The Generations Legal Group Podcast
“Aging” or “Growing Old” has to be better than dying young, right?? Join Certified Elder Law Attorney, Todd Whatley, Founder of Generations Legal Group as he dives deep into the complexities, sensitive topics, and how-to’s of becoming an “aging individual” or caregiver of an aging loved one. This podcast covers senior-related caregiving issues, legal/financial issues, when to stop driving, late in life marriages, grief, death, and other end of life concerns. If you struggle with what to do next, how to cope, or simply the basics on what lies ahead as you or your loved one ages, this podcast provides solutions to your questions.
The Generations Legal Group Podcast
Navigating Northwest Arkansas Real Estate: Insights on Downsizing and Investing with Coley Bailey
We delve into the crucial topic of downsizing and its impact on aging homeowners, with expert insights from Coley Bailey of Lone Rock Realty. The conversation highlights current real estate trends, challenges seniors face, and the benefits of considering a condominium lifestyle.
• Overview of the aging housing market
• Real estate statistics for Northwest Arkansas in 2024
• Introduction of Medlin Park condominiums designed for seniors
• Features and amenities of condominium living
• Financial advantages of downsizing for retirement
• Signs indicating it's time to sell your home
• Offering both real estate services and resources for potential buyers
• Call for listeners to reach out for more information
lonerockhometeam.com
Corey: 479-777-3379
Information to help you answer all of your questions about aging.
Welcome to Answers on Aging, the podcast dedicated to helping you navigate the complexities of growing older. Your host is Todd Whatley, a certified elder law attorney with a passion for empowering the aging community and their families, From finances and legal matters to health, long-term care and beyond. We've got you covered, Because every question you have we aim to answer. Dive into today's episode and let's uncover the truth about aging together.
Speaker 2:That's right. This is the Generations Legal Group Answers on Aging podcast. My name is Todd Watley and, as always, I always thank you for joining us and please like and subscribe. And today I am not here by myself, thank goodness. I have a guest, and so our guest today is Coley Bailey with Lone Rock Realty. Hey, coley, how are you Good?
Speaker 3:Glad to be here.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being here, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:You're obviously a real estate agent, so tell me what's new in real estate. Well, it's crazy. There's been a lot real estate. It's crazy, right, it's crazy.
Speaker 3:There's been a lot going on. I will say we've actually sold more properties here in northwest Arkansas this year. We're here at the beginning of 2025. So, looking back at 2024, we've sold more properties in 2024 than we did in 2023. Wow, okay, properties in 2024 than we did in 2023.
Speaker 3:Wow, yeah, okay, which I was curious at the beginning of the year. You know how it was going to go, with interest rates being where they are, because they're about double what they have been, you know, over the last decade or so, and that's been tough. That's been tough for some people, particularly younger folks that are getting into their first home. For your audience, they're actually one of the most advantaged groups that we see in the market right now, especially if they're looking to downsize because prices have also risen quite a lot over the last couple of years. Well, I got a few statistics here. Let me just look at it. So the closed transactions that we had in 2024 are up about 7.76% year over year from the number that we had in 2023. So in 2023, we were just below 10,000 homes sold across Washington and Benton counties Okay, so 9,800. And then it bumped up to 10,565 for 2024.
Speaker 2:10,000 homes in one year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the highest that has ever been in this area was in 2021, and that was 12,348 that year. Wow.
Speaker 2:That was during COVID. Everybody was like I want to move, yep, yep, tired of this small house, whatever if you're stuck at home, yep, that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Especially, it seems like such a low number compared to you know. We have almost 600,000 people in the area right now.
Speaker 2:That is surprising, honestly. I know Huh Interesting. So do you know, and if you don't just tell me, how many people are moving in per month? I've heard 30 a day.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's what I've heard 30-something a day.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's like geez louise. I know. If you did the math, that's about 10,000 people and so not every single person is going to buy a home. But yeah, that kind of makes sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we have people who buy and sell transact here too, that are local, that already live here too.
Speaker 2:So they're not moving in. They're just selling houses, all right. So I think you are kind of involved in a particular project that you're obviously excited about.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it's something that our clients would also be interested in, so tell us about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we've been working with Burkhart Construction, a fantastic builder here in Bentonville.
Speaker 3:Bill Burkhart is the founder and owner of that company and he's on city council here in Bentonville too. But anyway, yes, we've got a project called the Medlin Park Condominiums and it's right over here off Walton Boulevard and it's on Medlin Lane, which is a little street most people don't even know about because it doesn't go anywhere currently, but it's going to be going to Medlin Park and that is going to be a project that has 120 condominium units across two different phases and it will be about five different buildings, so each building will have 24 units. The sizes are going to be anywhere from a studio at about 600 square feet to a three-bedroom at about 1,500 square feet, and what we've noticed is that, you know, it fits a lot of different people you know for the lifestyle that it can provide, but one of those groups is definitely people who
Speaker 3:are looking to downsize, Because you don't, you know, when you move into a condo and we don't have very many condominiums in this area but it's essentially like a very nice living situation where you're in a building with other people, so each building will have 24 units, Um, uh, but there's, you know, good space and division between between all of them in terms of, you know, insulation in between those walls and everything, Uh, but the beauty of it is that you don't, uh, you, you own your unit, but you don't have to worry about exterior maintenance.
Speaker 3:You don't have to worry about landscaping, taking care of a yard. You've got on site a dog park, a pool, a gym, a fishing pond. There's going to be a little cafe area in our clubhouse. There's also and I really love this because I'm a biker there's a bike storage area so you can put your bike in, and there'll also be a little workstation in there. And the location is right off of the Greenway, and so the plan is for it to connect right into the Greenway and you'll be able to hop on a bike. And the location is great it's 10 minutes away from Walmart Global Headquarters by bike.
Speaker 1:It's about two miles away.
Speaker 2:It's not very far, that's cool, yeah.
Speaker 3:Sam's Club Home Office is even closer than that. And then the other thing is we're right across the parkway from the Northwest Medical Center, so we're very close to the hospital. I mean, you can walk right to the hospital.
Speaker 2:Okay, interesting, okay, and so between 600 and 1,500 square foot is it? Is it open now? Are you selling units now?
Speaker 3:We're under construction now. Okay, yeah, so you know, as of early January 2025, we have a slab and we're framing the first building.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:They're going to be, you know, doing the slabs and framing on two more buildings here in phase one.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:And you know I'm not the builder, I can't tell you the complete timeline there, but I will say we're hoping to welcome owners into the condos around the end of 2025 and into the you know, early parts of 2026.
Speaker 2:Okay, interesting.
Speaker 3:Okay On the first phase, and then we do have another phase after that. Okay, interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay On the first phase, and then we do have another phase after that, okay, okay, are you doing like down payments or can you like reserve? Like, if you know what you want, you can reserve. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So we have 32% of the first phase already sold out.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, yeah.
Speaker 3:Already reserved and that requires a $5,000 non-refundable deposit and you know that's to hold it until it's completed, and then you know you could get a normal loan or, you know, cash. A lot of people that are downsizing will sell a larger home and then you could buy one of these for cash, because you know our price points are actually between $200,000 and, you know, up to around $400,000.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So you know, a lot of folks will be selling a larger home a $500,000, $600,000, and moving down into one of these and it's just a lot easier lifestyle. You don't have a lot of maintenance. You one of these and it's just a lot easier lifestyle.
Speaker 2:You don't have a lot of maintenance. You don't have anything to take care of. Yeah, okay, let's go ahead and drop a phone number real quick and we'll come back to it at the end. So if someone is interested in this, how would they get in touch with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the best way to reach out to our team, we have three dedicated agents that are just on that project and you could go to medlinparkcommunitycom or you could call 479-244-4931. And one of our agents will be sure to pick up and get you all the info. Is that you?
Speaker 2:Is that your office? Okay?
Speaker 3:Yes, and those are Lone Rock Realty agents.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool, cool, okay Well that sounds interesting. I think people are either they're very young or they're older they're interested in owning something that they don't have to mow or clean or clean out the gutters it's, it's just just live and yeah, that's, that's cool. But that's not all that you do, is it? I mean you're you're a real estate agent for someone who's just looking for a normal house or whatever, right Okay?
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah, we, we do. You know general real estate sales, helping people buy and sell and invest in in real estate all over Northwest Arkansas. So, yeah, especially in the event if someone did have that larger home to sell, we could help you sell it, you know, and then we could help you find that downsized home, whether it is, you know, something like a Medlin Park or even a, you know, just a smaller home in another neighborhood or a different situation that you might want to be moving into.
Speaker 2:Okay. So how are real estate prices doing now? I know over the last few years they've just gone up. It just seems like tremendously, I mean like almost doubled. I mean I've sold a house not in the too distant future for 120, 130 square foot and I just bought a house for about 210 or so per square foot.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So you know, if we look 10 years ago, so 2015, the average home sale price in Northwest Arkansas was just under 200,000. And now they're over 400. Sure, so it's been over 400 for the last two years and really those kind of those COVID years were the years where it shot up. So you know, if we look at from 2019, that average sale price was $248,000. And then by 2022, it had gone up to 388.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, in just three years.
Speaker 3:Three years it went from 248 to 388. Wow yeah, and so for the last two years, with interest rates rising as well, that has suppressed that growth curve that we saw in pricing and so we're not totally leveled out. We grew about 6% in pricing from 2022 to 2023. And then we've seen about 3% pricing increase from 23 to 24.
Speaker 2:Okay yeah, so not quite as crazy, but still just gradually going up.
Speaker 3:You know, and 3% to 4% a year is considered a normal market. So it feels a lot like we've just gotten back to a normal market. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, got it. Yeah, I had someone in the office just last week and he doesn't live here, but he came here Mom's going into the nursing home and she owns a home and I was like, okay, do you all want to sell that? He says yeah, probably. And I said, well, what do you think it's worth? And he said, well, it was in Bella Vista. And he said I think mom thinks it's worth about 80,000. I said there is not a house in Bella Vista that's worth 80,000. I don't care what it looks like. He said really, I had someone call and check on it and it was like $240.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, unless it needs a lot of work. Yeah, you're not getting that low, yeah.
Speaker 2:There is nothing worth yeah down in that price range, and so he was shocked. He said, wow, mom's going to be surprised. I said, yeah, most people are.
Speaker 3:Most people are yeah, especially if you've owned a home you know 10 plus years to home you know 10 plus years. It's shocking to most people, yeah, very surprised.
Speaker 2:So all right, so you're involved in some. I'm not sure if it's marketing or what, but you have a podcast and video thing that you're involved in, so tell our listeners about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so for Lone Rock Realty, we do have a YouTube channel, okay, and that is livinginarkansas-arkansawrealestate is the name of the channel, but you can also, if you just go to youtubecom at Lone Rock Home Team, that'll pull it up, that'll get you there. Yeah, and we do market get you there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:And we do market updates on there. We do videos about what's great, parks in the area or different neighborhood areas that people might be interested in, things like that. And then another fun project that we've done over the last year we did a real estate investing podcast with the Real Estate Investors Networking Group of NWA, so that's REI NWA for short, and yeah, so we've completed about 50 podcast episodes with them and that's a local networking group that gets together. They have a speaker, a certain expert about various different investing topics, and I've been lucky enough to get to interview 50 of them over the last year or so that's cool.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm just curious what kind of topics do y'all cover there?
Speaker 3:Well, everything from people getting started in real estate investing to. You know, for instance, one of the programs monthly has been a landlord lunch, yeah, okay. And so you know, people get together and talk about well, okay, how do we get our tax deductions in order? How do we find qualified tenants, what happens if we have to evict a tenant, right? All these different things that people don't think about until they're kind of in that asset class. It's a wonderful way to preserve and even grow your wealth and provide some cash flow. A lot of people do that. They'll take money that they've worked for years and years for, put it in real estate and start collecting those monthly rent checks as their retirement, as their retirement, and it's a wonderful way to have retirement income. But it does come with its own set of challenges. People, yep, yep, people Mostly dealing with people.
Speaker 2:Dealing with people who don't appreciate your stuff as much as you do. I'm sure that is a challenge. Yep.
Speaker 3:But if you've got a great team to help with maintenance and property management.
Speaker 3:You've got a, you know, you've got a good financial plan around it. It's yeah, it's a great asset class. I mean, there aren't very many areas in which you get the benefit of the asset going up in value. Right. So appreciation, but because real estate does sort of have maintenance issues over time, the government lets you actually depreciate it on your taxes across 27 and a half years. So you get to count depreciation even on an asset that actually is appreciating. So that's pretty nice.
Speaker 3:Then if you know there's two other real benefits there. You know, if you happen to finance it Now you've leveraged it and your tenants are actually paying that mortgage for you, so you've got the debt buy down and then you've got cash flow on top of that. So you've got a monthly benefit, you've got a yearly tax benefit and then you've got a multi-year appreciation benefit. Hopefully.
Speaker 2:Interesting, yeah, cool. So back to just normal real estate. What are some signs? I always like to ask agents this, just because people always ask me they're like you know they're getting older and so what are some signs that you see that someone really does need to be looking at, possibly selling? You know what are some things that maybe older people or even younger people, but it's like you know I think I need to sell what are some of those things they should be looking for?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, selling a house is one of the top three most challenging, stressful times in people's lives, right Right after getting a divorce and a loved one dying. I mean, it's a big thing, and so it has to fit into your life. You know, I'm not one of these people.
Speaker 3:that is like hey the market's up, you should sell your house, right? You know if you need to make a lifestyle change. You know if you need to make a lifestyle change now we need to look at how to make, how to look at reality, read the market and put a plan together for you to get you into the lifestyle you would rather be living in. Sure, right? So I would say if someone let's talk about downsizers, okay, okay, if you've got rooms in your house that you haven't gone into in months, you've got too much house. Yeah, you know. Yeah, I was talking with someone even last week. You know they've got a two-story house. There's one of those floors they never even go into. Yeah, stairs, right, stairs are dangerous. Go into Stairs.
Speaker 2:Right Stairs are dangerous. Yes, stairs are dangerous.
Speaker 3:You know, for a while, going up and down the stairs keeps you young you know, but at a certain point it does become a hindrance.
Speaker 3:I would say, if you've got an entire floor or even just extra rooms, even if you have a single story house and you've just got 2,000 square feet and you really only live in 1,000 of those square feet, you know it might make sense to let someone who needs that lifestyle that that home can provide buy it from you, give you a ton of equity, and then what we're seeing is that most people in the downsizing situation are actually able to pay cash for their next house, and then that downsize house doesn't have a payment. So if you had been making a mortgage payment now, more of those retirement funds can go toward, trips can go toward times with family.
Speaker 3:There's so many other benefits that you can get instead of having that cash tucked away essentially in your walls that you can't get to Sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean a lot of things. Go down Utility prices, typically with a smaller house will go down.
Speaker 2:Insurance Insurance costs. Yeah, I mean there's just a lot of will go down Insurance Insurance costs. Yeah, I mean there's just a lot of things go down and yeah, and particularly if you move into a condo, you don't have to worry about mowing and painting and all of that stuff. You just, yeah, you can travel and enjoy life and not have to worry about your house sitting there being just empty and the grass growing and not being mowed. So, yeah, it's yeah. So okay, very good. Anything else we need to cover? Anything else you want to talk about? Any hot topics you think our clients need to know?
Speaker 3:I think we've covered quite a bit.
Speaker 2:Okay, good good, okay, so again, what is your phone number and how can people get in touch with you?
Speaker 3:So our website would be LoneRockHomeTeamcom. You can find all kinds of great information there about buying and selling. We've got guides for how to sell for the very most. We've got a staging guide about how to prepare a property. We've got all kinds of information there. So I always love to direct people there. But you can always call me directly as well at 479-777-3379. And that's my direct work phone.
Speaker 2:Directly. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:So yeah, give Coley a call and he seems to be very well connected with all kinds of stuff and probably even some of those investors that you know can come in and look and maybe you're interested and yeah, so yeah sometimes and look, here's the other thing too when someone's lived in a property for 20 or 30 years, sometimes they're worried about maintenance.
Speaker 3:Yeah Right, like well, I've got all this maintenance I got to do on the property. You know, I don't know if I can do it. Well, sometimes we've got investors that would love to buy it, fix it up and either sell it they do need a profit margin in there, so you won't always get total top dollar, as if you had done those repairs yourself, but that is an option, right. And then we also have investors that aren't looking for that full profit margin in terms of selling it, but they just need a little bit of a deal to be able to rent it at a good cash flow. So, yeah, so there are a couple of different options there, depending on condition of the property. So don't worry about condition of the property.
Speaker 2:So don't yeah, don't worry about condition of the property. Yeah, that's what it's like. Well, I need to fix this and this. I need to fix this. No, don't, I need to replace the carpet or paint. Don't worry about it. Right, these guys come in. They know people. Yep, they can come in and they do it. So, yeah, do not keep you from doing that. All right, man. Thank you so much for being with us. Again, coley Bailey with Lone Rock Realty and all of his contact information will be in the show notes. So, thank you again for listening and, as always, if we can do anything for you, please call Generations Legal Group at 479-601-4119 or visit generationslegalgroupcom and we will see you next time.
Speaker 1:And that's a wrap for today's episode of Answers on Aging. Thank you for joining us on this journey of discovery and understanding. For more resources, detailed show notes and expert advice on the many facets of aging, don't forget to visit our website at wwwanswersonagingpodcastcom. Remember, growing older might be inevitable, but doing it with grace, knowledge and empowerment is a choice. Until next time, stay informed and keep those questions coming.