with it. Because to compete with it, you are going to sink quick. Who do you think these companies are going to reward more? The guy that is at $200 a month or the guy that is at $20,000 a month?

Keith: Pretty obvious.

Jason: It is kind of a no brainer. Yeah, whose ads do you think are going to show up more? The guy at 200 or at 20,000, right? And that is why it is hard to step in. So anyway, we have created a system, which you can come check it out. And actually, we are going to pay you. That is another unbelievable thing. Most real estate businesses, when you start, it is 100% commission. That does not work for everybody. Most people have to have some money. Right? Anything. So that is what we have created with our apprenticeship program is we are going to let you earn as you learn and go until you say stop or we say stop. Because at some point in time, let’s just face it. 100% of the people, it is not going to work for.

Keith: No.

Jason: 100% of the people do not need to be in real estate. I would say we have 1.2 million people in our association. It is probably half too many. But anyway, they are there. We deal with them. The thing of it is it is a low barrier of entry to start. You have got to pass a test, and magically you are a real estate agent. Not so much. It is like having a driver’s license. Let’s face it. Does that 16-year-old that just got his driver’s license really have a clue how to drive?

Keith: No.

Jason: Absolutely not. Uber is not putting behind the wheel. Right? Liability. Same thing. The guy that just got his license last week maybe not so much going to sell your house for top dollar. It is not because they do not want to. It is just that they do not know how to. They have no experience. All right. Let’s do this. We went a little bit long on that.

Keith: Good stuff.

Jason: Just a little bit behind the scenes of what is going on in Jason Bramblett Real Estate. Stay tuned. We are going take a break, go pay some bills, come back. We are going to get into what you need to do to be ready for the spring market to get your house sold. We will be right back. (in/out music) And we are back. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is Jason Bramblett and you are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. So, we were talking, just having a little fun there in there beginning. But seriously, if you are in the market or if you just ever thought about an opportunity in real estate, what does it look like? We are going to break it down for you from 6-7:30 on Tuesday night. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com. Get your name in the hat. It is limited seating. Linda and the team will reach out to you and get you a confirmation. So, we talked about what do we do with this house. Right?

Keith: Yeah, we were talking about the shrubs and how to get all that stuff ready. Well, what other things can you do? You are getting ready to sell. What areas should we look at when getting a house ready? Where should we invest? What is the best plan?

Jason: The key number one thing is having a plan. You went to the grocery store with a list, and then you have gone to the grocery store without a list. The grocery store list typically keeps you on budget and it keeps you on diet. The go to the grocery hungry, no plan, you leave overspending, and you have got a lot of frozen things in your basket.

Keith: I have done that way too many times.

Jason: Exactly.

Keith: You figure it out on Wednesday that you messed up.

Jason: We went to the store the other day, me and my daughter, for sour cream. We left with Butterfinger ice cream, chips, Doritos, some soda. I was like wait, this was a $2 trip, and all of a sudden it is like 17 bucks to get out the door?

Keith: Do not walk in Costco.

Jason: Right. Exactly. It was like 17 bucks and 8500 calories probably. We actually laughed. It goes back to we did not have a very good plan here, Dad, right. We did not have a very good plan. Here is the key with selling a house. So, we talked about yes, the outside. No, the inside. Outside is important to certain folks. Some people want a yard. Some people want no yard. Most everybody wants the inside. They want shelter. They want it dry. They are not looking for a waterfall coming through the ceiling. They like this thing called air conditioning in the south. Even heat is good, but air conditioning definitely, for sure, especially in July.

Where is the best place to start? Think about the place you are going to make the first impression. Where is the first impression? The front door. It is actually sometimes the longest place a potential buyer will spend at the house just waiting on the real estate agent to unlock the door. To get into the lock box or do the electronic key or whatever it is they have to do. They may spend more time at your front door than they do in any other room in the house. So, think about that. You need to look at the door. Does it need painting? Does it need freshened up? Is it clean? Are the handles tarnished and nasty looking? Is there something living in your lights? Either spiders or birds. It is that time of year when birds are going to start building nests in your lights. If you are thinking about selling your house, you probably should figure out a way to keep them away that is humane. We will leave it at that. I do not want any other mail from some of my other recommendations in getting your house sold. And then as they come through the front door, what do they see? Do they see your fake wood floors are worn out? Or do they see that your real wood floors are worn out? Right? Are they all scuffed? Is the polish off? Is the varnish off? Has the tile been chipped? Is the grout black and it was not? Is it supposed to be gray? Is it gray and it is supposed to be white? All these different things you need to think about. That first impression. Are there shoes and coats and jackets and debris all throughout the house.

I showed a house one time really, they have got a lot of kids and it is a friend and its kind of fun, and we went over, and I am going through the house. And I am like wow, this looks pretty good. And the people they love to cook, and they were like, well, they wanted to open the drawers and the cabinets and all this stuff. And it is fine. That is what people do. Hey, people are going to open the drawers in your house. Right? It is what it is. Let’s face it. It is not the first time they have been in your drawers. Right? Think about it. Okay. So, your friends and all these people are coming over and so I am showing this house. We are going through. They open, there is just stuff falling out. There are jackets, the dog bowl. It is just like whatever was around.

Keith: Get everything put away.

Jason: Yes. So, what happened I am sure is Mom or Dad gave really strict barking orders. Get rid of everything without a specific location. For some, between 8 and 14, get rid of means do not see it. If it is in the cupboard with the glasses, and you put the dog bowl in there, I do not care. It does not matter to me. You just said get rid of it. Make sure you cannot see it. The fact that you open up the dishwasher and there is a jacket inside. Hey, it is the kids. That is what they do. It is amazing what could fall out of that cabinet when you open it depending on what kind of chaos may have went on. Think about as you go through a grocery store as well. When you go through a grocery store, most of them, they have got all the canned food facing a certain way. Right? It is not all a mish-mosh of everything. They have got everything in its order. Right? Everything is specific. Everything is facing the right way. Why? It looks great. It is a great presentation. It is just kind of professional looking. Some folks will be like well that is just a little over the top. You have to think like a retailer when you are selling your house. You have to think what could I do that would get me the most money if the most money is your goal. If you just want to slap a sign in the yard and let it rip, well, there is probably a price you will get for the condition your house is currently in, but it may not be the highest one. It may be the one that somebody is just willing to tolerate. Like I will take it for this, but I could really care less if I get it or I do not get it. That is not how you are going to get the most money for your house. You want people to walk in and you want them to fight for it. Like there is so much value in your house they cannot believe the price. That is when you know you have won. That is when you know you are going to have a good outcome. And you do that by presentation. Right?

We have multiple tiers within our home-selling systems. And they are all at different price points. And one of them is above average. You could just look at it on the surface and say wow that is a really high price or a lot of commission, but when you break it down and you look at the overwhelming value we put in that, you could not touch duplicating that product at, the only way we could do it is because of the volume that we do. We have put so much value into our premier product you could not touch it with a ten-foot pole to try to duplicate it yourself. You would be thousands and thousands of dollars overpriced, out of the league, out of the market. That is how much value we have been able to shrink down and put in there. And that is what you want to do with your house. You want to get it in the condition where people walk in and they are like holy cow. Compared to the other three at the same price or in the same market or in the same neighborhood or in the same school district, this is a no brainer. And sometimes it is even more and sometimes it is considerably more in price, but it is worth it.

One, because maybe the work has been done. Right? Maybe all that frustration of well, I do not really want to paint the house. I do not want to paint the house. I do not even want to go to the store to get the paint. But that is me. Other people like that. Everybody has got their own thing. But we want to look at the little things that can add a lot of value. So, think about when you go to a store. Think like a retailer. If you have ever been to a model home, you will notice one thing. They did not go to a garage sale or a flea market and furnish the house. They did not take their brand new, $300,000 amazing house with all the travertine tile, the beautiful wood floors, the granite countertop, and then go out here on the curb on Saturdays and buy $50 sofas and chuck them in there. Right? You do not see plaid couches and stuff in the model home. It looks like a furniture store. Why? Because it elevates. And that is what you want to do. The little things that will help to elevate. So, we are out of time. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com. We are going to send you a list if you want it. Say help me sell my house. But we would love to see you Tuesday night at six o’clock at our career night. So, call the office. Get in touch with us. (336)553-0796. Make it a great weekend everybody and we will see here next week live.

JASON BRAMBLETT RADIO SHOW PODCAST

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO 03.02.19 PODCAST

Keith: Good morning and welcome to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Radio Show with your host Jason Bramblett and myself, Keith Allen. So, Jason, hope you are having a great weekend. What do we have lined up for today’s show?

Jason: Good stuff. Good morning, good morning. I hope everybody is doing good out there. I believe we are Facebook Live. If we are not, hey, just wave at me. I will see you maybe. Right? Good stuff. I was thinking today may be a good day to start that boat construction company that I have dreamt of for a while. All things serious, hopefully, today, I am told at two o’clock, we will see this big orange ball in the sky. It may be the sun. I do not know. It is just a guess. It is what they are telling me. Let’s hope it is true. I was actually thinking that instead of footings on homes in the Triad, maybe we should start doing pylons and just tether your house to the pylon and that way, as the water level rises, so does your house. What do you think, Keith? Pretty good idea? Innovative, right?

Keith: Listen, some day that rain is going to stop. I do not know when it is, but probably some day it will stop.

Jason: Think about this. If we did not have the weather to talk about, about 90% of mundane conversation would go away and we would just stare at each other. Right? Especially around the office. If we did not have the weather to complain about, what would we do? I am in confident in July we will be begging for water. Right? It will be in some kind of crazy drought, and we will remember the days in 2018. All of 2018 when it rained. It ends in 2019, but anyway. We have got some good stuff set up outside of, just messing around with you, many listeners have been calling in, asking questions, shooting emails over to the office. We appreciate that. You can always reach us. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com. Shoot your email over. You go in that top right-hand corner. There is the email icon. Shoot your question over and I will happy to answer it on the air. I also usually answer it prior to going on the air. But if it is a really great question, then you make the list. Right? You make the show. If you allow me, I will even share your name and all that kind of stuff. We have got some good stuff. So, grab a cup of coffee, sit back, relax, enjoy getting educated on Triad Real Estate Radio. We have got some good stuff coming your way.

I do want to make one quick announcement. Just really something fun that is coming to Summerfield, North Carolina. If you are a horse, it does not even matter if you love horses or not actually, just come out hang out. It is for a great cause. Horse Friends. Putting on their fundraiser event, Boots and Buckles Benefit. Just to give you kind of a, Horse Friends is something my company and my family has sponsored for a lot of years. It is a therapeutic horse, almost, I would say it is a ministry. They work with kids that have all kinds of different challenges from autism to behavioral stuff to you name it. It does not really make any difference. The really cool thing is to see these kids that just kind of they have different ways of learning, and they have different things that are going on with their life, whether it be physical, emotional, mental, whatever it is, and they get on these horses, and the peace and the calm and the happiness and joy that they experience is instantaneous for one thing. So, it is quickly noticeable, but just a phenomenal opportunity to get out there and support them. It is at Summerfield Farms. It is pretty easy to find. It is like the only business in Summerfield. So, there you go. It narrows it down pretty, it is the only farm in downtown Summerfield. It is an amazing place. You can go there. Check it on. It is on April the 14^th. It is coming up at 6:30pm. Tickets are on sale. You go to horse friends ncdotorg. You can also go to our Facebook page, Jason Bramblett Real Estate. We have a link shared to you there. You will also be able to go, after the show next week, to Jason Bramblett dot com. You will have the archived version of the show, and there will be a link that you can click on and you can go there and buy your tickets. They are $75 a person, and I will promise you, not only is it a great value, it is a great benefit, and the money will go a lot further than you think, and just come out and hang out and have a good time. There is going to be food. There is going to be fun. There is going to be a young lady, Stephanie Quayle, which I am told is an amazing singer. Do not know her, but I am going to go with yes.

Keith: She is very good, and that is an amazing event. It is not often that you can go do something that is so much fun and does so much good for so many people. That is just a great event.

Jason: Absolutely. Silent auction, hors d’oeuvres, all kinds of fun stuff. Come out. Check it out. It is going to be at Summerfield Farms, April the 14^th. We will keep you posted. We will keep you reminded. Do not forget if you want free tickets to the Greensboro Home Show coming up at the end of March, give us a call, (336)553-0796 at the office, or go to Jason Bramblett dot com. We have your free ticket. Be our guest. Go to the Greensboro Home Show, hang out, and get some ideas. Actually, and really one thing that is really cool when you go there, you will go through the home show and it is all the new stuff that is coming out that has to do with homes and things. And here is what you will not see, anything brass. I promise you. It is not there. I am not even lying to you. I know you guys think for ten years I have been lying. Like Jason, no, everybody loves brass. I promise you. There will not be any brass at the home show.

Keith: You are just not a fan of brass.

Jason: Yeah, I am just not a fan. No. No. It is something that screams 1990. Right? And we have got to get you past that. To get your top dollar, we have got to get you to 2019. Anyway, all jokes aside. If you have questions, get in touch with us at (336)553-0796 or we are live in the studio, (336)553-0796.

Keith: Well, you mentioned some of those really good emails, and we were talking about Summerfield, so I have got an email here if you want to try to knock this out.

Jason: Let’s do it.

Keith: So, it says, Jason, this is Kevin, Mr. Bramblett, I am in need of a contractor to help with my leaking basement. He says we have tried everything possible to stop the water. He is out of options. Could you please assist and who would you recommend? Many thanks, Kevin, flooded in Summerfield. Probably not happy it is raining today.

Jason: No. Two inches of water we had yesterday did not help Kevin out any at all. So, water is mysterious in that it never quite appears where it enters. I do not care if it is on the roof, in the basement, coming down a wall, wherever, especially in a roof. It is amazing. We will find water leaking in a bedroom and find the actual cause 35 feet away, and it is running down a 2x4. It is like the game Mousetrap, you know from back in the day. It is just like it go everywhere and it just difficult to find the source. Sounds like maybe what Kevin is dealing with here in that he has got water coming in and normally, here is what I find. If you have got a block basement, which is very popular here in the Triad. It is one of the, we have some that are poured concrete, but most of the foundations here in the Triad are going to be block. Well, if you take a cup of water and you pour it on a cinder block, the first thing you will notice is it does not all just run away. Most of it is going to get absorbed into the block. And what happens is eventually just like a sponge or like anything, it cannot hold any more water. It only has one place to go. And typically, that is straight towards your basement and or straight towards your crawl space. It is a frustrating thing.

Having personal experience in dealing with basements and flooding, I owned a home in Kernersville a few years back, and I was on a trip and headed down to Cuba doing one of our mission’s trips down there. And I got back to Miami and I get a message from the office. When you land, call the office immediately. This is hugely important. You have got to get in touch with us. I am like okay. We are not running an ER, so that is kind of unusual. But my admin was very adamant that I call, so I did. And she is like you know that house you have on XYZ Street? I said yeah. The front steps are in the basement. That is kind of a problem, I think.

Keith: You think?

Jason: Yeah. Just a little bit. Of course, the neighbor leaves the message and it is like Mr. Bramblett, your porch is in the basement and so are all your flowers, and I do not think that is a good thing. Of course, it is not. And one of the downsides with this type of ground movement is that your insurance does not cover that because it is not an act of God. It is not an earthquake. It is just simply flooding, and unless you have flood insurance, you have got a double problem in that you have the earth that moved and water in your basement and insurance does not cover it. The only person that covers it is Benjamin Franklin. And you have to dole out several of him to get that fixed. It was quite the experience.

But here is the thing. There are companies out there that can help that. So, imagine this. 42 feet of the front wall of the house is in the basement.

Keith: Wow. Just from water. All of that.

Jason: Just from water. Yes. From static pressure. Blew out the wall of the house. And so, I was very impressed though that it was still standing. That was amazing. You have got three sides of a house. Typically, so all the brick fell off the front. It was good times. It was fun. Great experience. Do not recommend it to anybody actually. But we reached out to Greg Harrelson and his team, and boy, they did a great job. We had a general contractor step in. Rob Taylor just did a great job for us. But Greg went in and did the waterproofing. He is just one of the best. And here is the key what you want to look for with any kind of waterproofing company, system, anything like that. You want to make sure they have been in business for a long time. But more importantly, you want to make sure they have a great warranty. And that is the key. Because it is one thing to be in business for two years and offer a lifetime warranty. That sounds great, but what is the lifetime of your business. Right? You want somebody that has been around. And maybe even a generation or two that has been around because now that warranty has some meaning. So, Greg, they have a phenomenal warranty. You can reach out to them. Just google Greg Harrelson waterproofing. He is going to come up. They are all over the internet. Great warranty, great company, stand behind what they do, and cannot say enough about them. They have helped me out and many of our clients over the years many, many times dealing with these types of situations. Not maybe to that extreme, but it can get to that extreme if you do not do something about it. And that is the key.

Keith: Well, here is my question. Now we know we have somebody we can reach out to if we have got the water damage. But obviously, just from your experience, with the kind of damage that can be caused by water, how do we be proactive so that we do not get water in the house in the first place? Because that seems like the cheaper option.

Jason: It is for sure the cheaper option. There is no question about it. And there are things as a homeowner that you can do. There are things as a homeowner that you can, go look at your house. Here is the number one culprit I find with water in the basement and or in the crawl space. It is typically your gutters are clogged. Your gutters are completely jacked full of acorns, leaves, debris. You do not want to have a compost pile in your gutters. Here is a good indication in about the next four weeks that your gutters need cleaning. When they start sprouting oak trees, you know it is time to clean your gutters. Okay?

But here is the other thing I want to warn you about. Not everyone listening to the show needs to be on a ladder. Okay? So do not get on a ladder and say well, Jason told me to clean the gutters and then you fall eight feet into your bushes or on your porch or whatever. You have to use wisdom and common sense. If you are vertically challenged, right, trust me. If it is a risk, like it is big deal for you to get on a ladder, you are the guy that should not be on one. Okay? And so, do not do it. It is the best money you will ever spend. I promise you. It is cheaper than going to the ER for sure. So just hire someone.

But look at the gutters. Downspouts. One of the other things is you have been proactive. You have got the downspouts. You have got the water running into the ground and it is going to be carried away. But the problem is it has settled over the years. And now we have this gap. This four-inch gap between the end of the downspout and where it is going buried under the ground. Well, it is supposed to be connected. Right? You are not supposed to have that. It is not a waterfall effect that we are looking for here. So, what is happening is tons and tons of water is spilling out. It is not doing what it is designed. I cannot tell you how many hundreds and hundreds of houses we will go through. There will be a damp wall. We go outside and the downspout has been disconnected from the gutter. It is just a simple little thing, but it is the simple things that we find do the most damage to the house.

Keep the gutters clean. That seems like a no-brainer. But it is amazing how many houses you will drive around and sure enough, you have got trees and everything else sticking out of the gutters right. Or the downspouts. You have the downspouts where they are completely disconnected, or they are completely clogged. And that is another thing you have got to look at.

So, lots of simple things. Again, do not get on a ladder. If you feel challenged, do not do that. The other thing is the slope of the ground. Over the years, sometimes the ground will slope back toward the house. You actually want it to slope away from the house. So, the current code is you should have one inch of fall over every ten feet. Okay? That is enough to keep water from running uphill, if you will. So far, I have only found one expert that believes that water can actually go run uphill. They actually work for the State of North Carolina. So, believe it or not. We had this interesting thing come up at the office, and someone complained about something and I was dealing with the State. I am like this is impossible for this to happen because water does not defy gravity. But they did not understand that, and they disagreed with me. So, there is one particular place in North Carolina where water does defy gravity according to the State, evidently. So, whatever.

Keith: All right.

Jason: Hey, I am not going to argue with them. You cannot convince all people of all things. Even physics. Right? It is something that is just impossible. There are five or six other things that we are going to dig into. We are going to take a quick timeout. We are going to go pay some bills, talk to some people on our Facebook Live feed. But if you have water issues, stay tuned. We have got five or six things that you can do as a homeowner and then we are going to get you some help. We will be back here in just a minute. You are listening to Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show on 94.5.

And welcome back everybody. Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Hope everybody is doing great on this Saturday morning. Almost dry. Right? No. But we are getting you dry. We are coming up with some ideas. Some things to do to prevent water from getting in the house. So preventative medicine and maintenance is always the best thing. Right? And so, we have talked about gutters. We have talked about downspouts. We have talked about the pitch of the ground going back toward the house.

And another place you need to look into, and another thing you need to think about is flower beds. Flower beds over time because we just keep adding either mulch or adding pine straw or whatever it is, we keep adding to it. It keeps raising the level of that bed over time. We can end up with, what we started out was below ground level. In 7, 8, 10, 15 years, now all of a sudden, our flower bed is eight inches above where it started. And typically, what we see happen is that is decomposing back towards the house and then we have these wonderful things in our crawl spaces called vent wells for, it is just to give some circulation and some air, and it keeps the mildew and the mold and all that stuff from growing, but it is a great entrance for water.

So, we have just created a nice gaping big hole in our foundation and as that debris and that compost and mulch and everything grows over time, now what happens is it funnels it right into the crawl space. You are talking, it can be hundreds and hundreds of gallons of water. We have opened up crawl space doors and there is a foot-and-a-half of water in them after a good rain sometimes. Which is really, really bad if your heating and cooling system that is under the house is only six inches off the ground. You have a major problem in that not only do you have water in your crawl space that can lead to all kinds of issues, you may be replacing your heat pump and or your furnace down there. So, these are things you want to check out. These are things that you want to look at.

Older homes. Especially in your Sunset Hills, Ardmore in Winston, Fisher Park and these places where you have the old cellar-style basements. Right. A lot of times they and those hand-dug-out basements and there was always a door going to the outside from the basement. Well, those do not get utilized near like they used to back 40, 50 years ago. You need to look at those doors. Most all of them have a drain at the base. You need to make sure that the drain is not covered because that will just fill that little area up. And basically, you will end up with a nice little pool down there, which you do not want, which ends up going all the way up against the door, which eventually will either rot the door, rust the door, or enter into the basement and or the crawl space area. Or typically the basement in this case. None of which, over long periods of time, end up with anything good happening.

If you have water standing down there, you are going to end up with the door rotted out, the door frame rotted out, potentially floor joist and or other components of the house rotted or a rusted door or just a dangerous situation. The other thing with those drains over time, a lot of them would break off and so that could be something that you need to make sure that you are watching and maintaining because let’s face it. We do not go in the basement, in those style of basements every day, and we certainly do not go in our crawl space every day. Most people do not.

Most of the time when we go to a house, I ask them if they have lived there for ten years, when was the last time you were in the crawl space, and they are like five years ago. No clue. It is not on your normal, it is not like your grocery list. Let me go see what is happening in my crawl space. Nobody does it. So, there could be things that are going on. Things that are happening that are not good.

The last thing is those windows. Sometimes we end up with those old, foggy, tilt-in, tilt-out windows in the basement area. Typically, again, in an older house. Pay attention to those things. Again, it could just be a little bit of water running down the wall, but over time, and that is what we are talking about, over time, huge damage. So, it can end up rotting out your walls, just anything that has a wood component, water over a long period of time is not good. Thresholds and those types of things.

So, pay attention and right now is the perfect time. The best time to find a leak is when it is raining. Right?

Keith: Absolutely.

Jason: It just makes sense. An acceptable fix is not putting a bucket under the leak in the roof by the way, guys. We have done home inspections. We go up there and there are like five Lowe’s buckets or Home Depot buckets or whatever. I am like what are all the buckets up here? Oh, the roof leaks.

Keith: That is not an answer.

Jason: Yeah, so what do you do when you get five gallons’ worth? What happens then? The best one is when you go up there and they have got a five-gallon bucket that is not on a ceiling joist. It is just sitting on the sheetrock. Yeah.

Keith: Yeah, we see what is going on there.

Jason: Yeah, water is eight pounds per gallon. Forty pounds potentially once it is full. That is going to be a nice surprise for somebody one night when they are sleeping and five gallons of water busts through the ceiling. That is going to be a mess. That is not an acceptable fix. Okay?

Keith: No, it is not.

Jason: So, think about those things. Think about those things. You go to Jason Bramblett dot com and we will do our best to answer any other questions and help you take care of these water issues.

Keith: Real quick as we are a little bit into 2019 now, if you are looking to buy or looking to sell, whatever you are wanting to do, are you seeing any sales or market trends here locally that might impact that decision?

Jason: Yeah, interesting enough is a couple things we are seeing. You would think with record-low inventory we would see prices just going gangbusters. Right? And we are just in this unusual anomaly right now. Of the 1195 homes sold year-to-date, we are actually 11.9% down in price.

Keith: Wow.

Jason: Which is really odd. It is like you can try to blame interest rates, but they have come back down. So, you cannot really push the blame there. So, what is it? Why are we seeing this? I think it goes back to a couple things we talked about where we had maybe some overly optimistic owners and agents for that matter that really pushed those price points up, that really said hey, Keith, I am going to get your $20,000 more than even remotely possible only to find out that even supply and demand has it limitations. Right? You find out that yeah, maybe not, you are not going to get that. So, I think we are seeing some of those prices come back down. Some of those prices being adjusted over time, which –

Keith: Reality.

Jason: Reality set in. Yeah. Exactly. Just like if you do not clean your gutters, the reality is you are going to end up with some water problems eventually. So, it is an interesting time that we are in, but we do think that we are off to a good start. So, go to Jason Bramblett dot com if you would like to get information about selling your home, and or give us a call at the office, (336) 553-0796.  We look forward to seeing you next week and everybody have an awesome weekend. Do not forget about Boots and Buckles Benefit, April 14^th.

JASON BRAMBLETT RADIO SHOW PODCAST

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO 02.23.19 PODCAST

CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIA FACEBOOK LIVE

Jason: And good morning, Triad. This is Jason Bramblett, your host of the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Hope everyone is doing awesome today. If you are a duck, you are in good condition and good weather out there because it is unbelievable. I think every ditch is full, every pond is overflowing, and yet, we keep on pushing through. This is a great time to test if you have a waterproof basement and or crawl space for that matter. I say that kind of tongue and cheek because I know there are some folks out there struggling, and if you need a good contractor, if you need some help with a situation, maybe an emergency that you are having, give us a call. We have got resources for you. We can get our folks out there to help you with your basement, your leaking crawl space, your leaking basement, any of those things. And obviously make sure that if you are near any kind of ditch or stream, use caution because I think they are talking about some flash flooding out there today. So, as you are cruising around enjoying your weekend, be safe out there.

So, a couple of things we are going to dig into today into the real estate show. We have got some great questions in this week. We had an absolutely phenomenal response to last week’s show. So, thank you very much for that. Keep your questions coming. If you have them, go to Jason Bramblett dot com. Click in the top right corner. You can click there on the envelope email icon. Shoot over your questions, and what we do is we look for questions that will reach the most amount of people, and we share them right here on the air. So, we have had some good ones coming in.

But Facebook Live is going live and well, so good morning everybody there on the Facebook. They are a little bit behind, so you will see that in about 40 seconds or so. Anyway, just reaching out to you a bunch of different ways. You can obviously follow us on Twitter as well at Jason Bramblett.

So, let’s dig in. Let’s get started. First question of the day is from David and Heather. We are considering getting into the real estate investing, and that could be a slippery slope and that can be an awesome thing. But where do we start is the question. We have some money. We are ready to get going. They have got about $20,000 they say here, and we want to get started in real estate investing. And is that a realistic amount and should we do it? And this is David and Heather asking the question.

There are lots of ways to invest, especially in real estate. There are lots of opportunities out there. Obviously if you have been on any TV show, HGTV, any of those things, you have got everybody under the sun flipping houses, flopping houses, remodeling houses. Whatever it is. And making just money all over hand in fist, in a shocking 23 minutes. They go from disaster to amazing in no time at all. It is not quite that easy, folks, but there are ways to do it.

Here is one of the things that I get a lot, and congratulations if you are considering investing in real estate. I like real estate. We have multiple investments, but something about real estate that I like is that you can drive by and you can see it and touch it. We have 401K and SEP and all that stuff, and I just do not get that warm, fuzzy feeling about touching paper or air actually. You just get a statement in the mail, and that is it. Something about driving by and seeing what you own and seeing that tangible asset, I think is just something that a lot of people can relate to.

So, what do you do? Where do you start? I am kind of reading between the lines here with what David and Heather said. One of the things that it sounds like they are saying is it sounds like they are saying it takes money to make money. Because we have got $20,000, where should we start? And that in and of itself is somewhat of a limiting belief in that it actually does not take money to make money. The first thing it takes actually is courage. You have got to have courage to get started. You have got to have courage to go out there and take that step. I had a friend of mine that was talking to me about a large project he was doing. He goes, Jason, when we walked in the bank to borrow $20 million, every single person there knew we did not have the money. Right? It is just a different equation with a different zero on the end. And there are not many people out there. There are certainly some that can write a check and stroke a check for $20 million, but it is not many. So, it takes sometimes a tribe, if you will, to put together some of these larger deals.

So, the first thing I am going to assume with the $20,000 that you guys have set aside is that you also have an emergency fund. You always want to make sure there is an emergency fund for the household that we are not tapping in to that. That money is not getting bored, and you do not need to take it somewhere else. I promise you. This is a Dave Ramsey principle. If you do not know who Dave is, check him out online, but Dave has got some good stuff. This is just really Grandma’s common sense. Okay? This is do not take your emergency fund and go do stupid stuff with it, because as soon as you invest your $20,000 emergency fund in real estate, something is going to go terribly sideways on your house or your car or your life, and you are going to need the twenty grand. And so, we always want to make sure that we have the emergency fund.

Assuming it is in addition to, which we hope that it is, then we have got some options for you. There are certain things you can definitely do to get the ball rolling. One of the things to make sure that you are diversifying, and you are not necessarily putting all of your eggs in one basket, if you will. So, I like to look at duplex, quadplex, triplexes, anything multiple family, multiple units to start.

Why? Diversity. Okay. If you buy one single-family home and that tenant quits paying and there is a mortgage, then you are the one that is stuck with the obligation. The bank does not care if the tenant is paying. They only care if you are paying. Okay? And so, if you put all your eggs in one basket, and you buy one home and then they stop paying and then it takes five months to get them out and then it takes two months to fix the repairs, and the repairs cost $4000, that all of a sudden does not look like much of an investment. It feels more like a boat anchor actually. It is not something that is fun. It is not something that is exciting. It is not something that you are looking forward to doing over and over and over again. Right? So, when you do single family, there is added risk. When you look at multiple family, you look at apartments. You look at these quadplexes and six-plexus and these different things. The likelihood of all tenants moving out at the same time is far diminished. Right? They are not typically all related. They are not all moving in one pack, if you will. And therefore, you can spread out some of your risk amongst multiple units.

The more units you can have under one roof, it is also easier to manage. Four, fix, six homes spread throughout the Triad logistically can be a pain to manage. When I have six units under one location, under one roof, on one parcel of land, I have got one roof to worry about, one foundation to worry about, one yard to worry about as opposed to being spread out all over the place. So logistically, these also become a much more easier thing to manage.

Now maybe you are not going to manage your properties, and so that is not a concern. And that is certainly fine. We have lots of single-family property owners that do not manage their own property. Not a big deal. But these are things that we look at. Diversity. We look at reducing our liability. These are the things that we look at.

And one thing that you do want to take a look at in getting started in real estate investment is establishing a relationship with a local bank. Taking the time to go in there and actually meet the person behind the desk, right. Go in there and meet the person that potentially you could build that relationship of long-term time with. And this could be done at a credit union or a smaller community bank. This is what I prefer. This is what a lot of our clients prefer. We have phenomenal local people in the marketplace that can help you. And some of the big institution lenders out there, sometimes they fall into the one-size-fits-all model, and that does not necessarily work for real estate investment. That does not necessarily work for maybe what you are attempting to do. And so, the other thing that it does is well, sometimes these big banks, even though you are putting your money in here, they are putting their money somewhere else. The local community bank, typically your credit unions, the money that you are investing is also staying within the community, which is a nice thing. If you have not noticed, we are building some stuff in the Triad. There are banks, commercial construction is going just amazing. If you go by and look at the signs in the yard of who is financing this stuff, most of it is local community banks. Very rarely are you seeing a huge, one of the big national chains out there, one of the big national banks financing these local projects. Pay attention to that because that is you are investing, and you have your money with some of these smaller, local banks. You can see with your own eyes they are reinvesting back into the community.

You see restaurants going up. Hotels, different things, so take the time to meet and make those relationships. They can really work out for you long-term because obviously we want to start with maybe one house. And then we want to start with a duplex, and then maybe you get a 20-unit apartment building. And before long, you are doing a 300-unit apartment building. And if you start small and keep those relationships, and they have that track record with you, you are not having to get reintroduced to different people all the time. So those relationships go a long way.

So, think about that. Congratulations. Investing in real estate, I believe, is a smart thing. And you are like well, duh, Jason, you are a real estate guy. So, of course you do. But it is just common sense as well. If you look at the wealth that is being created in America, real estate is at the forefront. It is at the core. It is one of the leading causes of wealth. And so, if you want to start building wealth, start investing in real estate.

The first and best place to start though is actually with your own house. Right? With your primary residence. And doing that properly and having guidance and having the right team of people behind you to make sure you do not do something foolish can also help you get started with building your portfolio.

I have met many, many throughout their career. They have never sold a house. They have bought a bunch from me, but they buy one, they live in it, they move out, and they turn that one into a rental. And they just keep going and keep going and keep going. Every single home that they have acquired as a rental property is a house in which they lived. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Over the course of many years, you can accumulate quite a few homes. And their goal is to use that to, many of them, to pay for their child’s or the kids’ college education. To have that cash flow coming in to pay for that education, which is not a bad thing either.

There are certainly some tax advantages to being able to transition your primary residence into a rental house. One, it is easier to qualify to buy a primary residence as opposed to a rental property. Things to think about. There are many different ways, many different strategies to get going and investing in real estate.

Got another question coming in from Robert. Robert is saying Jason, should it ever stop raining, and amen, I am with you, Robert. Could you prioritize the yardwork that I need to do to get my home ready to sell this spring? Signed, building my ark, Robert. Of course, Robert. And I can relate.

First of all, save me a seat on your boat because at the way things are going right now, we may all need a seat on Robert’s boat. It is unbelievable. The rain is just, I cannot understand it. Anyway, here is one thing that I am hearing out here is we have gotten so much rain I am actually hearing that some of the septic tanks are actually rising to the surface. Now, you do not have to be in the septic business to know that is not good because the pipes are not moving. It is just the tank. Therefore, I am assuming these pipes are coming dislodged from the main tank. You have heard about this in New Orleans and different places where they had the flood and then when the hurricane came through and they had cemetery vaults and they were popping up like corks. I guess that is the same thing. Some of these septic systems have not been installed properly or anchored properly, I should say. And some of them are rising to the top, which is never a good thing. So hopefully that is not anyone that we are working with or anyone listening. If it is, we have a phenomenal septic contractor we can get you in touch with. You can give us a call at the office. It is 553-0796. And if you see that happening, I am going to go with probably steer clear and let a professional handle that. You will probably be running off by all the aroma and everything coming out, but just trust me. It is like yellow snow. Do not play with it. Same situation with that. Steer clear.

But it is amazing what all this rain does from foundation walls to septic issues to water in a crawl space. But to get back to Robert’s question. Curb appeal. Curb appeal is huge. And remember curb appeal starts on the internet these days. It actually starts online. So quality photos are key and number one. What we recommend is kind of go old-school or old-fashioned. Go all the way out to the curb and look back at the house. And then what you see or even get your phone out and just look through your phone or camera. I do not even know anybody that uses a camera anymore, but look through your phone, and what do you see? So, can you see the house? That is key number one thing. When you look through the phone, when you look through the lens, can you even see that there is a house there? And some of you will know what I am talking about as you drive around town and you see these houses with mature landscape. Well, overgrown may be the better way to put that, right? So, when you see that, think about these flip flop shows. What is the first thing that they do? The first thing they do is they go in and rip out 99 times out of 100, they rip out all the old landscape. And the reason why is because it is just something fresh about a new start. Or something that just makes the house look younger and newer when you go back with fresh plants and fresh landscaping and those type of things.

Pay attention to those shows. They are not just ripping those bushes out and ripping all that stuff out because it makes great TV. Think about that end product. Think about what it looks like. So, getting those things back to fresh and new look makes a huge difference. It actually takes some age, well, it actually makes some of them appear about five times bigger than they are because you cannot even see them from all the foliage and all the stuff.

So, there are other things that we are going to look at. We are going to take a quick timeout. Go pay some bills, as they say. When we come back, Robert, I am going to get into about 10 or 15 more things that you can do to get your house curb-appeal ready for the spring market. Stay with us. We will be right back here in just a few minutes.

And good morning, Triad. Welcome back to this wonderfully wet Saturday morning.  We are glad you are here. We were digging in, talking about a few things. Robert had a question about landscaping and when it finally quits raining, what to do, where to start. So, we talked a little bit about curb appeal. Getting in front of the house. Checking out the property from the curb, looking back because that is what the folks are going to see. And remember great photos are everything because curb appeal actually starts on the internet today. So not as many people driving around as they used to. They just, well, sit on their couch, chill out and look at us on Facebook Live like they are doing right now.

But they also do that with real estate. So here is the key. Here is what we are going to look at. Trees overhanging the house. Are there any? And this is where probably we need to get some professionals. I am not encouraging anyone to get up on a ladder that should not be, and most homeowners should not be. As a matter of fact, if you are my age or older, stay off the ladder. Stay on the ground. It is easier to write the check than it is to pay the hospital bill. Okay? So, get a qualified professional out there.

But if you have tree limbs hanging over your house, this is always something that comes up on a home inspection. So just be prepared. People are going to ask you to do those things. And while you have the professional there pruning the trees and trimming everything, have them clean the gutters as well. Another thing that always comes up on the home inspection, of course if your gutters are clogged, you know it today because all the water is overflowing into your yard and not down the gutters. But add some nice clean lines to the landscape. So, prune everything. If it is not overgrown ridiculously and you have got something to work with, get everything trimmed, pruned, looking good. Add some color. Make the front yard pop. And this could be done with some potted plants. You do not have to go in there and spend a bunch of money on just replanting everything. Take a few potted plants, get some nice color and just do some accept pieces. Maybe on the corner of the front porch. Those type of things. Make sure the sidewalks and driveways are clean and free of debris and those things.

Now, do not pressure wash if you do not know how. Just because you own one does not mean you know how to use it. Okay? And I know that, well, here is the first rule. If you are using the pressure to remove the dirt and the gunk and those things from your sidewalk and your driveway, stop because you are doing it wrong. I know it sounds like device and the machine would say pressure is good. Remove the dirt. But I can assure you, my friend Chris, can remove everything from your roof, your house, your driveway, your sidewalk and he uses a garden hose because it is not necessarily how you do it. Sometimes it is what you know.

And so, Chris has got a great product. It is bio-friendly product that is some kind of enzyme that does the heavy lifting and then you can just take a garden hose and just wash everything away. What happens when you use pressure, because it is coming out of the nozzle at such a small point, you cannot control the same amount of pressure evenly across the sidewalk. And then so when people come to see your lovely home, they are welcomed by this bangled, triggered-looking sidewalk with stripes or zebra stripes or tiger or whatever you want to call it. I usually say it is the tiger-striped driveway because that is what it looks like. And it is because you could not evenly use the pressure washer and you blasted out too much dirt in some spots and not enough in the other, and it looks horrible. And you just wasted 20 hours of your life when you could have just, you could have done anything else. There are a hundred other projects that I probably could have had you spend your time on in the house and let a professional do this. So, it does make a difference. I know it is fun for the first five minutes because I have unfortunately tiger-striped a sidewalk or two in my day. But I can assure you it is easier to write the check and just let the professional handle it and it looks phenomenal. As opposed to ending up with a product that nobody likes anyway, which is never any fun, especially after you put all your hard work and time into that.

Another question we got it this week, which this one here is a great question by Kelly. Kelly said we are redoing our kitchen and our bathrooms. We are going to put tile down. Do you know how much this will increase the value of our home? It is going to cost around $3200 to install. First of all, Kelly, thinking right and thank you for the question, Kelly. You are asking the right question. Is, I am going to put XYZ, first of all, she obviously must be thinking about selling, and then she is also thinking about investing. Is that a good thing to do? Not always. Some of the things that you put money into you will not see a return, and therefore, maybe you should hold back. Some things that are so worn out and need replace, like if you have got a blue bathtub, you do not need to ask me. Go ahead. Do that. I get accused of not liking brass somewhat. If you have brass, you do not have to ask me. Yes, replace the brass. I promise anything you choose will be better. Green bathtubs, blue bathtubs, yellow bathtubs, yeah, call the guys that can come in and help you. No question about it.

But tile, it is interesting, so $3200, that tells me a little bit that more than likely, this is a do it yourself project. $3200 for a normal-sized kitchen and say two, 2 ½ baths is probably not enough money to hire a professional. Okay. That is probably enough to get the material and do the grout, and that is probably about it. So here is where sometimes doing nothing is better than DIY. Because some DIY projects start out like this. Hey, hold my beer. Watch this. Watch what I can do. I can buy tile. I can mix this grout in a bucket, and I am pretty sure I can apply it. And that guy I saw doing it on TV, I am a lot sharper than him. Well, until you have to cut it. Until you have to go around the toilet. Until the room is not exactly four foot by eight feet and you end up with a tile that you need to cut into a third. And oh, by the way, the wall is not plumb. And it is not straight at all, and how are you going to know that? And where do you start? Do you start in the middle? I have heard you start in the middle of the floor. I heard you start against the bathtub.

If you do not know these questions, these are where professionals come in. I have unfortunately witnessed many, many DIY projects over the years that truthfully it would have been better had they not done anything at all. It would have been better had they just gave an allowance. It would have been better if they had just bought the tile, set it in the bathroom, and said hey, if you buy our house, we have already got the tile for you. Or whatever it is.

It is like painting. Some of you know I have joked about painting. There is one thing to apply paint to a wall. And there is another thing to, one you can schmear color to the wall. And the other one, you are actually painting. You are actually accomplishing something. And the same is true with tile. Just because we can see it on TV sometimes, these DIY projects can be careful. So, Kelly, be careful. Let’s talk about it. Let’s get some more detail. Let’s take a look at it. You may be awesome at it, but we do not want you spending money in the wrong place.

If you have got more questions, go to Jason Bramblett dot com. Click on that email icon. Shoot them over to us. We will share them on the air, and we will see you next week right here. (336)553-0796. Everybody have a great weekend.