Scott: [00:00:00] Dollars and Cents with Hapo Community Credit Union helps empower our listeners to achieve financial success while living for today and planning for tomorrow. This podcast focuses on financial education, community support, fraud prevention, real life stories of financial transformation, and much more.

Hapo Community Credit Union serves Washington and Oregon with over 18 locations. Bank on more when you bank with us. Hi everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Dollars and Cents. This is Hapo Community Credit. unions financial literacy podcast. Today, we've talked in previous episodes with our mortgage team, but today we're going to get a slightly different look at this world.

We brought in a couple of wonderful real estate agents with us. We have Laura Harris Hodges with Caldwell bankers and Vicki Monteguto with Century 21. Ladies, welcome. 

Laura: Hi, thank you. 

Scott: So today, like I said, we've had conversations on the podcast before about the mortgage side of [00:01:00] things, which is the financial, the money stuff, but we have not necessarily dipped our toes in on the opposite side of that, which is the real estate side, finding the house buying, renting all those fun things.

So tell me what is your day to day job consist of? 

Laura: It's a lot. The list is long, several pages, probably. Primarily, start to finish, I answer emails, lots of them follow up on files. Depending on the day, if I have a client, I have a listing appointment showing appointment, then my day is going to be structured differently.

And if I'm showing homes, it's going to be what type of buyer I'm showing, who that client is, if I'm listing a house or going on a listing appointment, then preparing for that, doing market analysis, researching pricing, all that information so I can present that to you. Not just hammering 

Scott: a sign out in the front yard to say that this is for sale, somebody come pay me lots of money.

Laura: Yeah. No it's a lot and [00:02:00] then the correspondence and keeping everybody up to speed. I do have an assistant who helps in the background on that making sure that things are happening. Timely and 

Scott: say there are a lot of moving parts in home buying and selling and I Want to say maybe a dozen or more different stages in the actual sale process Keeping everybody on the same page is probably pretty important I know when I was buying my own home if I didn't know what was going on I was like I might need to reach out to somebody and it's usually pretty quick between those milestones, isn't it?

Laura: Yes. 

Scott: In the grand scheme of things, a week or two between steps of the appraisal what all does the process consist of? 

Vicki: Yeah. The process begins with now with department of justice and some of the new rulings that some of your listeners probably heard about. The first thing that we need to start with is bringing the client into the office, talking them through the what we call the buyer consultation, letting them know what the [00:03:00] expectations of their realtor and what it should be and also walking them through some of the vocabulary, right?

So what an appraisal is, what an inspection is, and how do we do that? Walking them through that before we even get into a house to start with. 

Scott: Yeah, nothing quite like asking somebody to bring you a particular document and be like, what? I have no clue what this is. Wait, we need to get an appraisal. We need to what?

Yeah. Bringing them up to speed on what's expected of them as well as what's expected of you. 

Laura: Which I think is great. Education and being knowledgeable is the first step in moving on to any venture that you're doing. And so I think all of this that's coming up new that we have to do, I think is going to be great for our industry.

Scott: Speaking of one of the things that our loan officers mentioned during our episode is that all of the real estate agents that they have worked with are always very excited when somebody shows up with a pre approval beforehand, talking to the loan officer, getting pre approved before walking out to to meet with a real estate agent.

Is that true? Or were they lying to me? 

Vicki: No, absolutely. 100%. [00:04:00] Yeah. Yeah. It's It could go either side of it, right? Instead of just window shopping blindly, if you know that you can afford a certain amount versus a lesser amount, you might be looking through the wrong windows. 

Laura: And also, yeah, that's very true.

And setting yourself up for such a disappointment, you think you can qualify for a 500, 000 home and it turns out you can only qualify for a 400, 000 home. That's a big change in your market and what you're looking at. And then. It just would set you up for disappointment. So it's very smart for the consumer to get pre approved ahead of time.

Scott: Also, I'm assuming it saves both you and them a lot of time, not looking at those particular homes, setting up showings and whatnot. 

Vicki: Yeah. Like she said, it's not just time, but the heartache, and it can go either way of it. If it's. You've been looking at a certain threshold for months on end, and then you then later find out you can only afford less.

That's not a good feeling, but it could be another way. You're not finding what you're looking for because you're looking at a certain bandwidth of pricing, and then you eventually find out you can go higher because it [00:05:00] matches not only what you can actually maximize your pre approval letter, but it feels the most comfortable in your monthly spend.

It just opens up more doors. 

Laura: I would definitely say, too, I think the consumer is way more educated today, and they do come to us pre approved or at least had some sort of conversation with the lender versus years ago when you would ask them if you'd spoken to a lender, and they say, no, today, most, I would say, most have already.

Whether that's the lender that they stick with is a different story. 

Scott: Yeah. And if they come to you and they say that they haven't, are you like, okay, we'll get out until you've gone and talk to them. Or is this a, a, I've got a couple of people we can talk to. Let's get some idea and get the ball rolling and get them out to talk to a lender at the same time.

Vicki: Yeah. So that's part of that buyer consultation on the front end is educating them. Again, what's the difference between an inspection and appraisal? Many times consumers will mix that terminology, but also [00:06:00] getting them in front of a trusted lender so that they know what their affordability index looks like.

Scott: I was going to say, and again, save them time, some heartache, save everybody, make the process a little bit smoother across the board. 

Vicki: Because oftentimes We have clients that are not prepared or on the current path of homeownership, but somebody needs to help guide them to get them on that financial path.

And sometimes those relationships can be a few weeks, but could be a year of planning to make sure that their FICO scope goes up. Maybe they pay off some debt, maybe they're counting on a promotion. So those kinds of things to get them on the trajectory of homeownership. I 

Scott: was going to say, those are actually Good things.

We talked about those on previous episode as well. The planning aspect of what goes into this, because everybody knows that buying a home is like just a whim type of a decision that you make. Now the amount of investment that goes into this is a huge deal. And I know one of the other things that we mentioned previously was with in [00:07:00] regards to rates and we'll touch on this here in a second, but was Date the rate, marry the home, find the home that you really want.

Don't be overly concerned because the market's going to do what the market is going to do. Whether that's, what kind of we're expecting to see here in the next couple of months or what happened over the last. previous couple of years. Do you guys have much of an idea of how the the rates in the real estate world is, are changing on a regular basis?

Do you have a bit of a forecast that you look at for those things? Or is this just I got an email from somebody saying these are the rates this week. 

Vicki: Yeah, I think we've have a number of trusted lenders that will indexing provide us their rates for that morning. 

And, 

Vicki: but it's like gas prices, they fluctuate even throughout the day.

But just knowing kind of, heavy handed as to what those could be. We've already seen that, that shift in the market. We've already seen that trajectory the last two to three weeks where the interest rates have steadily paced down. Even this morning they went down again. But what consumers need to understand [00:08:00] is if they're waiting for the interest rate to get to their perfect perceived interest rate, the issue is they're The other index that's moving up is the pricing of the houses, because there is a direct correlation, and we're already seeing that with a lot of builder incentives, maybe rather than offering 25, 000 incentives to pay down their closing costs, now they're toggling it to maybe 10, 000 as that demand steadily starts to increase.

If somebody's looking in that next 12 month period of time, this really is that window of time. I think we've hit the floor. 

Laura: And on top of it, date myself just a smidge, but, when I bought my first house, interest rates were 14%. Yep. To me, where we're at today, and even have been for the last couple of years, yes, they're not twos and threes, which were unbelievably low and The 100 year flood.

Yeah, that's right. It's unrealistic, but to pay somebody else's mortgage doesn't seem to me making any sense to me either. So why be so concerned about and rate that you're going to have to pay your rent? mortgage someplace. So why [00:09:00] not pay your own? I say that kiddingly all the time.

Why are you paying somebody else's mortgage? Because that interest rates a hundred percent. 100%. 

Scott: Yeah. At least when paying your mortgage on a home that you are buying, that is going into equity. That's going into ownership. Whereas again, rent is basically, I, we talk about investment properties as a thing.

I'm gonna buy a pro. I'm gonna buy a house, a secondary house to rent it out. That rent is gonna go to pay my mortgage payment on that house making debt. build income and wealth, which is great if you can do that. But again, like whoever's renting is paying that mortgage for me. That's the goal. And in a case of home ownership yeah, we wouldn't want somebody to go out and be doing that if they can afford their own mortgage.

That's correct. But that does lead me to a next point that I wanted to talk about. And that's a, what are we seeing as far as like the housing prices? You just referenced it. And the trends of those because over the last couple of years, if I'm not mistaken, like we've been seeing those numbers steadily [00:10:00] rise in housing costs, 

Vicki: both the average and median price continue to rise.

And there's a lot of destruction. Yeah, exactly. There's just so many different outlier, outliers. Reasons for that one would thought our labor costs would have went down in the last 18 months that hasn't happened because we still have Increased labor shortages our material cost for construction also hasn't gone down considerably enough Then you have like in March of this year the International Building Code change which added another Fifteen to eighteen thousand dollars per home in energy credits that are now required for new construction homes And then land acquisition you're what they call the finish lots They haven't come down in price.

Because the 

Laura: cost of the construction to get the lot has gone up, so it's impossible for any of those fixed costs to come down if the cost of doing it is still going up. So 

Scott: it's not even just the fact that people are willing to, because for a number of years that was you put a house on the market and within 18 hours you had 400, 000 cash [00:11:00] offer over what you're asking price was the bidding wars that came about.

It wasn't just that driving up. The home prices, it's the other factors that go into it the interest 

Laura: rates, and the cost of it, the cost of the home. Especially with new construction, because, and we have a lot of new construction in this area, which is great. 

Vicki: And she knows that too, on the developer side, before we could get a project done, let's call it 18 months, to get it from from your entitlements to finished lots.

Now, all those time spectrums have doubled. 

Laura: I might get myself in trouble for making the, this, everybody can relate to what a manhole is, right? My husband and I did the development, in our cost sheets we had, let's call it 15, 000 for the manhole. Then in the mid stream of the project, they want 50, 000 per manhole.

How do you recoup those costs, but do you add them into the cost of the lots? 

Scott: It's got to go somewhere in order to make the project worth it. 

Vicki: Always a pass through, too. And that's what a lot of studies you'll find is the regulatory costs add about 32 percent to new construction. [00:12:00] It's just the regulation, the permit costs, your traffic impacts, just all those fees that inherently get passed on that end consumer.

And your new construction is what sets the baseline of a community's pricing. For example, if you have an entry level builder that's new construction, as they are able to adjust prices up, it allows your resale, your pre owned market, to also adjust pricing up. That's true.

Laura: I would say that's true in our community. Yeah, I don't know. 

Vicki: Every community 

Laura: just 

Scott: yeah, that will be a major difference is how the population of a particular place. If there's nobody moving into an area, just people moving out. Odds are you don't have as many people fighting for those homes that are available.

That'll probably drive some level of pricing. We chatted a little bit about it. You mentioned it early as far as like part of your day, if you were preparing a listing, doing that market analysis, that market research, how much wiggle room is there? [00:13:00] I, and this, that might be a weird way of asking it, but when setting the price for a home.

To put on the market. It's I've got a house, I'm ready to move. What's it worth? I just got the latest tax statement, I think for mine that has the valuation of my home and everything. I can look at that and give or take on something along those lines. I could also decide, you know what, I just really don't like this place.

I'm going to put it up on the market for 50, 000 and get out of here. That would be a huge loss on my side. But beyond all of those random things that I could come up with, what actually impacts your decisions on. Guiding somebody on a pricing point for selling their home, 

Vicki: I think to his point about the Benton County assessor rates that just came out.

I think as a homeowner, you really be, you have to be cautious because in decades past, sometimes your assessed value was only 80 percent a true market value. We got to a point was at, let's call it 100%. We have some instances already on our books that are, there's a 12 percent [00:14:00] Delta. Yeah. And so that's something that a homeowner, if they're questioning the valuation that they are provided for this next attack season, is consulting with a local realtor to run an independent market report, because we're seeing those grossly outpace what the current market is providing.

Correct, 

Laura: because they've always been behind. That's not unusual. And it's the same in other communities, too, in other states, where the assessed value is different. For us, I'm sure Vicki is the same. I look very closely at the actual sales and current sales. So it, I would almost say it used to be like, we can go back six months appraisers like looking six months.

They actually want to keep us more in a 90 day time period. And that's because of how fast the market's changing. But right now I will tell you, our inventory is still fairly low, that it is really challenging to find comparable sales. And you want to do like for like property. You don't want to compare a two story with a one story in different market, different buyer.

You Stairs, it's just, typically not to say that when the buyer comes in, they say, we only want one story and then they buy the two story. That [00:15:00] happens. But for the most part, for an appraisal wise, there's a difference between the style. So you really want to compare like for and try to find similar sold sales because what's active is 

Scott: hasn't sold yet, 

Laura: hasn't sold.

And it could be somebody's fantasy. What did they, if they listed it because they just wanted to, they didn't do any research. Yeah. I just 

Scott: really want to sell my house for 2. 7 million. It's totally not worth that. It's way less, but I could still put it on the market at that price. 

Vicki: An ambitious seller.

Scott: Yeah. And if somebody really wants to offer me that, that's a make me move type of an offer. 

Laura: And sometimes it is luck. Honest to God, this is not necessarily I haven't seen this for a little bit because, we're professionals obviously. But I would if I would be with a client, they call me to do a market analysis, I look at the market analysis, and I see that what they purchased the home for was so much more than the value of the houses today, for instance, and then I look back, and I see that they actually bought the home from the owner directly, and so that consumer thinks that they're saving money by buying [00:16:00] it directly from the seller when in actuality, they aren't necessarily saving any money, they might be back paying more than the actual value.

So But it's a perceived notion that if you buy from an owner with a washer and dryer, you're gonna go to Sears or, the appliance store. Sears isn't here. You're dating yourself again. Yeah, I did. 

Or 

Laura: are you going to, Look at Craigslist. Nope. Craigslist is not a good either.

Facebook Marketplace. There we go And you know find something for a better price. It is a better price Yeah, is 

Scott: how much do you know what you're getting what the market value is again? Another good reason to go actually talk with a real estate agent. Somebody who spends their time in the industry looking at what's out there, has a good read on what the valuation of these areas are.

And again, can take a look at what I want, what I'm interested in and be like, okay, we're going to direct you to these locations because this is really what you want. 

Vicki: Correct. 

Scott: Not this place that you think you might want. 

Vicki: And [00:17:00] oftentimes, even though we might have an ambitious seller that wants to overprice the property, the other part is they've gotta get through the checkpoint of an appraisal.

And the appraiser, I always say, as realtors, we're always looking through the front windshield of the market car. But with an appraiser, they're looking the rear view mirror. And so if they don't see the equitable value, it's, it could potentially, create a hiccup in your transaction Anyhow.

That's 

Scott: correct. I was going to say that comes into the the approval side on the loan to value if I'm not mistaken. Yes. 

Vicki: Yeah. With LTV. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott: I had something else I was going to go to. 

Vicki: We stumped 

Laura: the speaker. 

Scott: Oh no, trust me. Happens all the time. 

Laura: If the appraisal, I bet you were going to go someplace in the effect that with the appraisal comes in lower than what you're selling the home for, then. Is that where you're going? 

Scott: I was I was thinking about that, but I had something else from earlier that I wanted to loop back to that.

I've just gone. [00:18:00] I believe it had to do with what people are looking for and directing them into particular neighborhoods. Basically how to find the inventory for a person like We get away from the pricing side of things and talk about fact, let's just go with that. No, 

Vicki: I think that's the one thing that there's been a lot of speculators on the kind of peripheral that think that there's going to be some real estate fallout.

But the thing is, when we walk this Time clock 15 years back, our inventory, the current active inventory is still half as much as what we had back then. That's right. And we're so under housed, specifically in this market. We have population growth of 5. 4 percent appreciation of population growth every single year.

That continues, the trajectory of that number just keeps growing. Simple things, you look at market indicators like TSA down at the airport. Now they're not running any propeller airplanes. They're all jets. [00:19:00] They're elongating the railway because there's so many people. Coming in and out of this market, and then we just have so many incubators for employment opportunities, which employment grows housing.

Scott: Yeah, and of course you've got a number of the national laboratories and other government energy facility type places. So we do have a lot of people coming out. How does that strain? Because you mentioned the available inventory, how does that strain you guys to try and get people into a place?

Is this like a, you found the one put in your offer, put it in right now, get it immediately. And then do you guys have a big churn as far as the as far as the clients or do you have clients that are just like, we've been looking for and then we're stuck in this apartment or a condo or wherever while we're trying to buy a home.

Laura: That's an interesting point, which kind of hits a couple of things. From the seller's perspective, if they have that house that hasn't been on the market because we still do have some low inventory and they price the property well it looks good. They've done all the things that their real estate broker is, expressed for them to [00:20:00] do.

And then it goes on the market, then it sells very quickly. It's because of that back. Those buyers who have been waiting and waiting for that right property to come in, they might've been looking for a year, two years even. And then that house goes on the market and then it's sold in one day.

So it's not really that it's underpriced or not priced. You know what I mean? It's because the right buyer just has been sitting there waiting for their opportunity. That's right. That's 

Vicki: right. And we're always trying to match the motivation of that buyer versus that seller group. So if you had somebody that was coming in for the lab, And let's say they have three days to look for a home, they've done the job interview, they've got their employment package, and they've got three days to find that relocation home.

Their timetable is very myopic. But then you have another set of clients that are looking specifically for horse property. Some of our clients we work with for years. Years. 

Scott: Are there different trends that you see with those different groups of people, what they're looking for in a home at this point in time?

Are there certain features to houses [00:21:00] that make them more or less marketable or sellable? 

Laura: I would say that I just went on appointment, I told them that they had several of the features that I think that are like things that people look for. Big garage, shop acreage. If those are hot points pool, is that a hot point as well?

Horse property, those are triggers that aren't readily available in the marketplace that if those come on the market and again, their price, it all still price, right? And good sellable condition. Then they're well sought after. 

Scott: But the items that you mentioned are probably pretty, pretty standard.

Like they're not, there's not a whole lot of change in what people are looking for in those homes over time. Or do you notice that those trends change? Let's go back to the seventies was beaded curtains, a major thing that people were absolutely looking for. Or is that no just hang your own curtains people.

It's fine. 

Vicki: We do a lot in new construction, so I think that what we've seen a lot here in the last four years is now [00:22:00] that some of these builders have had the moment to catch their breath. That we've innovated our floor plans. People are living in their homes differently, they're wanting larger kitchens, maybe instead of just one office, they're needing two offices because of their flexibility with their employment opportunities.

People are, it seems as though having less kids, so that extra bedroom may not be allocated for, we'll call it a part time or a full time kid, because we also are seeing a lot of blended families, but maybe dual offices within a house. We're also seeing a lot of, The mediums of flooring materials and countertops going to, I would say surfaces.

Yeah. Quartz LVP. Yeah. Yeah. Not a lot of rough surfaces like tiles or carpets and things like that. So us having the opportunity on the front end with the builder accounts that we have to build a pre plan into what that new future generation is looking for. 

Scott: Are those changes, countertops flooring, those are the type of things that the floor plan itself, I don't know if work works into this as well, but I think that [00:23:00] those other items, those are the type of things that a current homeowner could change about their home in order to make it more marketable.

Sure. 

Scott: So if somebody was looking at having or looking at getting ready to sell or they're looking at a remodel to the home, you would say that's the type of thing that might actually make their home more marketable or retain its value, possibly even increase the value of the home. 

Vicki: And I think that's what's really important of Having your realtor come to your property to give you some gifted advice, because the other thing we've seen in the last few years is the remodeling costs.

Some of them have actually outpaced what you can foreseeably resell that property for in certain categories. Looking at different things you can do with paint, with the flooring materials, the countertops. But making sure that your realtor is really experienced and knows how to give you that gifted advice so that you're actually getting more than a dollar for dollar return.

Yeah, 

Scott: don't put 40, 000 into your home if you're only going to be able to get 20, 000 of that back. If you're, if your plan is to make it [00:24:00] capable of being sold maybe that's not the right route to go. 

Laura: Even with, and same thing with people building homes, doing things in the home so that in the event that you are going to sell it, it's marketable.

Don't take away all the bathtubs in the house. Most people don't like a lot of people don't like bathtubs, but it's necessary if somebody is going to have Children, so you try to guide people in that direction to make sure that they're keeping things in the homes. that are still very much wanted, depending on the buyer profile.

Scott: Yeah, so like a remodel to make a house sellable, potentially look at the in, or the actual cost benefit analysis of that. Is it going to make it marketable, but are you actually going to get your money back out of it? Versus maybe you sell that without that and tell somebody, Hey, you go make that modification because you're going to live with it for that amount of time.

Because it could be worth it to them to put that dollar amount in to have those items or upgrades. 

Laura: I would say 100 percent this [00:25:00] is something that, and I know that we've gotten it for years. People say I don't want to do that because I want, I'm sure the buyer wants to pick their own color.

So carpet and paint still today is still the number one thing that I think will give something a reface. And, I certainly still get resistance from sellers saying I want the buyer to pick it. But hands down, they will 100 percent get the benefit from putting it in prior than allowing a buyer to purchase it.

Pick a color because just that clean look that 

Scott: When people are walking through a home So what you're saying is effectively if I'm walking through a house and I see some scuff marks on the floor The carpets little worn maybe somebody's dog ate a corner of it. Not that has totally happened in my own home But like repairing those things right out of the gate is going to make the house just look more favorable curb appeal to a point 

Laura: 100 percent 

Vicki: if you have a trusted realtor, they can give you that market advice because they are on the front lines.

They see what consumers are buying or not buying and what they want to see. [00:26:00] 

Laura: And maybe that changes, a couple years ago when things were flying off the shelf and going much quicker, people were willing to accept properties that made it a little bit more repair than they do. So I think it is market driven as well.

But for the most part, I think people want to walk into a home, you don't have to, Do a whole bunch of repairs immediately. 

Scott: How many other items do we have on a home list that may be a red flag for a buyer? I know one of the things that I heard was if they are leaving behind the appliances that are sitting in like a 15 year old range, you're probably going to have to replace those anyways.

Is that the type of thing that you would be marking as some sort of a red flag for as you're, say, representing somebody who's looking to buy? Thank you. Or is that something you'd be like, they're going to leave it. You get it for X amount of time. 

Vicki: Yeah. The hard part is some of the old appliances actually work better than the newer appliances.

And so to try to determine an appliance or an HVAC system or a hot water tanks life [00:27:00] expectancy is really hard to figure out. But what we do have is tools where we can explain to a buyer that their home warranty packages that they could purchase And that will protect them. They just pay the small deductible, usually 75 to 100.

And then that could actually take care of remedies, some of those issues that they would experience during that first full year of homeownership. It's 

Scott: going to say, so basically planning ahead, put a little bit of a cushion or get yourself some. Oh, what's the word I'm looking for there? Insurance is obviously one of the words because that's what we're looking at.

Vicki: Yeah. And I think a lot of people think it's an exorbitant amount, but really four to 600 kind of as a rough realm is really achievable. 

Scott: And if everything in the house survives through that, you end up not using it. Then you got at least a full year out of all of those appliances, the peace of mind that comes along with it.

But if say your hot water heater does decide to rust out and. You have something in place to replace that with. [00:28:00] I know when I first moved into my home we had a lot of appliances that were there. They were all sitting in, I want to say about the 10 to 12 year range. And they've been fantastic.

Luckily we've had a lot of them. We only had one that we ended up having an issue with. And got that replaced. But again, it was one of those things where it was like, Oh it was right at the edge of its lifeline. I should have expected something. And, I think it cost a thousand or so.

Yeah. We didn't actually have that when we moved in. So I ended up having to spend, I think it was something in the range of about a thousand dollars or so to replace one of one of the, one of the appliances. 

Laura: And that's like why getting into the buyer side of things, why getting a home inspection is so critical during that process, it does cost money for the buyer.

That's not part of their loan package, but certainly at least, what? Is going to happen down the road or potentially could happen down the road with the home, whether, there you find things that are immediate, if there's a leak or some issue with the roof, but also the life expectancy of the appliances, what you expect or budget.

A lot of [00:29:00] inspectors say budget for replacement down the road, which at least they know. And then that's where that home warranty comes into play. Knowing is better than not knowing. 

Scott: Exactly. Do we have particular items that are a absolutely yes versus an absolutely no depending on who the buyer or the seller is on those things?

I feel like the one thing that jumps to my mind is a pool. If you've got somebody that really wants a pool, that's all they're going to want to look at is houses with pools. And if they absolutely have had one before and we're just like nope, never again, then showing them anything with a pool is going to be a no.

What other items do we have that kind of fall into that, that you guys have seen with homeowners that are or home buyers that are just a, don't even bother showing me 

Vicki: a house that 

Scott: has this feature. I 

Vicki: had that just this summer. He only wanted a house with a pool. And was indifferent about bedroom count and location, it was just the pool scenario.

And so you get that, the priority of needs, the highest needs, maybe it's bedroom count because of the amount of children that they have, maybe it's location, [00:30:00] geography to their work, or maybe a specific school. So it's really just getting in tune with what that specific buyer's needs are, and being in tune enough that even if they're not verbalizing them, that you're aware.

Laura: And I think as we have our aging population, a lot of folks don't want stairs. So having that one level home is super important. So really, showing them anything with stairs or that probably isn't going to work. We're going to spend 

Scott: our entire life on the first floor. So that top floor up there, no one's going to ever go up there, wasted floor space.

My parents were the same way when they when they moved we had a two story home with a basement, stairs up and down, and they moved into a single level with a massive garage. I want to say it was like four or five bays in the garage for my dad and his cars and whatnot, but it was 100%.

Let's get rid of, let's get rid of the stairs and let's get a big garage. And they found what they were looking for. And they'd been there for, I don't know, 10 years or so now. [00:31:00] But yeah, that was again stairs. Never would have thought that stairs would have been a major factor in picking a home myself, but it makes a lot more sense having watched them go through that.

And see it like, Oh no, that has to, that's a big deal. You're gonna spend your entire life on the first floor. You may as well make it the only floor that you've got. 

Laura: And I remember I had an older client and I loved what she did. She, the master is on the main level. So then she can have guests or family members be upstairs.

So that's always functional if there are stairs But then I had this other gal who wanted the stairs because she wanted to keep herself young She wanted to exercise and that was her exercising, and I sold her two houses and both houses Had stairs and by the time the second house rolled around she was in her mid 70s.

So I was like, wow you need to be a postcard person for 

Scott: take the stairs every day, get a little bit of exercise in park further away from the entrance to the to the office, walk across the lot, small things here and there that matter. How [00:32:00] often do you guys get people that are absolutely focused on the view from their house?

Like you mentioned location. But I think when you did, you mentioned a proximity to work. How many people are actually looking for, I don't care where it is. Like I can be a half hour outside of the city or whatnot. I just want peace and quiet and a view or I see 

Vicki: that change depending on also gas prices, all these little things that you're toggling all the time.

If gas prices are cheaper, maybe they'll go further out, but then as those gas prices or energy costs go up, maybe they toggle their search a little bit closer. Or if you have. More inventory, then they'll get a little bit more persnickety in particular But if there's less inventory, then they have to like we've 

Scott: only got three options I'm willing to look at one that's quite a bit further out because I'm still trying to find a home 

Laura: I should I feel like I should have added view when I was saying that the things horse property, you know I think view is definitely on one of those if you give a home Be it on a, let's talk about a golf course for instance, if it doesn't matter if you're a golfer [00:33:00] or not, I think a lot of people will go to a golf course community if they want to have that space feeling and that view.

They may never play golf, but that's also, golf 

Scott: courses are generally pretty well known for gorgeous groundskeeping, which is like an entire park out your backyard that you don't have to maintain, which personally not having to maintain a yard, that's a big selling point to me. 

Vicki: And that's why I think a lot of developments, the lots are getting smaller because people just don't have as much time as they used to.

It's true. 

Scott: I was going to say, I know when we were looking for our current home our real estate agent. We walked out on the back deck. She's check out that water view. And I started to laugh to myself because we live right above a canal. But she was pointing off in the distance at the Columbia river.

And then as I'm laughing at the joke that we apparently weren't sharing she pointed off the other, you can see the river over there again, too. And I was like, Oh, I thought we were making a funny joke about the canal because that would have sold me.

But it was absolutely, we ended up actually, [00:34:00] like I mentioned, buying that particular house, not because of the water view, but because it met all the other needs that we were looking for at the time. But it has fantastic view. You mentioned the the cost of the inspection being something not part of a loan package.

What other items can say a buyer expect to run into similar to that as they're going through the process? 

Laura: They'll have to in their loan process, they have the appraisal and the title fees and everything, but they'll also have a home inspection is one of the first things that comes up pretty rapidly.

And that typically isn't part of the lender fees. It's just a separate fee, which I highly encourage any buyer to get a home inspection, even on new construction. Absolutely. 100%. So that's just, an inspector is going to go through the home and check every. System in the home roof crawl space attic that usually ranges someplace between I'd say 400 and 500.

Okay. But it's service that is important if you're going to spend, half a million dollars, 500 isn't that big of a deal if [00:35:00] you're going to be making sure that the house is still standing. And if 

Scott: anybody needs any reason to think that this is a good idea, there's a number of different home inspectors on social media, on TikTok and whatnot.

Some of the things that they will find in new construction is impressive. Oh, this is the type of thing that comes out of some of these. If there's a builder that's just, Putting house after house up, they're rushing from one job to the next. Some of the things that have shown up in there are impressive.

I actually had an apartment in in Pullman when I was going to college where the window out of the dining room space, we couldn't raise the the blinds all the way. because it actually shrank that much on the way from the bottom to the top that you had like about a half inch of movement on either side of the blinds, but it would actually get stuck before it made it all the way to the top of the window, which again, that's one of those inspection things.

We, we got a trapezoid instead of a square for our window. And finding things like that, you like, we wouldn't have seen it just looking at it. But yeah, because those are the 

Vicki: things that you're looking for in an [00:36:00] inspection are latent defects. The things that are not necessarily visible to the naked eye.

And especially in new construction, even though it goes through a series of different inspections by the city or labor and industries, contrary to what a lot of consumers will think, builders actually prefer the consumer to get an independent third party home inspection because then it definitely sets the expectation.

Because a new consumer doesn't necessarily know what, to necessarily ask for, or maybe they're over asking or under asking, but it sets a really good benchmark from a third party inspector that sees and does a lot of inspections of the things that they should call out or shouldn't. 

Laura: 100%. Um, I've several stories with new construction, even in my own house.

I had a broken truss, I didn't do an inspection. Dumbest thing I could have done, and I worked with my, the builder that I, who built my house for 18 years. I was like I don't need to do that. And then sadly he passed away and I, we found that we had a broken trust. He would have fixed in a second.

Now I had to pay [00:37:00] 1, 500 to get it fixed, so that was a mistake on my part for not taking care of that when I should have. 

Scott: Ladies, I believe that at this point the only thing that we have left to talk about is whether you got any final words of wisdom or final thoughts to leave the listeners with.

Laura: I would say always leave it to the professionals. I think that hiring a local broker who has experience is extraordinarily important. And listening to them. 

Vicki: Yeah, and the other thing I would comment is today's retail is tomorrow's wholesale. And, everybody always looks back like I should have bought this piece of land or I should have bought this home and it's one of the best ways to create generational wealth.

Scott: All right. So trust the professionals. You guys have this position, this job for a reason. I know there's a lot of things that you brought up that even as somebody who's gone through buying a home twice myself hadn't considered. But yeah, I'll always, I have always worked with a real estate agent when we've gone and done these things.

So [00:38:00] probably things that were getting taken care of for me that I wasn't paying attention to. Hooray. Thank you. And yeah, don't hesitate on buying something today. If you can, if you want to utilize that, it is a fantastic way to, to generate wealth pay your own mortgage, not somebody else's, as you mentioned earlier.

And then that. That equity can come back and help you out with future items that you have ready to go. Ladies. Thank you very much for joining us today. This has been dollar incense, Hapo community credit unions, financial literacy podcast until next time.