Ever wondered about the costs, challenges, and benefits of living in the mountains or building your own home? This episode sheds light on these topics and more. We kick things off by commemorating Veterans Day and chatting about local happenings in Henderson County, such as the traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall and the recent Poplar Drive Fire. We also share the inspiring story of local veteran AJ, and explore the critical factors to consider when budgeting for a new home.
Unpacking the allure of a life nestled in the bosom of mountains, we delve into the unique experiences it offers and the challenges it can present. The serenity and historic charm of these remote areas are undeniably captivating, but they come hand-in-hand with practical hurdles like winding roads and limited services. To make your relocation decision easier, we introduce two fun and insightful tests – the Martini Drive test and the pizza test.
Finally, we share key tips to help you navigate the process of building or selling homes. Whether it's considering the cost of land, site prep, and additional features in your budget, or preparing your house for sale with deep cleaning, minor repairs, and decluttering, we've got you covered. We zoom in on bathroom upgrades, revealing potential costs and the benefits of working with top 1% real estate agents. Don't miss out on these practical insights to inform your real estate decisions!
Ever wondered about the costs, challenges, and benefits of living in the mountains or building your own home? This episode sheds light on these topics and more. We kick things off by commemorating Veterans Day and chatting about local happenings in Henderson County, such as the traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall and the recent Poplar Drive Fire. We also share the inspiring story of local veteran AJ, and explore the critical factors to consider when budgeting for a new home.
Unpacking the allure of a life nestled in the bosom of mountains, we delve into the unique experiences it offers and the challenges it can present. The serenity and historic charm of these remote areas are undeniably captivating, but they come hand-in-hand with practical hurdles like winding roads and limited services. To make your relocation decision easier, we introduce two fun and insightful tests – the Martini Drive test and the pizza test.
Finally, we share key tips to help you navigate the process of building or selling homes. Whether it's considering the cost of land, site prep, and additional features in your budget, or preparing your house for sale with deep cleaning, minor repairs, and decluttering, we've got you covered. We zoom in on bathroom upgrades, revealing potential costs and the benefits of working with top 1% real estate agents. Don't miss out on these practical insights to inform your real estate decisions!
This is the plain English real estate show with your host, rowena Patton, a show that focuses on the real estate market in terms you can easily understand. Call Rowena now. The number is 240 9962 1-800-570-9962. Now here's the English girl in the mountains, the agent that I would trust, rowena Patton.
Speaker 2:Good morning. This is Rowena Patton on the real estate news radio show and happy Veterans Day. Happy Veterans Day.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:We did Happy Marine's birthday yesterday 248th, I believe it was 248th. Do you know? The Marines are older than the USA.
Speaker 3:No, I didn't know that. Well, we got lots of things going on. The traveling Vietnam memorial wall is in Henderson County at the Veterans Healing Farm. It arrived Thursday afternoon and will be open 24-7 until 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon.
Speaker 2:The traveling Vietnam wall.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Interesting, yes, yes.
Speaker 3:Lots of the brothers and sisters like these will be reading a lot of their stories there and lots of things going on around that presentation.
Speaker 2:I'm going to look that up because we have a veteran in town. Aj and his really good friend drove in and surprised him. He's been through a lot of medical issues recently. My honey, randy, and his veteran friend drove from Texas, from Houston, to surprise him on Friday. Fantastic, and they're both Marines, they were in the Marines together and now they're in the 50s, so I think they might be interested to see that.
Speaker 3:Oh, of course they would, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that might be something we do later today. Hopefully the weather will clear up a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't think we're in for a lot of rain that we need, but it's just a little drizzly this morning.
Speaker 2:Well, it was on there yesterday as well. Right, it was all drizzly and gray, but we do need it. You're right, everything's looking a bit brown and gray. Well, we're in a severe drought.
Speaker 3:The crews are getting control of that forest fire in Henderson County. The Poplar Drive Fire, 434 acres and I think they have it 35% contained, I think.
Speaker 2:Wow. So surely the rain's going to help with that, hopefully. So we also have AJ in town talking about. He may just call in later, we'll see. You know it was the Marine Corps birthday yesterday, so they might have had a big day. He may well call in, we'll see. He has a building firm in Houston and they do high-end luxury homes just gorgeous, gorgeous homes and he's looking into using the Builder CPO, which is the latest program that we've added for builders, because you know, a lot of the time when someone's building a new house they put the order in. It might well.
Speaker 2:If you're building it here, it's probably going to be 18 months from groundbreaking to being finished. Wow, yeah, so you know Houston has lots of flatland, charlotte has lots of flatland, so when you have lots of flatland and you're building 100, 200, 300, 400 homes, they can build them very quickly because they've got all these crews and they're rotating around. They've got six different styles. We don't tend to have those big neighborhoods in Western North Carolina because we've got mountains, so it's a little tricky to do those. At least that's the reason I'm told that we do have big sways of land, but I guess a lot of it has been gobbled up and there's just not enough to build those. You know the volume in that way, so it takes a lot longer here and it tends to be a lot more expensive. In fact, when people are looking into building a home, they often choose to buy a pre-existing one, even though our housing market is relatively expensive to other areas Once they look into it.
Speaker 2:And what I can say is if you're even thinking about building a home and you are looking at purchasing a piece of land, please be careful with that. Make sure you've got a great agent. We might be able to help you. And you know we have a lot of people saying we want five acres or even an acre for $50,000 or $25,000. There's plenty of land out there. You can get a lot in a neighborhood for $10,000 or less. We have a bunch of them, so it's not that hard to get land.
Speaker 2:And what I'd rather you didn't do is buy a piece of land saying, oh, the land's going away. We're not going to be able to find land, so we're going to buy it now and hold on to it and one day we'll build something. Let me tell you how I know this, because so many of you come to me to list the land 20 years later and it's been sitting there and you've been paying taxes on it, and if it's in an HOA, you pay it, paying homeowner dues on it. So it just doesn't tend to be cost effective. And just make sure that you understand what your full budget is. So that's another question I ask people that are thinking about building what's your full budget? And what I find is most people haven't thought about it. Well, here's the problem there. Why would you be buying a piece of land when you've no idea the price of the home you're putting on it? And I'll tell you why that's important. Because you're probably saying, hey, it's no problem at all, because one day we'll know how much money we've got to build a house in 10 years when we retire or whatever it is. So your land should not exceed 20%, and preferably 15%, of the home.
Speaker 2:I've got a whole chart on this in my blog, actually. So All-Star Powerhouse. I will post it on the All-Star Powerhouse Facebook page here shortly so you can see that I'm actually bringing it up, because it helps me as well. We try and leverage this in terms of when I write something, I make a blog post out of it, so I can find it in future. I do all the research and who can remember all of this stuff and all of the tables and everything else? Some of them, of course, are fairly straightforward.
Speaker 2:So if we talk about land for a minute, when you buy that land, normally you are going to have to clear some trees off it, clear some dead trees off it, put a driveway in. You may have to add a septic or tie into the sewer. You may have to tie into the water lines or dig a well. All of that costs money and it's important to have an idea of how much that's going to cost, because that basically dictates the amount Excuse me that you're going to spend on the land. That makes sense, right? Because if you ever go to sell that property, I always want you to go in thinking about selling. I know that sounds crazy. You're like oh, it's going to be my forever home. Do you want me to tell you how many times I've heard that, that it's going to be a forever home? I felt that way myself. I've done the same thing. Oh, this is going to be it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:How many times have you?
Speaker 2:done that? Of course, several. Yeah, it's normal. So you know there's a number of questions you want to ask yourself. So one of them is you know what's the most important factor in the location? So do you mind being out in the boonies? Do you want to be in a homeowner's association? Have you had any experience with a homeowner's association before? Most people either love it or hate it. There's not much in between Right, right. Having been the president of one for five years, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I've been on both sides of that too.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I really have People fighting about somebody's dog pooped down the corner and who's going to pick it up, and then, oh, let's all take a vote and spend a lot of money putting the poop bag stations up, and then people fighting about who's going to empty the poop stations and pay for the bags, and you know, just goes on and on and on. Dog poop is the number one issue in an HOA. It's not I mean I'm serious, it really is. In most HOAs, dog poop is the major issue.
Speaker 3:Yeah, animals, period cats or whatever Spouses.
Speaker 2:Definitely so. The location is very important, obviously, and you know a lot of people come to the mountains and they think, oh, we're going to be on a mountain top somewhere and far away from the city and the busyness of our work life, and it's just going to be so peaceful and lovely looking at the birds every morning. And then reality hits. I call it the martini drive or the martini test. Do you want to drive up that mountain after a martini or when it's dark?
Speaker 3:Or surrounded by tinderbox forest.
Speaker 2:Yes, surround. Well, we don't tend to have those fires though. That's unusual, that's really unusual, thank goodness, yeah, but medical care Well, that's the thing you may need. Medical care, you may, okay, so you don't drink. You're telling me you don't drink? Okay, how about the gallon of milk? Test, right, so you're up there on that beautiful mountain top, little birds tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet. See the bats flying across at night. Honey, look, there's a bat. See the bear rolling by hopefully not rolling, that would be weird.
Speaker 2:Strolling, Strolling not rolling, yeah, rolling would be hit by a trick, and rolling down, that would be, terrible.
Speaker 2:So you know it's all lovely and everything. It's like honey. I want to make some pancakes. Oh, we don't have any milk. Are you going to drive Even 20 minutes on windy roads? Now, you may love it, in which case that's great, but I want you to really seriously think about that. Maybe have an air B&B for a week or two up in the boonies and just check that's what you want, because it's one thing for a summer home, which many people have here, because we're in the south but we're at elevation, so it tends to stay cooler. You know we have. Yeah, it gets a little hot sometimes, but it's not hot like the rest of the south. It really isn't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the pizza will not be hot.
Speaker 2:The pizza won't be. Oh, the pizza delivery. You won't even get pizza delivery most of the time.
Speaker 3:Wifi it's gone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got the Wifi issues. Thank you, randy. That's a very the pizza test. Well, do you get delivery? That's another thing you miss if you've lived in a city, so I used to live in. Well, this is blows me away, honestly. I'm now in Mills River. I used to live in West Asheville. West Asheville, you could get anything Right, I could, you know, step outside and literally walk to I don't know half a dozen of the best restaurants in Asheville. I don't miss West Asheville at all, honestly. However, now I'm in Mills River, we're lucky if we can get a pizza delivered. Yeah, I don't understand that at all. There's a lot of people who live south of Asheville and yet it's difficult to get delivery. So imagine now, just out in the boonies, just a little bit, on that mountaintop. It's serene and beautiful, and you're on your two acres or your five acres or your 10 acres and now you can't get a pizza.
Speaker 3:I did it. I did it in 08 and 09.
Speaker 1:You did.
Speaker 2:I moved out and it was beautiful.
Speaker 3:I could see into Tennessee. It's gorgeous, wow. But I couldn't get a pizza of that place for nothing, for loving their money. Or anything In a net service and you know. And so now I'm right on Sweeten Creek in South Asheville and I can see five, I can see the movie theater, you know, I mean it's.
Speaker 2:And the mountains too. There's a lot of this area where you can still see the mountains and really I'm not trying to talk you out of getting some peace and being out there in the peace and quiet. That's actually where I grew up, that's what I grew up in. But I just want you to think about it really carefully because when you build that house out there, that's going to be a harder well, first of all, it's harder to build because in the middle of nowhere and you've got all the trucks delivering everything at windy roads very often they're windy roads and secondly, if you ever come to sell it, it's most likely going to be a much harder sale.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't doubt that I leased this house for a year Thank goodness because I didn't at the end of that year. I didn't. I mean, this thing had a deck, I mean it was a mile down there to the bottom of that. Oh wow. You know it was gorgeous, but at the end of the year I wanted to come back home.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, that's why I think you know, even a couple of weeks in an Airbnb just be really realistic what happens if you know someone twists an ankle or needs hospital care or get down to the. Do you go to the doctors on a regular basis? Really, we could create a whole chart on this, honestly, where you fill it in and we choose the neighborhood for you. I've actually got one of those, strangely enough, my nerdy time. So the location is really really important, so you know. Another thing is do you want a new home? What weight does historic charm bring for you? And I mentioned I mentioned that I have a whole chart on this on the website. If you go to allstarpowhouscom, there's a little search site at the top and just put in building a home versus buying, vs buying Building a home will probably bring it right up. So do you want historic charm?
Speaker 2:We have a lot of beautiful historic houses here. In fact, for Art Deco homes, we're second only to Miami in terms of how many Art Deco homes we have or Art Deco buildings. We also have a lot of arts and crafts. That's the predominant style here and they are absolutely beautiful. We have newer homes being built in the arts and craft style and, of course, a lot of industrial modern. I mentioned AJ earlier. That's the primary style of the homes he builds and they're absolutely gorgeous. I wish I had his card with me because I'd send you to his website to look at them. They're amazing. I'll post it on our Facebook page for allstarpowhous later on. So a lot of what you see. You are seeing some newer homes that are industrial modern. The primary style here, I'd say, is still arts and crafts, would you say? That's true, randy?
Speaker 2:I think, so, yeah, so, and a lot of people love that. Now, if it's a more historic home, you may have a tiny owner suite bathroom, because that's what we used to have. We didn't have these big, luxurious, giant bathrooms. They were tiny. So, you know, is that important to you or not? And you may want to put up with it for now because you love the charm so much, or you may want a new home that has those things that are more important to you.
Speaker 2:What I usually suggest to people is write down a list and put what I call the waiting next to it. So you know, make it on a spreadsheet. You know I'm the spreadsheet girl. It's much easier and if you're a couple or a family, put all the things down there and then put some columns at the top. You know, mom, dad, kids, whatever dog the dog can choose as well and then score all those things one to 10. And then you consult them and see which things are most important to all of you. Now, like everything in life, it's a compromise. You don't want to be arguing about it. Of course, if it's just you, you're fine, although choosing the waiting, ie the priority or the importance of that thing, can be really tricky.
Speaker 2:For example, people say I've got to have a fence backyard. I'm looking for a home, I need a fence backyard. And I always say most often you can add a fence. So why are we even thinking about that? You're spending four, five hundred, a million, two million dollars on a house but you're worried about having a fence in backyard. That's going to cost us. Well it depends on big yard is 3,000, 10,000, 15,000, depends how big it is. But that's such a small amount of the overall cost of the house we can easily add it. So it may be immersed, that's fine. So we probably want to look outside an HOA or find you an HOA that allows fences, because they don't all allow fences. And secondly, make sure there's enough in the budget to be able to put that in. Chances are if you. You know price points now 450 to 550, if you're buying at that price point, you can probably afford the additional 15,000. Or we just put an offer in 15,000 less to get your fence in.
Speaker 2:You know how important is it. Is it immersed? That sounds like a small one, but it may be important to you to have a large owner's bathroom or a garage garage. That's another very common one If you've got the extra land there, you can build a garage. Yes, it's expensive. It might be 40, 50, $60,000 for a good, you know, a good size, well-built garage, not talking about just, you know, throwing up a canopy or something. However, again, if it's immersed, then you might want to think about that. Here's why the majority of homes here do not have a garage, right, randy?
Speaker 3:Right and I miss when the places that I've had a garage and I don't now and I miss it terribly.
Speaker 2:Yes, interesting, isn't it? So, especially as the winter comes, it's like oh.
Speaker 2:I could pull my car in. Actually, I don't remember the last time I used a garage and I've had one for a long time. It's really about pulling up close to the door for me, but that's a whole other subject. So you know, think about what would it take to build a garage, because there are very, very few here and the older homes that do have garages they were the posh homes back in the day the garages are about big enough for a child's toy car. You can't you really can't fit even an economy car in those garages and they're not going to have electronic doors or anything else. So it's really a big storage unit taking up the space where you could build a modern garage.
Speaker 2:The good news is that many houses don't have garages at all and if you've got the space, there's no reason you can't build that garage. People always ask why don't you have garages here, and I think it's because it's so temperate. You know we don't get a lot of snow Right when we do, it mounts off really quickly. We do get rain, but it doesn't. You know we don't have that freezing cold for six months of the year, please tell me, we don't.
Speaker 3:No, no Coming into winter.
Speaker 2:We don't we don't Makes me sad.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I know the time change. Oh my God, I don't like that anymore.
Speaker 2:No one likes it. Please call in 240 9962, 828 240 9962. I know you're listening around the country 800 570 9962,. 800 570 9962. We'd love to hear what you think of the time change. A lot of people don't know this. I used to work for an insurance company. Heart attacks go through the roof, Suicides go through the roof. The entire country is suffering from jet lag. Think about jet lag when you've had jet lag. It takes sometimes a week. It's definitely two or three days. The whole country has jet lag for two or three days.
Speaker 3:It took me about to Wednesday to kind of get back to normal yeah.
Speaker 2:Car accidents, all kinds of things. So especially when someone works, you know if you're retired out there and your your sleep changes and everything, maybe you don't notice it as much. But when you have to get up and go to work or take the kids to school, you know people have really noticed it, but it's out there. The only reason I know this is because of working for an insurance company and the insurance claims go through the roof and more people kill themselves. It's horrible. More divorces, divorce rate applications go up. It's scary.
Speaker 3:So why are we still doing this Congress? Get off your butts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really, somebody did say something interesting to me last night and this is standard time, so this is what we would stick at.
Speaker 3:Well, is that true? I don't know. Well, the other is daylight savings. Some have said that that's the one we would stay with.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's the one we'd want to stay with. I do too. Yeah, I do too, and it's you know, kids get up very early in the morning. That's the argument now. I mean it used to be for farmers back in the day. Kids get up early. They can't be going early in the dark it's almost always dark anyway, because they have to go to school so early, exactly.
Speaker 2:Never really figured that out here. Our school times were nine to five in England, so it fitted in with you know anytime. Well, it fitted in with parents work hours yeah Most people work.
Speaker 2:I mean not everybody, obviously, but most people work nine to five. So so, if you're thinking about building a home, give us a call 1-800-517-9962. Would love to answer your questions, or catch me out Give me a real estate question and I'll see if I can answer it for you 800-517-9962. This is Rowena Patton on the Real Estate News Radio Show on 570 AM, wwnc. We're talking about building a home today, so let's talk about number three. How much does cost matter? In other words, how important is your budget? Do we know anybody that budget is an important for?
Speaker 3:I don't know any of those people.
Speaker 2:I don't either, so you know it's so. The price is quoted for new homes in the US is 160 to 250 a square foot. Good luck with that.
Speaker 1:Is that Bear Bones?
Speaker 2:I don't know who's going to build your home for 160. It may be quoted at that, but you find it usually comes around 300. About double, yeah and and. Well, it's the top end. You know is quoted at 250 for national. But here you've got to think about 300 a square foot. If you want something luxury, you're talking about 400 or 500 a square foot.
Speaker 2:Now, nobody builds a thousand square foot house, or very few people do. However, that's easy math. So we're going to do a thousand square foot house and then double it. So a thousand square feet, 300,000, which is it really is build a basic. It's going to be 300,000. Now, a 2,000 square foot home, which is what most people build, 1800, 2000 square foot. You're talking about $600,000 for build a basic.
Speaker 2:But here's the issue. So you're at 600 for a $200,000 house, 2000 square feet, sorry, so it does not take into account the land. Then you got to buy the land on top of it. So if you're building a $600,000 house, you don't want it to be more than 10%. So you, 60 is 10%, so 90 is 15. So you don't want to spend that much money. Make sure you keep it under that. 15%, 20% tops, right, so that gives you the budget for the land. Now if your budget for a home is not 700,000 because that's about what that comes out to You've got a problem because you've got the land and the home and you don't want the land to be 200,000 and then put a manufactured home on it. It doesn't make sense because you're not gonna get that many out.
Speaker 2:When you buy an existing home, the prices are quoted square foot but the cost of the land is built into it. That's the difference. When you build a home, you don't get the land for free. You've gotta buy the land. So there's a whole estimating list on here. So you've gotta estimate how much your lot will cost. We've got a link to the site on there where you can go to mountainhomehuntcom If you're interested in land. Mountainhomehuntcom, take a look at what land costs and then, when you've looked at the land, you want to add $40,000 to the lot price and that's for site prep. People say that's so much. Well, not really. Take the trees down.
Speaker 3:Dig a well, put the driveway in.
Speaker 2:Sceptic, Sceptic. Yeah, you really want to allow that much. You may want to put some rock features in or do some landscaping. Somebody in our neighborhood just spent $125,000 on landscaping alone. I don't doubt that.
Speaker 2:So $40,000 isn't very much. So you've gotta build that into the cost as well, and you definitely want to. So if a home builder's quoting you a price, add 20%. This is an old adage, and people sit down with the builder and they say you know, I've heard that you add 20%, but I'm sure you'll keep to the cost, won't you? And builders go, oh, yeah, yeah. And then on the journey you think oh gosh, I just saw this. You know, you're building a home. Now you're all excited. You're looking in magazines and you're buying all the home building magazines. And you're looking online and you'll want that chandelier and it's $3,000. There's a change order, that back splash, that builder basic back splash. You found these beautiful glass tiles $10,000. Like it just keeps going. So add 20% always, because even if the builder isn't trying to charge you more, then it's very, very likely that you will come up with other things that you want along the way. So add 20% for that.
Speaker 2:So the fourth question what's the importance of your timing? Now? The great thing is because we have the builder CPO, and I'll tell you what that is in a minute. It's based on the cash CPO. You can choose your move in time. Now, how does that work? Well, you've probably got a house you need to sell. That's fine, because we can do the builder CPO for you. That is where we can make a full market value cash offer on your home, get you the majority of the money within 12 days and the rest of the money when we resell it.
Speaker 2:After we've done the inspection, the appraisal, your home is gonna be certified pre-owned. They sell 11% faster. Five to 6% more. Why? Because we've given it a fresh coat of paint. We're doing one where we're putting a new septic in right now. It may need a new roof.
Speaker 2:When you have your home inspected and I've been talking to you about this for years, you'll know certified pre-owned launched it in 2007. That's actually where a cash CPO came from. Now we get our funding partner, zoomcast, to do it for you, which is awesome. They put the money up front for you. So we've been doing CPO for a really long time. It's really important to do that. Now we can make you that cash offer. So and it's a full market value cash offer. It's not any old cash offer. There's an ad running that. I just got out of New York yesterday that has yours truly on it. You can go and see me doing my little TV spot at cashcpocom cashcpocom at the top it tells you a lot more about the cash CPO and how it works and, from the builders perspective, what we do. And we're working with builders all around the country to do this. The agent will make a full market value offer on your home. You can choose your move out and you can keep that offer in your back pocket until your builder is complete.
Speaker 2:Who wouldn't want to do that? I mean, doesn't that make sense? You've got all your stuff in your home. Well, it's very frustrating and nerve-wracking and can be very stressful waiting on your builder to get finished. Maybe that some materials aren't.
Speaker 2:It's often not the builders problem. It could be that some materials aren't available. Or that beautiful hood that you chose for over the range isn't available, or that beautiful chandelier that you said change order. Oops, it's on back order. There's all kinds of little things. Now, chandelier probably wouldn't stop you moving in, but there are things that would Maybe the floors that you wanted down. You know something like that. Maybe I don't know, something has gone on where there's been a leak and we need to replace some of the floors because one of the pipes froze or who knows, aj's in Houston, so he doesn't have that problem at all. However, you just don't know what happens in house building and there are often delays. We all know that. So it's very, very hard when you're doing something as intricate and complex as building a home, especially when us, as the buyers, often say oh, we wanna change something half the way along, you know, and that changes everything. It stops the flow of the home build.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good point.
Speaker 2:So you know, oh, it's gotta be ready for Christmas.
Speaker 3:Well, this house I've leased while you're building. My lease runs out. I've got to ever, you know.
Speaker 2:Yes. So you know, often people are saying and we're dealing with this right now with somebody that has a deposit down on the new home. It's being built and it's gonna be ready in two weeks, and now they need to sell the house. The house is already listed. And because they were in the mindset of the last two years where things were selling really fast and multiple offers like, oh, we don't need to list it right until the last minute, well, guess what? It's been listed for a month and it hasn't sold. It's still sitting there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the Builder CPO is perfect for this. The agent will come in make a full market value offer. You can see BuilderCPOcom, it gives you all the details for this. It's based on a cash offer, so it's the same thing, except it's a full market value. I can't say that enough. And why do I keep stressing that? Because all top realtors around the country 95% of them at least have a real-to-cash offer. Real-to-cash offers are usually 60 to absolute top 70% of your home's value. Buy ugly houses. You're lucky if you get 50 or 60%. You've got investors out there that want to buy them at 50 or 60% so that they can make some money when they flip it. It's just a business model. There's no judgment on that at all. That's not what this cash offer is. There's nothing like it on the market. It is 100% of your market value that's being offered. It's incredible Not only that, it's a certified pre-owned home and you all know why.
Speaker 2:I know about that because I've been running CPOexpertscom since 2007. That's where you, as the homeowner, and you can do this yourself too. You, as the homeowner, are very much stressed doing it. If you're listed right now, pay for the inspection. So you're going to pay $400, $500 for the inspection in most places in the country. Some of them are $600 in different states and have an appraisal. We haven't been doing that for the last couple of years because of the changes in value. Now we're in a declining market.
Speaker 2:An appraisal is a snapshot of your value in time. We all know that. However, having an appraisal is like evidence. It's not one agent talking to the other agent saying Mavis, how did you come up with that price? And Mavis said I did my comps. And I say well, why did you choose the one with the blue door? And Mavis says why did you choose the one with the red door? And it just goes on and on. And appraisal is very different. Appraisers are able to use a lot more details than we are, and it's all they do every single day.
Speaker 2:You can also offer a home warranty. That's the trifecta. And you can go to cashcpocom that talks about certified pre-owned homes. We've pretty much shifted from certified pre-owned homes into cashcpo because instead of you paying for the appraisal, instead of you paying, which also gives you all your square footage and measurements and floor plans and everything else, instead of paying for the inspection and then having an inspection report and, trust me, it's got 40 or 50 items on it, that's normal. Every inspection report has items on it. I've never seen a clean one. I'm at 3200 transactions in Western North Carolina right now and a number in different states as well DC, los Angeles, miami I've never seen a clean inspection. There's no such thing. They will find things Well. The difference in this is when you're going to get 70% most likely 70% as an advanced cash offer within 12 days, that's why it's so great for when you move again Now you're not just going to get 70%, which is a traditional cash offer.
Speaker 2:Most people give you less than 70%. We're going to paint the inside, we're going to, if it needs it. We're going to put new countertops in, if it needs it. We're going to fix the roof if it needs it. We're going to fix all the items on the inspection report at no upfront cost to you. It does come off the profit when it resells, but it's going to resell for more. Because guess why, as buyers, we're lazy these days. We don't want to do anything, we don't want to paint, we don't want to buff up the floors.
Speaker 2:No, what's the clear coat, the surround coat, the stuff you put on cars?
Speaker 3:Yes, surround coat. Yes, a coat of protection on the finish of your car.
Speaker 2:Have you seen how they're advertising that now, if you're selling your car, you need to use this on the black stuff, because they sell for so much more when you clean it up.
Speaker 3:I hadn't thought about that I have some of those companies that advertise with me. That's a good point, that stuff's amazing too it really is.
Speaker 2:It's got thousands and thousands of five star reviews. I mean, people love it. It lasts for 10 years, sometimes Right, 200 car washes, I think it said. Now I was trying to figure out okay, if you go twice a week, you've got the new zip things now where you just go through any time you want to. How soon is it going to wear off? But at least it's there for the time and you don't have all that white stuff on your plastic bumpery bits. Is that the technical term for it?
Speaker 1:Plastic bumpery bits.
Speaker 2:So your house is kind of the same way People go into a house. We had one recently that we were looking at for a buyer. This is a true story. It had a big old dog that had some abscesses and things and everybody loved the dog and the dog was all over the furniture. Yeah, it was not pretty. The house needed a deep clean. There were lots of kids in the house, two smokers in the house who said they smoked outside, but I beg to differ a little bit. They had a beautiful sunroom that was leaking just all kinds of little things that needed doing. Had we put that into this program and we did a deep clean, a fresh paint everywhere, some minor structural things, very minor structural things, we could have spent about $10,000 and instead of selling it for $375 easily got $450 easily For $10,000?.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Most homeowners, because the dog would have been out, the kids would have been out, all their big furniture, smelly furniture would have been out and the kitchen would have had a deep, clean, fresh coat of paint. The things that came upon the inspection report would have been completed. People love that.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It allows it to compete with newer homes, because there's nothing wrong with it. Buyers get very, very scared off by inspections. Over 30% of deals it's just over 33% of deals fall out when they're under contract, which is very scary. It's primarily because of the inspection and the appraisal, but primarily we're going to see more appraisal issues coming up here. They already are. The next three to five years. Guys get ready. That also means homes are more affordable. Just bear in mind things are going to come up.
Speaker 2:This is a way by getting the cash offer or the builder's CPO, where they will upfront the money to take care of all these things. They're used to doing it. We have teams of people now that come in and do it. They have project managers. Things get done quickly. You get a proposal. You're still in control. Two thirds of sellers get more money than with an old fashioned real estate sale. I don't doubt that one bit. You don't have to have people traipsing through your house You're not worried about. Are they going to steal my painkill pills or whatever it is you've got in the house? Oh, I've unlocked my guns up. We're in the mountains. We've got guns in the mountains.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they stole my cowboy hat and my guitar and my cowboy boots. One time you serious, I'm very serious, I thought you were joking, I'm still hurting over that. That's been 20 years ago. I don't know who took that, but somebody was working.
Speaker 2:Some girl probably.
Speaker 3:So no, I was married then and there was people working in my house all the time coming and going. You know, you never know.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden you look up where's that you know Well who wants strangers in the house, honestly, really. And if you've got little ones or pets, that gets more difficult and it's really good. And you know, if you're selling your house for sale by owner, remember this you really don't want to be in the house. It's not good, people don't like you. So my sellers sometimes stay back and they want to explain everything that's been done to the house.
Speaker 2:The buyers don't want to hear that. They want to feel like they're walking into a new house that isn't yours, that didn't have all these problems that you might be proud of the fact that you've you fixed them and you've created this beautiful gem. You know. But it doesn't help when you're like oh yeah, we put new carpet in and spent $5,000. Well, whoop-de-doo, because it probably stank as your dog. You know, I mean it just they don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear that it used to be half the size. Like, did you get put that those are red flags. They want to walk around and imagine it as their home.
Speaker 2:So it's way better if you are out and yes, that means you've got to take the dogs out and it's like oh, my dogs are friendly. This is what I get told. Oh, my dogs are friendly, that's great. Try it when a realtor comes in and who they don't know, and two strangers come with them and that doggie somehow knows that their house is going away. Yes, they do. So please don't tell me your dog's friendly and it's not gonna hurt anyone. You don't want the potential buyers coming in and focusing on the dog, that's right.
Speaker 2:You know. Or the dog the dog may be friendly and, you know, maybe snuggling around the legs. I mean, we don't want that Nibbling at the shoelaces. It might be a lovely, friendly dog. That's not what we want in place. Babies crying, you know, kids, stuff, everywhere. It doesn't help with your sale. So again, the Builder the Builder, cpo, buildercpocom you see more about it there that allows for you to choose your move out date and the offer to be made. You can move into your new home. So, let's say, your home is ready the day before Thanksgiving Uh-oh, it was supposed to be ready two weeks before Thanksgiving, of course, and it ends up being ready the day before Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, so, but that's okay, because we've got your offer in play and we knew around the time it was gonna be ready. We can get you out and into that new home for Thanksgiving. Now you get to enjoy Thanksgiving. I mean, that's not so bad, is it really? So, you know? And then we resell it and you get another fat check.
Speaker 2:Two-thirds of sellers get more than with an old-fashioned listing, and timing is the important thing. When you list your house now, you don't know when it's gonna sell, and you have to trust me on this. I'm 3,200 more transactions in. When a home is freshened up, when you clean up the right things. I've got a seller coming to me now saying you know, I don't wanna sell my house right now because I wanna refinish the bathrooms. Please don't refinish the bathrooms.
Speaker 2:We're in a declining market. Most likely, most likely, next spring, your house isn't gonna be worth as much. I'm sorry to tell you. It's normal Seven to 11-year cycle. I've been telling you this for two years now. It's finally happened. We've had one of the longest climbing markets in history, where some of us think it was artificially propped up by interest rates that were so low. That's really hitting the market now, of course, because we all got used to those 3% rates and we just had a little drop, but we're still in the sevens. That's a shock to many people and it's flattened out the housing market. So please don't spend more money on your home. It's just not worth it. Don't put that 20, 30, $40,000 in. It's probably not gonna be worth it. You're not gonna get it out.
Speaker 2:If you want to sell, people are like oh, the holidays are coming up. The holidays are a great time to sell your house. It's all festive and lovely and you've got it all decorated. You've probably got family coming around so it smells good and it's cleaned up and you can hold showings to once a week if you want to, or when you're out Maybe you're out at church on that Sunday morning Just have showings Sunday mornings because the chances are there's still not.
Speaker 2:We're in this weird market. There's not a whole lot of inventory out there, not too many homes. We still have buyers. So if your home has been cleaned up and it's certified pre-owned, if you choose not to do the cash offer, then you're ready to go. Of course, if you do the cash offer, you don't have to have any of the showings or anything else. Just go to cashcpocom, click on Get my Offer and we'll get you your offer very, very quickly. It is the weekend so it might take it a little bit more than 30 seconds, which is our average turnaround time. But you can definitely look at your value on there and we'll come to an agreement on that full market value offer. You've got to have somewhere to go. Of course you probably have to go and camp out with your neighbors or friends or family at Thanksgiving at this point, but when you've got money in your hand because your home is sold, then that's when you can make a non-contingent offer.
Speaker 2:A lot of people are so worried about selling the home right now that they're making these contingent offers. Oh, we can't move until we find something else. And they're making these contingent offers. That means I will buy your home in Florida or I will buy your home in Waynesville when my home in Hendersonville sells. Most sellers are not going to accept that. 99% of sellers are not going to accept that, because many times it falls through. And now you're tying the home up. They want to get the home sold. They don't want to tie the home up.
Speaker 2:In the old days, back before I think it was 2011,. It changed we used to have a thing called a kick out clause. We could probably have that written now by an attorney, but it was great because basically, when you found a home, if you got a home and a contract contingent on your selling, when our person found something else, we could give you 30 days to either go through with the contract or not. It was a great clause in there. I'm not sure why they took it away. We probably could have an attorney write one up for you, but you don't want to make a contingent offer if at all possible, because sellers just aren't going to accept it.
Speaker 2:The cash CPO offer or the builder CPO offer allows you to make a non-contingent offer. You've got to have some equity in your home, obviously, because if you're not making a profit you're not getting any money out to put down on your new house. But usually it allows you to make a non-contingent offer. Ie, you don't have to sell your current home because we've bought it. So that's.
Speaker 2:The timing piece is very, very important. Now, around the country they say that the average time for a build is seven months. I'm guessing if we had AJ on today he would tell us that is what it takes him, even though he's building an ultra luxury there in Houston. However, here I would say 18 months. That's what I'm seeing, unless you have one of these tract home builders which are very uncommon here, but we do have a few they might tell you you know there might be halfway through a home already, so it might be three or six months. That is a way to do it. They tend to be on very small lots, little, teeny, tiny lots, which is great for some people because you don't want the maintenance. So if that's the kind of home we can find you. Those too, most people are doing either buying something that's pre-construction or they're building a custom home somewhere or other, or they might be putting a modular on, even a modular.
Speaker 2:Right now there's a modular place in Fletcher. I don't think anything in there is under 400,000 for a modular home. Now the modular home you've got to drag out to the land and you've got to put the foundation in. That's where that 40,000 at least comes in, plus the land. So again we're at 600,000 for a modular home.
Speaker 2:We're also asked very often, you know, we want to piece of land to put a mobile home on. That's fine too, quite, honestly, your best way there. This is what I tell people. If you're not in a big hurry, we'll set you up with a search for just mobile homes, because some of them are much older and worth about $5,000. They just need pulling off.
Speaker 2:But the great thing about having a home in place is you've got the septic or sewer, you've got the water or you've got the well, you've got the driveway, you've got the trees taken down that need taking down. You're probably gonna be able to put it there, because there's one there already. Not necessarily we have to check that out, of course, but it can be a much less expensive way of doing it Because you don't know if that land's gonna perk. You've got to check if it's gonna perk, ie can you put the septic and the water in. Most often in the mountains you're not hooking up to city water and sewer. There's still lots of very high-end neighborhoods here that have septics usually public water in the higher end neighborhoods, but they have septics. So you know it's not unusual at all when the sewer line wasn't taken down the road.
Speaker 2:And again, think about your Wi-Fi. Many people work remotely. Now a lot of people are looking to work remotely, especially if you're in high-priced California or other high-priced markets that you're moving out of DC's, another one, new York's, another one we see a lot of people coming in from those markets Florida as well Then you know you're coming in because you want to spend less money on a property. The million-dollar condo you're selling in San Francisco probably two million dollars buys you a lot of home here. So you know, obviously, take that into account.
Speaker 2:And the fifth question this is taking us right back to what we started with Is the land cost 15 to 20% of your budget? Now why do I say that? Because you know people want to put a literal stake in the ground by investing $30,000 or $40,000 in land. Without looking at that entire budget, I'm taking you right back to where we started here.
Speaker 2:Whether or not you're building now, or in five years time or 10 years time or whatever it is, you're worried that land's going to go away. I hear that a lot and, oddly, it hasn't yet. Consider what price point you think you'd be comfortable at and, quite honestly, if you can't come up with that, I wouldn't be buying land at all. You know what's your dream home. What would it cost now? Yes, we've got to add some percentage at what it's going to cost later on. Or maybe you want to build it now and Airbnb it or VRBO it Meanwhile. Why you, you know, wait for this dream and now you can actually use it yourself in the meantime, rather than having land there that's going to cost you money every single year, if only in taxes.
Speaker 2:And people say I want a view, I want it Creekfront. You know, I want to oceanfront. Sorry, we can't do that for you here. So the land tends to get a little bit more expensive than you were thinking and again. You can find this at allstarpowhousecom. There's the entire list on here with all the numbers Little easier to see as a visual, obviously and just type in building a home into the search bar at the top of allstarp house. It gives you all of these figures. We send it out to everybody that signs up on our website at mountainhomehuntcom. That's the other way to do it. If you find that easier, mountainhomehuntcom, click on contact us and just ask for the table showing you what the budgets are for land.
Speaker 2:So if your total budget, say, is 400,000, that's a common one. Actually I've got the 333,000 here. That's the most common budget for a house in its entirety 3,000 to 400,000. What that means is you've got $40,000 in improvements and this is based on a 200 per square foot build. That is very low end, very low end, and a home with 1417 square feet. That is not a very big home. Two bedroom, one bath or two bedroom, two bath maybe you know, if you get the flow right you can do it, but 1417 square feet is not a big home by any means. So we can get you, you know, 1,400 square feet for 333,000, with the land being 15%, 40,000 in improvements and that's only 200 per square foot. That's going to be very, very low end, if we could even do it at that. What that means is you don't want to spend more than $10,000 on the lot, so you're most likely not going to get views, you're not going to get Creeq, you're not. You're going to get a very small lot that's value priced.
Speaker 2:So let's look at 400,000, the next most common price point. So, yeah, I think our budget will be 400,000. That, with $40,000 improvements, 200 a square foot, which honestly, is not realistic at this point. The 400, I need to redo this table because I don't know where you would get 200,000, 200 per square foot. So this is a 1700 square foot house, which again is not a big house.
Speaker 2:Most people who are building build 2000 and up. So 1700 square foot house and this is a 200 square foot, which again is very low. That don't spend more than $20,000 to hit that 15% and that's a total budget of 400,000, right, 1700 square foot house, very, very basic. So my point is you could we can also set up a search for you at 400,000 and find you a home with everything in place. I'm not telling you not to build, I just want you to go in with eyes wide open. So let's go up to what we think of as a bit more luxury 533,000. There are people out there that consider themselves luxury 500 to 600. So if you're at that 500 to 600, you don't want to spend more than $50,000 on a lot, and $50,000 on a lot is not a lot of money. That's not going to get you a whole lot of lot.
Speaker 3:No no.
Speaker 2:So let's say, if your total budget is $1 million, you don't want to spend more than $120,000. And again, 200 square foot at a million dollar mark really is not realistic. So it's going to be more like don't spend more than $100,000. And that's going to get you something like a 4,000 square foot, something like that home. So I hope that puts it into perspective for you when you're building a home.
Speaker 2:We haven't done a show on this for a long, long time. And remember, if you are buildercpocom, it's all based on the cash CPO. You can check it out at cashcpocom. Of course, if you're even thinking about selling, have us come in, get a value. Or you can go to cash CPO and get your value right there.
Speaker 2:Cashcpocom this is Rowena pattern, all Star Powerhouse Brokered by EXP. We can do the cash offer all over the country. We have lots of partners now all over the country, so it doesn't matter where you're at. I know we have listeners everywhere. So if you're even thinking about selling or selling in the spring, let us come in now and let us discuss with you what this would look like, so you don't waste money on the wrong things. Please, please, please don't upgrade the bathroom. I'm sure there are things we can do with it or we can help you do at a lesser cost. All top agents everywhere in the country cash CPO. We only have top 1% agents. You've got to be in the top 1% of the market to be in it. We are able to help you on what to spend the money on. I will see you on the radio next week. It's been great having you here today. Rowena pattern, all Star Powerhouse. Give us a call 828-333-4483.
Speaker 1:This has been the Plain English Real Estate Show with Rowena Pattern. Visit Rowena and post your questions at radioashvillecom or call her at 828-210-1648.