This month\u2019s note has shifted a bit due to the Hurricane Helene disaster; I removed a story, a photo and changed the first topic.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been an inconceivably disastrous few weeks. I don\u2019t have the words to describe the destruction we\u2019ve seen in North Carolina due to Hurricane Helene.<\/p>\n
This disaster will affect all of us in so many ways<\/a>, and at some point, our society needs to have a reckoning with how we live and build our communities and economies. Nest has offices and people in Asheville, Greensboro, Lake Norman, Morganton, Raleigh-Durham, Wilmington, and Greenville. We have people whose lives are irrevocably forever altered.<\/p>\n The people affected need our help. If you can donate money,<\/a><\/strong> because that is what they need, please do so. My initial sense is that this is a generational disaster; recovery will take years.<\/p>\n We have partnered with MANNA Food Bank, which supports over 16 counties in Western North Carolina. Money donated will stay local to Asheville, Morganton, and the areas hit hardest by Hurricane Helene<\/a>.<\/p>\n Albemarle County:<\/strong><\/p>\n I use 2019 as the comparative baseline as that\u2019s the most recent not-Covid-affected market. New resale listings are down about 20% year to date, and new contracts in the most recent quarter are down about 9%.<\/p>\n Why? Rates, fatigue, seasonality. Most of my conversations right now with buyers and sellers are looking at the 2025 market<\/strong>.<\/p>\n City of Charlottesville<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the more difficult numbers to track is the \u201cde-listings\u201d \u2014 the sellers who put their home on the market, usually for a relatively short period of time, and then withdraw it from the market when they don\u2019t get the number they wanted. More on this next month.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n That is how a buyer described the first-time home buying process, and that\u2019s one of the most real descriptions that I have heard.<\/p>\n Buying a home is a commitment \u2014 an expensive one, and one that can help bring some life and financial stability and grounding.<\/p>\n Even when prepared, buying or selling a home can be exciting, scary, and overwhelming \u2014 and that\u2019s one of the many ways in which I make my best efforts to help my clients.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis might be TMI, but we just moved to a new apartment, and I just installed a new toilet seat. I always think of you when I do it because that was the first purchase you suggested in 2018 when we bought our house in Cville<\/em> ?\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I told a new seller client today recently<\/a> that next year, there will no longer be \u201cthe old way\u201d or \u201cthe new way.\u201d<\/p>\n There will only be, \u201cThis<\/em> is the way.\u201d We don\u2019t need to complicate things.<\/p>\n Hell, the thing shown in the photo below used to be the new way.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve known about transfer switches for generators to houses. Just recently, I learned about transfer switches for car\/truck to house<\/em>.<\/p>\n New things every day, and highlighted by Helene. I now think that having a transfer switch that will allow you to charge your house with your EV should be an absolute must-have.<\/p>\n My buyer said they wanted a converter for what we thought was a generator. He was talking and I was hearing \u201ca transfer switch for a generator.\u201d The builder rep heard the same thing. We started talking about the need for a propane tank because generators need propane. How wrong we were.<\/p>\n The client explained that they wanted the transfer switch so that they can plug their electric truck into the house to power the house when the power goes out.<\/p>\n Helene and climate change are changing everything.<\/p>\n I am now going to recommend this to all of my new construction clients, because we probably aren\u2019t as protected as we\u2019d like to think.<\/p>\n Related \u2013 More than 1 million Americans are still without electricity. EV owners are using their cars to keep the lights on<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n While Zestimates are fun, and often accurate enough for conversations, the human look is often better, more accurate, and better contextualized<\/p>\n I\u2019m starting to do annual real estate reviews for clients (and not-yet-clients if you\u2019re interested).<\/p>\n Curious? Ask me.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Last week, my older daughter\u2019s power went out. She, her husband, two kids, and dog came over to spend the night. I made dinner while they settled in, and my wife was managing\/wrangling\/playing with the boys.<\/p>\n I looked up and had a moment of, \u201cThis is good. We have a home, a place, for our kids to come to if they need us.\u201d I want this same thing for my clients.<\/p>\n The power came on a few minutes after dinner was ready, and they went home. So we got to see them, give them food, and the boys went home before bed\/meltdown time.<\/p>\n All is good.<\/p>\n Two of the answers sent to me (thank you!):<\/p>\n How many years will it be until this is all built out?<\/p>\n What do I wish I\u2019d known?<\/em><\/p>\n To look at neighboring plats. We chose our lot for three features: 1) it was the flattest lot in the neighborhood, 2) flatness notwithstanding, it was at the confluence of two ridges which created a lovely little dell as the two ridges crossed each other, and 3) there were trees, hundreds of glorious trees. As we toured, I asked, \u201cY\u2019all are building behind us, too, where will those houses be?\u201d The answer I was given was that the two lots behind us were huge and the home sites would likely be deep in the woods. The reality was that they built three houses almost on top of us, obliterating the ridges, destroying most of the trees, and turning our flat lot into a basin for all the other houses.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know that we would have changed lots, but I would have spent a lot more time talking about protecting the trees, enhancing the drainage, and incorporating swales into the terraces they built so that the water moved evenly across the lower lots rather than dumping all of it on us. Across four efforts to make it right, we only paid for half of the final effort, likely eating into the builder\u2019s profit on our lot. Then again, the builder built all those terraces and destroyed all those trees to enhance the view from their own house that I can see through my office window.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019ve said for many years that if you don\u2019t own<\/a> it, it\u2019s going to change<\/a>. We do our due diligence and make decisions based on the best and most relevant and accurate data we have available. And even then, sometimes the decision is a fait accompli<\/em> because we have a relatively low inventory and few choices available.<\/p>\n *Also, fewer riding photos as I\u2019ve been stuck riding the trainer as September has been so rainy.<\/em><\/p>\n What I\u2019m Listening To<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This month\u2019s note has shifted a bit due to the Hurricane Helene disaster; I removed a story, a photo and changed the first topic. It\u2019s been an inconceivably disastrous few weeks. I don\u2019t have the words to describe the destruction we\u2019ve seen in North Carolina due to Hurricane Helene. This disaster will affect all of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":179395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[27059,30865,1159,11209,4757,20720,4517,4238,11238],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-179394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate","tag-charlottesville","tag-helene","tag-home","tag-market","tag-monthly","tag-note","tag-october","tag-update","tag-values"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3ab8b194-9b21-4b8b-9306-4c45d2aa27d8_1440x1800.jpeg)
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