Elder Law Report
Elder Law Report
Real Estate for Aging Homeowners (feat. Jason Brodsky)
When it comes to navigating real estate decisions, particularly for older adults or those managing inherited properties, professional guidance isn't just helpful—it's essential. This enlightening conversation between Jane Dearwester of McIntyre Elder Law and Jason Brodsky of Owners Only Real Estate reveals why DIY approaches to property valuation and sales often lead to significant financial and emotional costs.
The Western North Carolina real estate landscape has undergone a dramatic shift, transitioning from a seller's market to a buyer's market in just one year. Jason expertly breaks down the factors driving this change, including the phenomenon of "rate hostages"—homeowners with exceptionally low mortgage rates who feel trapped in properties that no longer suit their needs. For seniors considering downsizing or families managing estates, understanding these market dynamics is crucial to making informed decisions.
Perhaps most valuable is the discussion of North Carolina's unique real estate contract system, which heavily favors buyers and can leave unprepared sellers vulnerable. Through a compelling case study, Jason demonstrates how professional pricing strategy resulted in a quick sale at $68,000 above asking price with favorable terms for the seller. This practical example highlights why emotional attachment to property must be balanced with objective market analysis—something that professionals bring to the table. Whether you're planning for long-term care transitions or managing inherited property, this episode offers invaluable insights on protecting your most significant assets with expert guidance.
Subscribe to our podcast for more conversations about protecting your assets and planning for life's transitions. Have questions about real estate and elder law? Contact McIntyre Elder Law today to schedule a consultation with our experienced team.
Hi there, I'm Jane Dearwester with McIntyre Elder Law and I am so pleased and excited to introduce y'all to my friend and realtor extraordinaire, Jason Brodsky, from Owners Only Real Estate, who's joining us for our Elder Law report today. Hi, Jason.
Jason Brodsky:Hi Jane, good morning and thank you for having me. I'm very excited.
Jane Dearwester:Yes, our pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. Jason and I know each other and have worked together on lots of real estate transactions, and really the focus of our talk here today is about how hiring professionals to protect and preserve and sell your real property is so important in regard to the elder law sphere, but really, all around right, hire a professional to do a professional job. I always say and yeah, jason, you mentioned something at the beginning about the number of real estate agents we have in Western North Carolina and you just said something that just hits so on point about, yeah, we've got a lot of people to choose from, but you really want to choose a quality person. So can you say a little bit more about that, because I think that's so important for our listeners to hear.
Jason Brodsky:Absolutely, thank you. So what we're referring to is the fact that there in Western North Carolina, the Asheville area, there are literally thousands of agents in the greater Western North Carolina. The greater Asheville area encompasses Hendersonville, waynesville, I would say just an hour radius around this area, and real estate is very popular here. There's a lot of people who've gotten into it because the bar of entry is not entirely that high, and that's a good and a bad thing. And you as a consumer, you don't know if that person whose card you picked up, if they have the integrity that matches yours, the experience that you expect. And so one of the sayings we've come up with from observation is there's no shortage at all of real estate agents, but there's a shortage of real estate professionals, and it is critical that when you are talking to somebody and getting advice on maybe the largest asset in your life and how to transact it, that you get the best advice you possibly can. Or the financial, emotional, time repercussions can be quite significant or the financial emotional time repercussions can be quite significant, Absolutely.
Jane Dearwester:Thank you for that, and I know people have been asking me, and the first topic we're going to talk about here with regard to real estate, specifically here in Western North Carolina and I think this probably goes across the state is the shift in the market. This is something, even though we're elder law attorneys I think our listeners know my background is in real estate and I also have my real estate license, but there's definitely a shift going on in the market. So I was hoping, Jason, you could talk about, from your experience right now in Western North Carolina, what kind of shift are you seeing and what elements are playing into that shift.
Jason Brodsky:Certainly so. When you hear the news and they say you know we're in a buyer's market or we're in a seller's market, let me put some out there, some food for thought. There's no such thing as a bad market, right? There's a market that favors buyers and favors sellers, and it just depends do you need a buyer or seller? So how economists determine the state of the market is it a buyer's or seller's is by looking at what we would call the absorption rate. And the absorption rate means if no more properties come on the market at the current pace of sales, what would it take in time to get to zero, to deplete the inventory?
Jason Brodsky:Anything below six months of inventory is a buyer's market and anything above tends to be a. Excuse me, I got that backwards. Anything below six months is generally a seller's market, above as a buyer's market. Well, a year ago at this time, we were at about 3.7 months of inventory. This month, this time last year, we are this time right now this year, we are at 6.2.
Jason Brodsky:So we're solidly into a buyer's market and we're in a buyer's market for, I think, a lot of reasons. Number one is just the influx of inventory, be it properties that are being sold because people don't want to manage, let's say, an Airbnb, since there has been a hit in tourism or new construction that we see everywhere that we drive around. So wherever that inventory is coming from, it is definitely coming. The other reason we're seeing some stagnancy in the market or stagnation in the market, is we see a lot of what we would call rate hostages. You refinanced your home during COVID. You've got a 2.3% rate. You're not refinancing to a 6.8% rate, to the point where you might live in this property that no longer works for you at all, but you don't really have another option. So rates still being perceived high, the amount of inventory coming on the market and these rate hostages who would be buyers if they could sell their property all of that has configured to a market that's seeing some, maybe some, stagflation right now. It's unique.
Jane Dearwester:It is. It is Thank you for that and kind of boiling that down into really a pretty quick rundown. You know, I tend to agree and that's kind of what I'm what I'm hearing in my, my realms and chat rooms and and those talking about the real estate market. Here to estate planning, the way that elder law attorneys, estate planning attorneys like myself and our attorneys here at McIntyre Elder Law work with real estate professionals. Often we have people who are transitioning into long-term care or maybe have just lost somebody in their family and are left with a property or two. They're trying to, through the grief, get their bearings to determine number one what is this property worth. And so, as we know, this is a DIY world, or some people like to think it's a DIY world. So people just go to Google, they go to Zillow. They feel like, with those resources, that they know what the property is worth and they can do this themselves.
Jane Dearwester:However, I disagree. I'm curious what you think, jason, of having professionals involved to help people understand what their property is worth. So we as attorneys will reach out to real estate professionals to provide broker price opinion or the shortcut acronym is B, or a CMA, which is a comparative market analysis. These are different than an appraisal. An appraiser is another professional that is a higher level of investigation, scrutiny on the value of a property. But as real estate agents we can do comparison and pull some comparative recent sales to help inform clients, friends, about what the valuations are. So can you speak to your process, or maybe some examples that you've seen in helping people determine, even as a listing agent, to determine what the value, the true value of the property is, not maybe what they think in their head or what they want it to be, but what the actual value, what the market bears as the value of that property.
Jason Brodsky:Certainly so. That's a really good topic to speak on because it all starts with basic free market mechanics of supply and demand Right, and I think one of the hardest things for sellers to get their mind around is that the real estate market moves as fast as the stock market, meaning if you bought, you know, a company listed on NASDAQ for a hundred dollars today and tomorrow it's worth one 10, that's clear. You can say I can sell this for one 10. Or it goes down to 70 and you want to sell it. It's clear it's going to go to 70. You can. We don't have a problem getting our mind around that. It's pretty intrinsic, it seems.
Jason Brodsky:But when you talk to somebody about their real property, their real estate, and they watched, you know they built the home with their teenagers and they watched their grandkids walk across the floor and take the first steps right there, there's a lot of sentimentality. Maybe it was built on old family land, which is common in Western North Carolina Very common. My perspective is price per square foot. Does this offer the amenities that the other similar properties offer and is it a good value for me? So when we talk about comparables, I think it's important to note that, unless you're in a, you know, manufactured home, community or a condominium, there's not an exact replica for your property. But what there is is the property that is either on the market as our competition, that is under contract, that gives us some good information, or that has sold, that is similar to your property enough that your property would have attracted those buyers. So we want to look at the current inventory, our competition, what's under contract as an indicator of what yours might be worth, but, most importantly, what has closed, because that's where the rubber meets the road, that's where the buyer and seller came to a meeting of the minds on value. Value, of course, is different than price.
Jason Brodsky:So when we look at this information, what we do to inform our clients is help them understand North Carolina's really unique real estate contract, and I call it double-edged.
Jason Brodsky:We do not have contingencies in this state. That word effectively does not exist in the North Carolina real estate contract, absent custom drafting and forms. But the boilerplate terminology in North Carolina allows for the buyer and seller to agree on a fee known as a due diligence fee. Some of you might consider it to be an option fee in some states or commercial contracts, but what that money does. It is given to the seller upon the formation of contract and it buys the buyer the unilateral right to walk away from the deal. And it is critical to understand the import of that, because the average seller who does not know or think this through or get the advocacy on the front end, I would say that we advocate for our clients well in advance of them even hiring us by explaining this before we sign an agreement. It's so critical that they know who they are getting into business with on the consumer side, on the buyer side, because a buyer can tie up a seller's property for weeks.
Jane Dearwester:Now and don't I know it. Cause I do it for a living. I do that in litigation for a living.
Jason Brodsky:And so how this ties into the market moving as quick as the stock market right Is. If you have a buyer, go under contract for a property and they're not a solid buyer, or they make all of these demands of you and you, as the seller, say I don't want to do this, I don't think this is fair, this isn't what we negotiated. I don't want to, I want to kick you out of the deal, buyer, and go find another buyer. Guess what? As a seller, you cannot do that. So it's critical to understand that in this state where you have a contract, where the buyer has all the leverage on the outset, at owners-only real estate, one of our first orders of business is to help our clients one become objective to get away from, to separate the emotional component from.
Jason Brodsky:Look, little Johnny took a step, first step. Sir, it's beautiful. I know this is your grandfather's land and we respect that and we're going to communicate that to the buyer. And we need to help you understand the true value, where we should position this in the marketplace so that, ultimately, we can have you engage with multiple buyers simultaneously and be able to allow you to choose the best of several competing offers, so that we can I don't like to use the word guarantee so much when real estate or when there's humans involved but we can come pretty darn close to guaranteeing you're going to close on time, you're going to have a smooth transaction and, more importantly, you're not going to find yourself with your back against the wall making concessions that you never had to make.
Jane Dearwester:I really like, jason, that you're going back to talk about the contract and I just want to point out I bought a house in 2022. And even though I'm an attorney, I used to be a closing attorney I have decades of experience as a real estate attorney and I have my real estate license. Decades of experience as a real estate attorney and I have my real estate license. I still hired an agent to a professional to represent me, because you want to have that level of separation and my agents looking at it through another lens, and I just feel like we need to have. I think we do have enough content to maybe create a series on real estate and I'm curious what our listeners might think. And again, there are so many aspects to working with real estate and legal professionals when you're dealing with real property. I think we've only scratched the surface of those.
Jane Dearwester:Some other topics that Jason and I discussed before we got on the meeting here were issues surrounding listing and selling a property where there are several heirs, other services when we're dealing with the aging community, people transitioning long-term care, that they may need to either renovate or upfit their property to work with a transition to mobility, or Jason was even sharing with me.
Jane Dearwester:He had client that kind of had some life transitions that happened where he could only live in the basement of his property he just wasn't mobile enough to walk around and so we see all kinds of situations where, again, professionals like Jason and I can come in, really provide incredible value to clients and help and support. People at times can be moving through all kinds of emotions, can be moving through grief or worry, frustration, and having compassionate, intelligent professionals surrounding you and your family. I just can't highlight enough how important I think it is and, like I said, jason, I think we could go on and on about this topic, but I want to give you an opportunity, just some final thoughts before we wrap up today, and then again maybe we'll make a couple more of these to fill in the blanks on some of the other issues that we've been discussing.
Jason Brodsky:I would love that. Yeah, well, I think you know. What I'd like to end with, I think, is because it's something I speak about every day. I'm so fascinated by markets, right, and what we've done at Owners Only. So a quick example of how we work is if we I'll just give you a real world one.
Jason Brodsky:So we just sold a property the other day for a woman who was not you know. She was in her, she's in her 40s, but she had lost her husband and wanted to go back to Miami. She's in her 40s, but she had lost her husband and wanted to go back to Miami. And we priced her. We valued her property at around $730,000, $750,000. But we priced it with the data that we have. We don't pull these numbers out of thin air. We did enough market research to understand that were we to price it just below $700,000, we would accomplish a few things. We would get her out on the time frame she wanted, we would get her absolute top dollar and we would able to be adhering to the as is sale. So she didn't have to make repairs and the properties were very good shape. We listed it for 697. We had it under contract for 765 cash in under a week.
Jane Dearwester:Oh, bravo, love it.
Jason Brodsky:Because she also needed to still move and get some things done. We helped her negotiate. It was very easy because of the way that we set this up in the first place with competing buyers. We got the buyer to agree to give her three weeks of seller possession after close and it was wonderful. It removed all the stress for her. It made it easy for her to solidify her housing details in Florida. But point is, we were able to get her top dollar quickly.
Jason Brodsky:But why I wanted to bring that up is every day I'm up against other agents and they'll I'll go into a meeting after they did and I'll tell them, the seller, what I think, and they'll say well, you know, that agent told me we could get this price and here's what I would say to anybody. They've got a better crystal ball than I do, because we don't know what somebody will close a property at. Nobody does. What we've created a science out of is helping quantify where we need to hit the market at, because price and value are two different things. Right, so we want.
Jason Brodsky:Our intention is to position your property in the marketplace at the right price so that you get all of the value. The inverse of this, which we don't do is when a property goes on the market at a price that is not reflecting the value, and ultimately what happens? There is a major loss of equity because as the buyers watch it, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop. Eventually they will know the price, but I can promise you it is less than the value had that property been priced correctly in the first place. More than happy to explain this in detail on an individual basis to any clients or anybody that would just like to see what their property is, what we project it to be worth, what we would price it at in order to help you maximize the equity that you have.
Jane Dearwester:Yes, Thank you so much. Jason Brodsky, Owners Only Real Estate. He is one of my go-to real estate people and a friend, and I so much appreciate you taking time to be here today. We're going to link all of the contact information for Jason in this talk so that everybody can check in with him. Check out his website if you're curious and, again, let us know. If we need to do part two, three, four, we'd be happy to do so. Uh, McIntyre Elder Law. As y'all know, I'm based in our Hendersonville office. We also have offices in Shelby and Charlotte, and so please, uh, check in with us when you need to evaluate protection of your real estate and what you want to happen to your real estate after you're gone. There are easy ways to avoid probate and that's what we're here to do. We love working with professionals like Jason to really give you this overall professional experience on all sides. So thanks again, Jason, for being here today.
Jason Brodsky:Thank you so much, Jane. I enjoyed it and I look forward to our next one.
Jane Dearwester:Absolutely. Thanks everybody for listening, take care.
Jason Brodsky:Bye-bye.