Real Estate News Radio with Rowena Patton

Why Your Grandma's China Is Blocking Your Next Move

• Rowena Patton

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The real estate landscape is shifting beneath our feet, and the numbers tell a compelling story. Household income requirements for homebuying have reached staggering levels - $86,000 in North Carolina, a jaw-dropping $205,000 in California, while Mississippi sits at just $48,000. These stark differences reveal why homeownership feels increasingly out of reach for many Americans.

Price cuts have become the canary in the coal mine for market shifts. When Arizona shows 37% of homes with reduced prices and North Carolina follows at 24.2%, we're seeing clear signals of a softening market. After three years of flattening prices nationwide, these indicators suggest sellers should act sooner rather than later.

Beyond the numbers lies a deeply human story about our relationship with stuff. That nightstand drawer filled with mismatched socks, obsolete chargers, and dried-up pens? It's a metaphor for how we approach our homes. Most of us wear only 5-10% of our clothing and keep furniture, china, and heirlooms we never use. This accumulated "noise" creates physical and mental clutter that complicates life transitions.

This is precisely why innovative solutions like Certified Pre-Owned home programs are revolutionizing real estate transactions. By applying the successful CPO model from the automotive industry to homes, sellers can unlock equity quickly (often within 14 days), avoid the stress of showings, and potentially receive 90-120% of market value. This approach proves especially valuable for seniors transitioning to retirement communities and homebuyers navigating new construction timelines.

The truth many agents won't tell you: approximately one-third of real estate contracts fall through, often due to inspection surprises. Pre-inspections can dramatically reduce this risk while building buyer trust and minimizing repair negotiations. For a $500,000 home, this difference can translate to thousands in savings.

Ready to rethink your relationship with your home and possessions? Start by decluttering one drawer at a time, letting go of what doesn't serve your next decade, and considering whether strategic selling approaches might better support your life transitions. The choices we make about our homes reflect far more than just real estate decisions—they shape how we live.

Speaker 1:

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 or 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 and welcome to the show. It's Rowena Patton on the Real Estate News Radio Show and we're live in Asheville, north Carolina, on this warm, rainy Saturday morning. It's awesome and I want to give you a little update. So, after 13 amazing years of being live every Saturday, the station is making cuts to save money and trying to shift us to a pre-recorded show. You may know, because I've recorded shows before. You know, sometimes it's been 13 years of this guys every single Saturday morning. So I have to do something sometimes or do reruns sometimes.

Speaker 2:

However, pre-recorded shows, they just kind of lack that same life and you can't call in. Um, we don't get as many call in these days on radio shows, but, oh my gosh, you guys used to call in all the time. And, by the way, you may call in today. If you're not listening to this on the podcast, you can call in at 828-240-9962. And if you're listening on Mars, 1-800-570-9962. And tell us what you think about the show being recorded Now. The good news is that no worries at all. And, oh gosh, big shout out to Randy Houston who produced the show for so many of those years. He's been a huge part of this journey. But no worries, you can still get your real estate news fix anywhere in the country at realestatenewsradiocom.

Speaker 2:

Come join me on the podcast, realestatenewsradiocom, because we don't know how long we'll be live on the air here on a Saturday morning, so I'd love to hear what you think about that. Realestatenewsradiocom, you can listen in on the podcast. All of these shows are podcasts and I will be doing the show on the podcast going forward, not live, because if I'm going to have to record it, I may as well just do the podcast right, kind of makes more sense, and then you can listen on your schedule. Same show, same insights. Hey, let's move with the times, guys. And if you'd rather keep hearing us live on Saturdays, like we've done for the last 13 years unlucky, unlucky for some of you I'd love to know. Just drop me a message or give us a call 828-240-9962. Would love your thoughts on that.

Speaker 2:

If you found the show useful for all of these years I know that some of you have because I go out and list your houses You're like, oh, I've been listening to you for so many years and I wouldn't go anywhere else. It's so great, because sometimes it's like I've been listening to you for 10 years and now I'm listing my home with you, and last week I had a lady call in from Denver who listens to me on the night shift because all these shows are podcast. There's also on realest news radiocom. There's a big button that says podcast and there's lots more material goes on there than the 50 minutes that I get to do on the radio every week, so you can listen to a whole bunch there more so, a whole bunch more there. Even oh, you won't be listening to me if I can't use my english correctly, right?

Speaker 2:

So what are we going to talk about today? We're going to talk about how we solve problems for people. We're doing this all over the country now. But I want to start with a couple of facts and figures. I'm hearing a lot of real estate agents training a lot of real estate agents on scripts. Nothing wrong with scripts when you first start in real estate. On scripts, nothing wrong with scripts when you first start in real estate, like anything else, you need some basis. Like when I started in radio 13 years ago, I needed like an outline of segments and how that works. You know, I didn't. I'd never done radio before. I wish you could listen to my old shows, but I heart made cuts in that as well and chopped all the old shows away, which is why I do the podcast for the last many years now, actually, so that I've got all of my own content. The early shows were really funny. You could hear my voice wobbling and I'd spend all day, thursday and Friday, preparing for the show and having about 14 pages that I read from.

Speaker 2:

It was a very different show in these days, in those days, oh my gosh. So let's have a look at some numbers. You know I run a national program so I like to look at it everywhere, but always, of course, I've got a sweet spot in North Carolina, where I'm at today. So this is the income you need to buy a house in these states. In North Carolina it's nearly $86,000. So $86,000 is household income, but often a household is one person and $86,000 is probably well, I know it's significantly higher than the average household income. That means that most people can't afford a house. Isn't that crazy to think about it that way? But wait till you hear this one guys. What do you think it is?

Speaker 2:

In California? I should start giving away trivia prices again. It's really interesting. $205,000. Now, of course, that is, you know, spread out over the country, right so? Or over the state, should I say, excuse me? So you've got those very high priced areas and I can dig into every single zip code in the country with 30 different data points with these, but the average across California. Now, some parts of California obviously are bringing that price down. So imagine, if you looked in the really high prices, what that income would be $205,000. I wonder what percentage of California earns $205,000. Crazy town, right.

Speaker 2:

So Georgia is 87. It's actually a little bit more than us. That surprised me a little bit. Florida is $101,000. It's just, it's amazing. I think of my server friends you know that are, maybe, with tips and everything else, pulling 40 or 50, that's half of the income needed towards a medium priced house. What do you do? You rent, I guess. South Carolina is $10,000 less than North Carolina, so we're at about $86,000. That's household income to afford to buy a home. Give us a call, guys. Tell us where you're at and I'll read yours out. Obviously I'm not going to. I'd be here all morning, literally, if I were reading all these out. But give us a call, 828-240-9962, tell us where you're at or where you used to be and I'll read out that one for you. Let's see if I can. Montana 119 000 that's a bit of a shocker, isn't it? Washington 160 000, like. Where are all these incomes?

Speaker 2:

coming from um. Now, if you want, let's go the other end of the spectrum, if you want to go and live somewhere inexpensive. And most of these states are hovering around the 85 000. So north carolina is 86, texas is 87 000. South carolina is 75 000, a little bit less. George is 87 000. So you know, around the same, no surprises, I guess. Mississippi 48 000. So you know, around the same, no surprises, I guess. Mississippi 48,000. So you know, and you could argue well, mississippi has lower incomes. I'm not sure whether it does or not, certainly would have lower incomes than California, for example. Louisiana 52,000. Texas is 87, which is what you know. Many of us are hovering around, which is what many of us are hovering around. Kentucky is only 58,000. Missouri 68,000. So not too far behind us over there. Kansas 66,000. Nebraska 76,000. North Dakota 74,000. Montana was a big shocker to me 119,000. Washington 160,000. Oregon 139,000. Washington 160,000. Oregon 132,000. Oh my gosh guys, utah is 135,000. That was really shocking. So yeah, so you can tell when you look at household incomes in an area why a lot of people are moving to West Virginia when it's $42,000. So get a decent job in Virginia and you know you can double up on that, but it's probably not that hard to earn $42,000. You could wait tables and do that and be able to afford a house. Kentucky is $58,000. Alabama is $57,000. I think we did that one already. I'm trying to find another inexpensive one. There aren't too many left, you guys. Iowa 63,000. That's pretty good. I mean, there's 20,000 less in salary than we are in North Carolina. Tennessee is 83,000. When did that happen? Kentucky's 59,000. I think that's the main ones covered. I'm not finding any that are too much less than that. Arizona 108,000. Well, let's talk about Arizona now 108,416, but 108 grand. Basically You've got to earn to own the median priced house. I mean that's early management. What does everybody else do? So price cuts? I've been talking about this a lot this week. I've seen a lot of real estate agents training other agents on scripts. So, like I said, scripts are great. You know, when I started in radio, I needed some scripts for that. When I started in real estate, I needed some scripts for that. Very quickly I realized that what we really need are numbers. We need to be able to tell you what's going on in the market in a truthful way. Now obviously you've heard me say this many times before. When we're talking about estate. Real estate is almost house to house. People say block to block. It's barely even block to block. Things change very quickly. Like even a zip code, it's hard to measure numbers on. So of course I'm broad brushing this when I'm looking at states. Otherwise we could do a whole show on North Carolina and just cover Western North Carolina. So price cuts are really, really important. Why? Because it's a leading indicator of what's happening in the market. For some reason, a lot of, even famous agents out there around the country when I say famous, you'll know the celebrity real estate agents, the ones that are on TV, all that good stuff Many of them are saying it's the best time to buy a house. Well, you can spin anything any which way. I believe that my audience is intelligent enough to make great decisions about anything, really if you have the right numbers given to you, because you can spin anything any which way. So I prefer just to give you the numbers and look at the numbers and uncover things that the spin doctors don't uncover. So let's look at price cuts, for example. Remember I said arizona at a hundred and eight thousand dollars to afford a medium-priced home. And these prices, by the way the way are. From April 2025, ie last month Prices in real estate are almost always last month. So Arizona is number one for price cuts. Why are price cuts important? Because when I say leading indicator, it hasn't necessarily affected the market yet. So if you look at homes a number of homes on the market that's just supply and demand. If there's a lot of homes on the market generally, that's going to put downward pressure. Actually, it's not a lot of homes on the market, it's a lot of homes on the market with less people wanting homes than homes that are on the market, homes than homes that are on the market, right? So if you, if you go into the grocery store and there's a hundred of loaves of bread and only 80 people want to buy a loaf of bread and they're not buying two loaves of bread, just say that one before someone texts me and says what, what if everybody buys two loaves of bread? Then you've got a surplus of 20 loaves of bread. So you might have to put the store special on those loaves of bread. Better, you'll see that and things that go off more quickly, right, because loaves of bread always seem to sell. But if you look at let's look at a pork chop or chicken. You know, if you've put out I don't know 500 pieces of chicken in your big grocery store and only 300 pieces of this chicken are bought, you're putting them on a manager special the next day. In other words, the price has decreased. It's all about supply and demand. It's just that simple. And you've only got so much time to sell that pork chop before you don't get any money for it, so it's almost better to sell it you know, cost plus 10% rather than the 200% that it normally is and make something, or at least not make a loss on it. Same thing with houses. If you've got 200 houses in a zip code and you've only got 100 buyers, you've got a surplus of homes. So that tends to have an effect on price. However, this takes a long time to shake out, a long time. Well, it could take a few months and the market flattened in almost every area in the country, the northeast being only. You know a few of the areas where this isn't happening quite so quickly. So here's what's happening in. Let's talk about western north carolina, for example. We've had nearly nine months of straight price cuts. Now price cuts in themselves. We always have price cuts. It's like foreclosures. We always have foreclosures. That's the other thing that spin doctors do. Oh my gosh, foreclosures are at 5%. Well, compared to what? So if they're normally at 5%, then there's been no increase. There's always some foreclosures. There's always some people that take on a mortgage, that then get medical debt or some reason why they can't afford it anymore. Maybe somebody in the neighborhood, in the household, passes away, or they get divorced or for whatever reason, they can't afford the house anymore. There's always, always foreclosures. Same thing with unemployment. There's always, always foreclosures. Same thing with unemployment. Oh my gosh, the unemployment rate is up to 4%. Compared to what right? So if it's usually running at 4%, that is a normal rate because there's always people that are unemployed. There's always that base of people that maybe don't want a job or they go in and out of unemployment. You know that might be 2% of that 4% and then there's just a Natural flow of some people that can't get another job for a while. So there's always that baseline. Let's talk about interest rates. Interest rates are never zero. So when they're 6%, and compared to what right? So that's where people spin things, because they look at what that is being compared to, or they don't look at it, they just go oh my gosh, interest rates are 6%. Well, when you peel back the layer of the onion a little bit or you start to explain those things, 6%, 6 to 7% is a normal baseline interest rate. Remember, it's never zero, right? So we've never seen it in my, in my lifetime. I don't think we've ever seen it lower than 2.75. And that was crazy town because they were trying to boost it. Well, all kinds of reasons for why the interest rate was so low. And now it's got us in a whole pickle because people won't leave the homes although that's starting to happen now. People won't leave the homes because they've got that great interest rate. But remember, you can buy something else and then refinance down the road. Yes, that costs money, but it's not a reason not to move out. When you are, maybe your family is increasing in size, maybe your family is decreasing in size. So the reason price cuts are important if you're selling your home. So we're talking about selling your home or buying your home. In that instance of those kind of situations that we're talking about If you are selling your home, I want you to really closely look at the price cuts If you are selling your home, I want you to really closely look at the price cuts. So price cuts are looking at what percentage of price cuts have changed right. So normal price cuts, if you want to look at it that way, is about 15%. So, in other words, of the active listings of homes that are listed on the MLS, then 10, 15% of them have a price cut. Arizona is 37%. It's way out in front. That means 37% of homes on the market. In some areas it's even higher than that of Arizona. Remember it's block to block, right. Sometimes it's house to house, so it it's putting them all in a pot and averaging them out. But arizona is 37. So 37 in 100 homes have a price cut. What that means is in in two months, three months, six months, remember, a lot of those homes are obviously not selling. That's why they're cutting the prices and there's always a bedrock. It's back to that bedrock again of 15, 20 percent of people that are cutting their prices right. So there's always those price cuts. It's how much has it increased? That's an indicator in how the market is shifting, because you've got home sellers that are going oh crap, we better get our home sold because prices are starting to come down. It takes a while for them to come down. The problem is, guys, if you don't get on it now, you're going to be caught when finally the alarm goes off and you really start seeing prices coming down and we call that chasing down the market. The worst case is and I go out on a lot of listing appointments and we have a big network of agents that are listing around the country. So we see a lot of this we go out and you say, yeah, I've got this to do and that to do and this little bit to improve, and I don't know, I've got to get it curb ready and I don't want to be embarrassed of people coming in. And it's not quite right. If you are going to sell, get it out there now, right? So in August, september, october, I think we're really going to see it right before winter. And then the winter not everywhere, of course, you know, in some places in the south. In fact, you know the winter is when a lot of the house buying goes on, not so much the middle states and even california, most of california and the east coast. So we are in selling season now. My prediction is that as we come into winter it will get worse, because winter, naturally, we don't sell as many houses, right? So on top of that, you've got this softening market. That's been flat for three years and now it's really softening. Why in north carolina? Because we are number 12. We are number 12 at 24.2 percent and locally in western north carolina we've got some higher figures than that. That means one in four of every houses is experiencing a price cut and and, quite frankly, if you're not cutting yours, cut it now and sell it. Don't go. Well, we don't really need to sell, that's fine. If you don't really need to sell, here's what I want you to do Take it off the market and have the mindset Good old Clément Juglar, right, clément Juglar, 1860, economic cycle 7 to 11 years. I like to work on 10 because the math is easy and it's Saturday morning and none of us want to think that hard, right? So think about 10 years. Does that house work for you for the next 10 years if it doesn't get out now? I went to see a family estate actually last week and I'm still working on I've got a number of calls out and just examining all of that. So if you guys are listening, don't worry I'm working on it Number of calls out to how to assess the value on it and I'm trying to think how to say things without giving things away here. The couple who own it are in their 80s. They've had the home for the homes and all the land for 30 years and there's lots of stuff. I mean all of us right that have had homes for 30 years, have lots of stuff. And you know I said listen is I mean I can barely even say this is going to work for you for 10 years, because they'll be in their 90s at that point. The last thing they'll want to deal with is all this acreage and clearing out three houses. There's three houses on the property, so that means we've got to get it on as soon as possible. So what would be? And this is? I want to come back to scripts for a minute, because all the scripts in the world aren't going to save you with this. Real estate agents. You have to do, you have to like really work on your brain and start with some common sense. Take your real hat off and look at what is happening with people, because people are what real estate is all about. What is going on with them, you know, in your 80s. Finally, the kids who are mid-50s are saying, saying we don't want to be left with all this stuff. You know there's lots of people with four bedroom, five bedroom houses that have had them for 13, 40 years, raised their kids there. Their kids have gone off there. Now they live in san francisco with their own kids and they're in their 50s. The last thing they want is for one day you're going to pass away. We're all going there, right? We're all going to the pearly gates hopefully most of us going to the pearly gates and and not the ones with the big hot flames and, um, we're all on the way there. Do you want to leave your family with all that mess? Quite frankly, you don't want to be living in it yourself. All those stuff and things are noise and they may have memories attached to them. But remember, the memories are in your heart. Your memories are in your head. Make a video, take pictures of the thing that you're holding on to. I moved over here from the UK 29 years ago. I'll be 30 years next year. I can't believe that. Back when I was one, of course, and I was raised by my grandparents and my grandmother used to collect those little. I don't know if she used to collect them. We just didn't know what to buy, grandma, so we used to buy those little glass-blown animals.

Speaker 2:

You all know what I'm talking about. They're about an inch high and they sell them at the fair. They sell about. They're about an inch high and they sell them at the fair. They sell them all over the place, little knick-knack shops, or at least they used to, and they're little glass blown animals and all kinds of animals. So she used to collect those and because I'd given her most of them, because I didn't know what else to give my grandma, she gave me the useful stuff she, she stuck a you know five. Well, it wasn't five dollars, it was five pounds or ten pounds in the card. That was much more useful than the little glass animal, I'm sure. But I took those little glass animals with me. I also took her little cottage wear pots. So a little tea pot, little sugar pot Half of them were mismatching because they'd broken over the years. Lots of them were shipped. I shipped them over to the USA, usa. I also shipped a bunch of my furniture.

Speaker 2:

What a nightmare that was. Don't do it, don't do it, ever. Don't move furniture. Sell your house with the furniture in it. Let let somebody else deal with that. Um, unless it's passed down by oh, let's talk about that one passed down the generations. So there you are.

Speaker 2:

This property was the same way that I went to see this week. Grandma's bedroom set, let's talk about that for a minute. Grandma, great-grandma, gave you usually your parents gave you a bedroom set. Your kids used that bedroom set. They despised it, but it was grandma's right. So you got in the bedroom. It was a bit wonky and when they were little kids and they jumped up and down on the mattress, the headboard hit the wall and bangers. It was all a bit wonky and wasn't very solid.

Speaker 2:

And now you're saying to your daughter or your son come get your bedroom set. Are you ready for this? They don't want it. I know that's a big shocker. All those antiques that are in your house, they don't want them. It doesn't matter that nobody wants them. I mean it does matter that nobody wants them. It doesn't mean that nobody wants them or that they don't have value. Right, they do have value and we have a team of people all across the country. We call them SLPs. We build a team of people that will come and value them for you. Sometimes they'll come and clear them out and sell them for what they can. It just depends on whether you've got high value items or not. Basically and here's the thing guys want I want you to listen.

Speaker 2:

If you're in your 40s and 50s, particularly you. You've been schlepping those things around for 10, 20 years already, 30 years already. You're just going to schlep them around for another 10 years. Stop schlepping them around like early on. Start getting rid of that stuff. I, I've done it personally and obviously I am one of those people that brought all that stuff around. It's just noise Half the time. You've got I'm going to let all the husbands roll their eyes here Half the time. You ladies particularly, have a clothes issue. Actually, I know a guy very well that has a clothes issue. He's a clothes hoarder. He's still got clothes from the 80s. Yes, the 80s, yes, the 80s. That is 45 years. I can't believe that's 45 years ago. I'm a child of the 80s, 45 years ago. You don't need those clothes anymore. Um, you know there are a lot of people that need those clothes. Go and donate them or so.

Speaker 2:

If you've have, you got three sets of dishes. You don't need three sets of dishes. So I'm talking to those of you that aren't in the pickle right now obviously not in the. In the midst of all this mess, where you're finally up there in your 80s and you've got all this stuff to get rid of, it's completely overwhelming, it's over. Have you ever been in this situation with anything in your house, even if you're renting or you're moving around stuff, like when you've moved? You're like, oh my gosh, how did I get all of that stuff?

Speaker 3:

yeah, a lot of old furniture my and my parents house. They have my great grandmother's dining table wow it's. It's a pretty nice table, but it's an antique and we we're scared to ever use it, basically so it just kind of sits there. I mean, we do eat on it occasionally, but it's like you can't play board games because if you roll dice on it it could scratch the table.

Speaker 3:

Yes so it's kind of like it's a nice table, I guess. But when it comes to things like that, it's kind of to me I feel like I don't want to say just get rid of it, because again there's history there yes, but what's the history?

Speaker 2:

is the history remembering the grandparents sitting around that table?

Speaker 3:

yeah, I believe so. I don't know if it's. I think it's fairly a fairly like nicer brand, but it's just that compared to something that's more durable it's just not as practical.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and the funny well, that's what we used. It's just not as practical. Yes, and the funny well, that's what we used to have for all dining rooms. Do they have the crockery as well?

Speaker 3:

The special plates and dishes. It is probably somewhere in my grandmother's attic. It's not at my parents' house, though.

Speaker 2:

So it's again we're not using that crockery. Now, if you do use it, then that's great. Use it every day. Don't not use it because it might break. Yeah. What are you doing, Putting it in a cupboard behind that glass door? I mean, we don't even have those antique cabinets anymore because we don't have the crockery that we're gazing at, because we don't use it. Yeah, the fine china that never gets used. Use the fine china. I'm not saying get rid of it because it's fine china. I'm saying use it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know, if it breaks, it breaks. And, by the way, if you have a bone china cup, you can turn that bone china. Don't sue me if this doesn't work for you. If you've got maybe a thrift store one or something, turn, I've done it actually and it, I've done it actually and it worked. Turn it upside down, stand on it, it will not break. It's that strong. Bone china is really really strong.

Speaker 2:

The cheap earthenware that we buy now often chips, often chips Bone china does not. Actually, I've got a mug I've been using now that's bone china. I have these tall mugs that have pictures of doggies or cows or anyway. That's my strangeness, and I ship them in for England and they're ridiculously expensive. I've only got my doggy one left, however. I use it every day and I've probably had it 15 years at least now. I've dropped it numerous times. It's bone china. That's what you need. Yeah, it's also thin on your lips. I like that on your on your lips rather than a great big thick cut for some unknown reason. But that's my little foie gras. We've all got them, haven't we? So get rid of that stuff, you know, especially if it's that formal dining room stuff that you're not using. But also I just went through this with um. I bought a little place in in florida and I realized that in the house, in the house here I had, I don't know three sets of plates that I wasn't using, so I donated two sets of plates.

Speaker 2:

It felt so much better just clearing everything out the cutlery actually I finally got around to I'd had the same old cut. Not there's anything wrong with that. Most people don't even notice cutlery. I like nice heavy cutlery and it wasn't like a major expenditure. I think I spent 60 bucks or something on one set. Of course, I liked it so much I bought another set, but that's part of the story. Now I've got this beautiful cutlery that I absolutely love and I don't. Actually I took the other set down to the Florida house, but it's just a way of now I don't have all right. Do you know what I'm talking about when I say the cutlery drawer? Can you ever find anything in your cutlery drawer? No, what's in there?

Speaker 3:

uh, a mixture of big spoons, knives, forks or mixed up chopsticks.

Speaker 2:

You know just a little bit of everything in there ketchup, the little ketchup things yeah, uh, maybe a couple in there. We've got like a separate drawer for all the all that, joe taco bell hot sauce packets and all of that that you never, ever use, correct? No? And you have no idea how many years it's been in there.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there's not dates on those little soy sauce packets or anything yes, interesting, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

so we we, just many of us are hoarders. We're just hoarders on the spectrum. It's the hoarder. Well, we need to develop this. I'm gonna do a bold blog post about this. It's the hoarder spectrum and most of us are at least at the lower end of the spectrum. Most of us have that junk drawer. And the worst thing, when you're moving and here's the thing, guys even if you're not moving I want you to think about the fact you're surrounded by crap in your house or some of the things. It's not crap, it's like, oh, this beautiful piece of furniture or china that I never use. Right, that you think you're. You keep it in your home because you think, oh, my family is going to use this one day because we were taught by our parents that you don't get rid of anything, because they were taught by their parents that went through the second world war that they definitely didn't, didn't let anything go to waste. It's just been handed down.

Speaker 3:

I think that must be why we have that junk drawer with all those soy sauce oh yeah, when you're when somebody, when your great-grandparents go through the Great Depression, there's kind of like a different mentality and mindset there.

Speaker 2:

But it gets passed down. And here's the wonderful thing about getting rid of everything in your cutlery drawer apart from one set of cutlery. And people go, oh, but that's only six knives, I need more than that. How can you need more than that? It just makes you wash them. How can you need more than that? It just makes you wash them.

Speaker 2:

And the really funny thing is you know how you can't find the can opener or you can't find the knife sharpener. That's because it's crowded out by all the junk. It's literally. It's a metaphor for life. You've got all this stuff everywhere. They say that the average person wears 10% or 5 to 10% of their wardrobe. It's crazy. You know, I went on a little hiatus down to Florida and I took a car full of stuff and I bet I didn't wear, but it was only a car full of stuff. It was nowhere near all of my clothes and shoes and all that stuff. I wear flip-flops every day. I might wear one or two nice pair of sandals and one nice pair of shoes. I could literally have six pair of shoes. Slash flip-flops and not even notice all the other shoes I have yeah, I usually rotate between like three, depending on special occasions yes, and how many pair do you have in totality?

Speaker 3:

Well, I had more, but Helene kind of messed some of that stuff up, which that's a good thing a little bit, because I got rid of that junk drawer I don't have that anymore so, you know, got rid of some of the random crap that I never used so got to look at the positive side of things, you know.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, I love hearing you say that I had a junk drawer full of jewelry and not expensive jewelry, except it might be one stud where I lost the other diamond stud. I don't buy diamonds anymore. It's just not worth it because, especially studs, you lose them. Any lady with studs or guy with studs knows what I'm talking about. Even when they've got screwbacks, they unscrew eventually and you lose one, and that's not fun. Backs they unscrew eventually and you lose one, and that's not fun.

Speaker 2:

And but most of the things, 99% of the things in that drawer was jewelry from 10 years ago. You know that big, chunky stuff or beautiful pieces that I just never wear. And this drawer has been there since I've moved into this house, which is I don't know five or six years now, which doesn't sound very long, but that that drawer has been. All the stuff in that drawer is just carted around with me and it's all tangled up and it's a big old mess. You know, you'll know what I'm talking about. You've all got one, along with the soy sauce and junk drawer. So forget moving. It's worth get it. You know we're in spring cleaning season. Get rid of it now. It really does feel really good, even if you do one drawer at a time. Let's talk about your night tables. You know your nightstands next to the bed, the drawer that's in there. Do you have a nightstand with a drawer?

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, and every random thing that I don't know what to do with goes right in that drawer.

Speaker 2:

That's the thing, the things we don't know what to do with. Can you give me any examples?

Speaker 3:

lip salve yeah, like there's some chapstick in there. There's like uh, I don't know like old mail that I'm like I should probably keep this bill from like a couple months ago, but you know I I don't have anywhere else to put it right now. So yeah yeah, it just goes in the drawer.

Speaker 2:

Elastic band, oh yeah, yeah, I have some hair bands and stuff in there yep, a screw for out of a shelving unit that you're like oh, I've got to get that screw back in and it's sitting in the drawer now you don't remember which the extra screw for the drawer that it's in.

Speaker 3:

yeah, paper clips, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. A pen that doesn't, a pen that doesn't work, a pen that doesn't work, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2:

Or the dog is chewed in his brain or something.

Speaker 2:

So the Florida one was it's just gosh, we just cannot get rid of this stuff. The guy had passed away, not in the unit but sometime before, and he had all these notepads with nothing on them, just clean notepads. I think he was probably a medical rep or something and, you know, had all those notepads and the six of them. How do you throw a notepad away? So in the bedside table there's six notepads. I never use them, but I think, oh, I might wake up in the middle of the night. I might want to, you know, offload that thing that's keeping me awake and write a note on it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's your dream journal, you know. Yes, Got to keep track of that, yes.

Speaker 2:

And then there's all the. So we also left six note things. You know those magnetic things you put on the fridge to do a shopping list. How can you throw those away?

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, they're so useful kind of. I mean for me like having something like visual to keep track of things is nice if you already have one or something on the fridge. I don't think you need much more than that.

Speaker 2:

But how can I throw them away? I mean, what I'm gonna do?

Speaker 2:

donate them you know and there's it's, you hit the nail on the head. Actually, it's all the stuff that you don't know what to do with. That bucket is the worst one to go through and I just went through this again after only a few months moving everything out, renting that place down there. I had to move everything out and I'm like what do I do with this? And it was this time it's only a bucket full, but it's still a bucket full and it's so painful.

Speaker 3:

And many of you have whole houses full instead of a bucket full. My grandmother had a uh had a bucket that just had a bunch of pine cones in it from like 10 years, like a decade or more ago and she just didn't want to throw them away because she like had memories of them or something but they were just taking up space and we're like it's just a bunch of pine cones.

Speaker 2:

I wonder if she used them on the? So I used to collect oh dear, I'm your grandma I used to collect pine cones to use on the Christmas tree, oh yeah, so I'd just like tie them on or something. It makes them look real.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, she would do some like little DIY projects, but she hasn't done those in years 19 years, yeah, and doesn't have any plans to do them, and also there's just plenty of pine trees around the area. If she needs pine cones, I could go out and grab some for her.

Speaker 2:

That's the other thing, and it really does feel good. Do a draw at a time and the thing is about doing the nightstand or any of those draws is you don't know what to do with it. Socks, let's talk about socks. How many socks do you think you have? Oh, a lot if you had to estimate pairs of socks, how many do you think you have?

Speaker 3:

30, but I mean, it's like those aren't all pairs. A lot of those are singles.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so now we're gonna have all the excuses. We've got to defend our sock drawer right. So they're not all pairs and why do you keep hold of the single socks?

Speaker 3:

because when I run out of pairs, I'll still use that single sock that doesn't match I thought you were gonna say because the friend will show up one day.

Speaker 2:

It's the funniest thing with socks. I used to have a ziploc bag for the mismatched socks and I'd put them in it and then every month or so I'd tip them all out on the bed and try where did the socks go?

Speaker 3:

they just go somewhere, I know and then they just appear back in the dryer. You do laundry and then you're like oh yes, it was trapped in a different dimension in the dryer, so I guess do you know when it gets trapped?

Speaker 2:

um, do you know? Do you know when? Um, so okay, so you find that trap one eventually. You find it when you've thrown that bag of mismatching ones away after six months. Yeah, yeah, I just found a mismatching sock actually. So I have a new puppy called Penny. Sophie's not sure about Penny yet. She's the size of a flip-flop, she's a mini Dachshund and she's Dalmatian colored. She's very cute and she went talking about a nightstand. She went under my giant nightstand it's not easy to move out and, um, she found a sock that had fallen down the back. How much can you guarantee? I've already thrown the other one away and the truth is you really don't. I mean, you know, maybe you, maybe you work um out in the field or something and you're changing your socks twice a day. I don't. I mean, you know, maybe you work out in the field or something and you're changing your socks twice a day. I don't know. But you don't need more than seven pair of socks.

Speaker 3:

Maybe 14 pair of socks you don't need 30 pair of socks, Depending on when you do your laundry.

Speaker 2:

I think is what it comes down to, True true, but how is that if you have to go to the laundry or something and you don't have a laundry downstairs? Yeah, I would the laundry or something and you don't have a laundry downstairs, or yeah, I would probably have more more socks and underwear at that point well, true that's, if you had to, if you didn't have a laundry in your house, which not everybody has a laundry in the house.

Speaker 2:

Most of us have a laundry in the house um, probably 95 of the population to have the laundry in the house.

Speaker 2:

You can do laundry and then you don't have stinky socks and stinky everything sitting in a drawer. You can only imagine the things that are growing on that disgusting laundry and you don't get around to it because, whatever you know, you've got 19 more pair, which is probably when my only point is you'd be amazed at how much more drawer space you've got, how much space you have, how much more draw space you've got, how much space you have. And when you have space, you don't have all this noise that's surrounding yourself all the time. That also is in your brain. It's just like brain noise where it's like, oh, I've got to sort my socks out, oh, if. But the worst thing is you can't find the knife sharpener or you can't find the tin opener or you can't find the whatever, because it's in, it's mixed up in all this junk that you never use yeah, I think that's the worst part just not being able to find what you actually need yes.

Speaker 2:

So forget moving, just clean it up anyway, listen, I'm talking to myself as well. I've got a whole um when, when I left for a little bit here over the winter, I've got a whole closet still. I cleaned out my entire house. It felt very, very good and it was very, very stressful, and I'm so glad I did it. And this is only after five years, right, so I've still got an entire, an old-fashioned closet, so not a big giant one, but an old-fashioned client closet jam-packed of things. I have no idea what's in there clothes, um, all the stuff I didn't know what to do with. Basically a lot of clothes I haven't missed. I haven't for once thought I wonder where that xyz piece of clothing is. I just haven't a lot of.

Speaker 2:

It is sparkly things that you wear at christmas. Uh, ladies, gents, you need one sparkly item, maybe two. You don't need 16 sparkly items. You're never going to wear them again. Those are one-offs. Go donate them. They're not even going to be in style, never mind all the shoes.

Speaker 2:

And then, guess what, when you finally get around to moving, it's not going to be as painful, but your day-to-day life just gets so much better. We all know it. It's just painful going through it. It's just super painful going through it. So let's talk about I cannot believe is it really 10, 48 already? How the time flies, oh, my goodness. So, uh, yeah, a few minutes left. Let's hope this isn't our last show.

Speaker 2:

If you just tuned in, the station is making cuts to save money and our live saturday show is moving to recorded. Only we don't know what day or or anything else yet, and, um, maybe you can help us out with that and call into the show or drop me a message. I would love to know. I've been doing this for 13 years. We don't know what day we're going on or anything else because of the cuts, which is very sad. However, the good news is I've been doing a podcast for oh, I don't know eight years now realestatenewsradiocom I don't know, eight years now.

Speaker 2:

Realestatenewsradiocom realestatenewsradiocom. Join me on the podcast and then I won't have to do any radio show at all, because you can listen on the podcast at your convenience and look at the topics you want and there's a lot of topics on there that I haven't necessarily talked about in the show and you don't have to listen to me jibber on for an hour. You can do my little five. Sometimes I do two minutes on there where I'm just updating you on something that's going on in real estate all the world. You know I don't just talk about real estate right, because it's all tied in. Let's have a quick run through our niches and we're going to do a whole show on this.

Speaker 2:

And people say to real estate agents you know, focus on something, focus on one niche. And the truth is that these niches cover 99% of why we move or why we do anything in real estate, and it allows real estate agents to focus. So, instead of all the stuff you're trained to do, like door knocking or sending out mailers or calling expired or any of that stuff, senior Living is a wonderful one SeniorLivingCPOcom. If you have parents or grandparents that are thinking about senior living anywhere in the country, we're in hundreds of them now all around the country. We have agents doing this and what we do. We have what are called slps senior life partners and we have senior living cpo experts. We're about to launch it here, by the way. I don't know why I launched it everywhere in the country and then waited to do it here. If you know any agents, um, that are amazing at this, maybe they were ex-nurses or they've just got a heart and they like working with seniors. It's a wonderful thing to do. We make a list of 20 plus senior living communities and we go visit with them and we tell them about this program that we have to unlock the majority of equity in the seniors home. So seniors go on a wait list on almost every. Every decent community has got a wait list and then you get the call and then, oh my gosh, it's.

Speaker 2:

It's usually you've got to sell the house to be able to get in. 87 percent of the time you've got to sell the house and your house is full of stuff everything we've been talking about. So you've got all this stuff. You, you may. Your average age is 84.

Speaker 2:

It's usually a trigger event, like breaking a hip or something like that, that takes you in. And then your kids are coming. Your kids who are in their 60s or 70s are coming in and saying listen, we can't. You know we want to help, but we've got our own jobs, our own lives. It's really that time when you need a little bit more help. And some of these places are like cruise ships. Guys, go look at them. You know what I'm talking about if you've been to see them. You know what I'm talking about if you've been to see them. The problem is we've got something that can unlock your money in 14 days. You move in, we go in and we do HGTV magic. And then you get a second check.

Speaker 2:

Two thirds of our sellers make more than with a conventional listing with no sign outside, no lockbox on the door, no pesky realtors coming in and out, no little dog behind your couch that's peeing on the carpet that you haven't noticed for a while. You might have an avocado fridge. You might have a formica countertop. Who knows? It may be just that you haven't maintained your home for the last year or so because you got up there, or maybe you lost your spouse god forbid. It's another trigger event. Only one in eight of these people moving into senior living are men. Often couples are moving into what we call independent living. Now it works for that as well.

Speaker 2:

It's just a wonderful program. The reason I think it's wonderful is because investors for many years have been I'm not going to say stealing, because it's not stealing, it's just a business model. There's lots of companies out there that will buy your home at 50, 60 cents on the dollar. Ours is 90 to $1.20 on the dollar because we improve the home, you get the majority of equity that allows you to move into the senior living or make a non-contingent offer on your next home. Make a non-contingent offer on your next home, whatever it is. We're always solving problems. We've started to unlock builder CPO now. So a lot of builders around the country one in every five contracts they're cancelling because the person can't sell the house. We know about this because of the number of homes that are coming on the market. Plus, how do you know when to sell your house when you're building a house? What a nightmare.

Speaker 2:

With our program, you can literally wait until you're two weeks out from the co. So we go and meet with. We make a list of 20 builders and we go and meet with builders and we tell them what we're doing. Most of us have got hundreds of people on our database that are always asking which, but I've got 60,000 people online and often I get the question you know which local builder do I work with? So meeting local builders is a wonderful thing just for that. And also we have this program where two weeks out from getting your CO, your certificate of occupancy, you know that you can hit that deadline 99% of the time, six months earlier or a year earlier when you start building the house. Hitting that deadline to the absolute day is rare, I hate to say it. Port closures, staffing issues, someone has a baby, whatever it is, you know it's very, very hard to hit that timeline. So there's your issue with that one.

Speaker 2:

With ours you can wait until two weeks out before the CO press that easy button, get the majority of your equity moving to your new home. We can go into your previous home and people go. Well, we only bought it five years ago and it was new. There's nothing wrong with it. The average inspection report, guys, has 40 to 50 items on it. The average repair request in this country is 3%. So if your home, you sell it at $500,000, that's $15,000. That's not an overestimation of a repair request at all. It takes all that away. A third of them drop out most.

Speaker 2:

I have a whole network of realtors. This is where the script thing um, I have a bit of a problem with. Just tell the truth. Agents don't talk about the fact that over a third of contracts fall out. That's's not good. And if you have your home listed now locally or anywhere in the country that you're listing, go ahead and, at the very least, get the inspection. I don't know why more agents don't talk to you about this. I've got over 1,100 now around the country that do, because they understand how powerful it is.

Speaker 2:

Certified pre-owned cars, cpo cars people buy them all the time. Every dealership has them carvana, carmax, that's a cpo play. That is where they've done the inspection 156 point inspection. They are offering a car dealership warranty, which means you're not buying a lemon. People pay six percent more for the car. So why the heck are we taking half a million dollar houses, throwing them on the market and hoping for the best? It makes no sense, guys. It makes no sense.

Speaker 2:

I've been talking to you live on the radio. I know that's going away soon here, unless you call in um, get me on the podcast. It's all good. More of you are listening to the podcast now than listening to the live show. Maybe it's just the way radio is going, who knows? But realestatenewsradiocom. Realestatenewsradiocom. This is Rowena Patton on the Real Estate News Radio Show Live on air today. If you are listening to it on the podcast, obviously I'm not live. I'm on the podcast, and soon I'll be just on the podcast, which is awesome because you'll be able to get all that extra information too, which is really cool.

Speaker 2:

Just know well, I think it's really cool, but I might be biased. Just know that a third of the contracts fall out. That means, if you are listed right now and you have a 30% likelihood, now are you saying, oh, because here's what happens. You say, well, my house is great, that's not going to happen to my house. Or what? Are you not a good listing agent? That's what you're going to say? Right, I know because I've heard over 3,500 transactions. I've heard it all. You have no control over what the buyers are doing. You don't know how nervous the buyers are.

Speaker 2:

Remember, the market flattened two to three years ago, depending on where we're in the country. Even the Northeast, most of the Northeast, has flattened. Now it's just behind the curve and a lot of places say, oh, we're special here. We say that in Asheville, actually, we're special here. That's not going to happen to us, guys, we went down over 30% last time in Asheville. 32% was the average. Prices went down. Now I'm not going to say that's happening this time, although we are down about 19% in South Florida. Now South Florida and Texas tend to be the canaries in the coal mine and we just choose not to listen every time. It's amazing to me.

Speaker 2:

So if you're listed and you haven't done the pre-inspection, so what are you going to say next to that? You're going to say, well, I don't want to fix anything, that's okay, you don't have to fix anything. You do not have to fix anything. Why? Because we disclose it. Well, people aren't going to want a house if we disclose things that are wrong with it. You've got things wrong with it anyway. You just don't know about it. Aren't they gonna run if, if we tell them there's something wrong with it? No, when we get an offer in every single time I barely do conventional listings now they're certified pre-owned, not the cash offer. They're certified pre-owned, although you can choose the cash offer. It's just a different choice. I like to give you lots of choices and you make the intelligent decision.

Speaker 2:

When an offer comes in, I say to the buyer's agent let me give you the inspection that we've already done before we go into contract. I've had one pull out in 17, 18, 19 years, now One, because everybody goes in eyes wide open, the trust is developed and it doesn't matter and we say listen. We took the price of the house into account when we did the inspection, so please don't come back with this 3%. It drops it to half a percent. Guys, the difference between 2.5% on a $500,000 house. Think about that for a minute. It only costs $500 to have an inspection. Go have it done. Love you all. I hope this isn't our last live show. Realestatenewsradiocom.

Speaker 1:

Come join me on the podcast this has been the plain english real estate show with rowena patton. Visit rowena and post your questions at radioashvillecom or call her at 828-210-1648.

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