How to Buy a House

John sits down with S2 Realty Group of Homepage Realty to discuss real estate market trends, agent representation, marketing strategies, home preparation, budgeting, personalized consultations, and safety measures. They highlight the importance of professional guidance, share valuable insights, and offer practical tips for a successful real estate transaction.

Transcript

Hey guys, I'm Justin with legato Financial Group, our firm is passionate about helping educate consumers, which is why we're powering the gaining interest podcast, the podcasts have quick conversations with industry experts on topics that you want to know about, from sports, to dining to healthcare and automotive, and really everything in between toasts about one of the greatest local personalities that I've met. That's John Ramsey.
I'll tell you why I love this podcast because it's all about community. We used to call it water cooler talk, and that no longer exists. But if it's interesting to you, it's interesting to us, we encourage you to tell your friends, As Justin mentioned, we're going to talk about everything under the sun, we will be gaining interest and we appreciate you watching. Hello, again, everyone and welcome to gaining interest about all things interesting and we are powered by legato Financial Group, there's going to be a time in your life where you more than likely will either buy or sell a home, we're going to save you money. And certainly that is interesting. And that is what we're all about s to Realty Group. Homepage Realty. We have two experts here with us, Susan Smith, and Melanie Leonard. Welcome. And you guys, thank you so much for joining us. Hey,
thank you so much for having us. All right. So
this this is good stuff. Because the bottom line is I want to talk about how people can save money things they need to know. But first of all, whenever you buy and sell a home and you check out the market, it is really a good economic indicator, Susan, so I wanted to ask you, how is the market right now as far as buying and selling? What are you seeing out there?
Well, it's not as crazy as it has been, you know, over the last couple of years, but it's still inventory still low. And interest is still high. And you know, we're we're getting to a point where we are having some still some multiple offers in on contracts on homes, not as much as we did before. You know, so it's I mean, it's still really good out there. It's
always good to buy I see you smiling. So as to Realty Group Homepage Realty. Let's talk a little bit about what you do. I assume Melanie, is it you buying and selling homes, okay, but this includes that really simplifying it. Tell me what you do if you if you're doing a little bit of a speech to one of your friends, I said, What do you do? What do you tell
buying selling investing, we do a little bit of all some agents prefer buyers, some prefer sellers, and we, we love them all. So just walking, I really get a lot of first time homebuyers. So we walk them through the process step by step, we have a buyer consult with them. And it's just the best feeling ever to get them to the closing table. And they're really appreciative of all we do
you know, in any business, it seems to me that it's always about supply and demand, you know, how many homes are out there? What is the demand for those homes, and that kind of indicates the market about what you can sell for what you buy for. So as far as supply and demand, it was my understanding Susan, correct me if I'm wrong, that really homes are kind of hard to find is that is that remained true?
Yes. I mean, again, inventory still low, I would say I've been doing this a long time, 18 years. So when I first got into it, and oh six, on average, we would have probably 3500 to 4000 houses on the market in the greater Louisville Association of Realtors, which is Jefferson County and like surrounding counties. And now or let's go back during COVID, we went down to like 900. And now we're at about price 2300. So we're getting back up there inching back up there. How's it staying on the market a little bit longer? Not you know, two hours, it's more like two months. So it just depends on on the location. So because
you buy and sell. You guys can react to either side of that if there's a high demand, or there's not many houses available either way. Yes, your business is good. Yes,
that's what I'm very, very consistent. And we work a lot of on referrals. And it doesn't matter, though. It doesn't matter if it's a $30,000 investment for one of our investors, or if it's a $3 million house, you know, we're gonna go from the bottom all the way to the top.
Interesting. All right, Melanie, I have to ask you Okay, so let's say we got to we have a do it yourselfer out there and they say you know what I can get online, I can describe my home, I can take a few pictures. Why would you discourage that? Why go to as to Realty Group Homepage Realty. Why should they come to you rather than trying to do it themselves?
I'm glad you asked that because I feel like a lot of people think that and, you know, everybody's on all the websites and all of that. But it's really important to have representation. You are representing that buyer or that seller and you have their best interests at heart. So if you go directly to the seller, of course, they have their best interests at heart. So it's good for us to be there to walk you through the process and really just to look out for you.
And I would say also to from a legal standpoint, you know, when when buyers buy and they sign that contract that's a binding contract. Same with sellers When sellers go to so you know, we we give them a listing contract for them to sign it's abandoned. contracts. So it's, it holds up a lot more than if somebody were going to be out there to do a for sale by owner. You know, and a lot of times, buyers don't even want to look at those houses because sellers don't want to the buyers to have representation. So they can save money or what and what they don't realize is they really eat into their equity when they don't use an agent. Interesting.
So where it says, There's a misconception, right? Sometimes you think, okay, if I go to, to a company like yours, I'm going to lose money, actually, you end up on the positive side when it comes to dollar spent, right? Yes,
you do. Because I mean, we do our due diligence, we make sure you price the house where it should be priced. We do our best to get you the highest price possible. I mean, of course, when the market was crazy people were going over asking and all of that. We're not having so much of that now. But we're still going into multiple offers on some. So we let sellers know that too. You know, if we price it right, you still might get some multiple offers.
So So Melanie talked to me, you you guys have to wear multiple hats, you have to be an expert in a lot of fields, one of them being marketing, it's so important to market your home. So tell me about the methods that you use there because I know you guys are cutting edge one of the best. I mean, everyone knows that great reputation. Congratulations to you. But with that being said, so how do you market a home? What do you do? What what resources do you use?
Well, I love marketing. And Susan always laughs at me about this because I am a stickler for marketing. So part of the reason why I joined homepage three years ago, when I was interviewing at other brokerages, there's some brokerages that just don't, they just don't hold up on their marketing piece. And homepage is amazing about it. So they provide us with so many materials for marketing, we have our Matterport that walks you through the home. It literally has digital footprints throughout the home that you kind of hop from room to room, we have our drones, that we go fly over the home so you can see what the surrounding area looks like. It's amazing. We have reels Instagram reels that we create. That way, we can blast it on social media. And for buyers and sellers. Every Wednesday, we have a sales meeting. And we kind of share with each other what we have upcoming and say, Hey, this is what we need. What do you have? And what do your buyers one? What are they looking for? So we all share amongst each other? And I mean, sometimes we Yeah, it's it's always fun to have cross causes, say
to cells, our biggest thing at homepage Realty that sets us apart from every everybody else is our media. We have a media team. You know, we've got photographers, we've got people that do the drones, we've got any body, we've got 1234, I think about four people that take care of almost 200 agents at this office. That's all they do. And that's all they do. And that was that was a goal of Kerry King and George Barrett, when they started this company eight years ago, they said, we are going to be set apart by having this media team. And they they we have been I mean, it's been one of our it's it's an easy sell, when we go into sellers and say, Hey, this is what we do. You know, we work really hard with the marketing side, this is everything we do. And you know, we all we do lifestyle pictures, you know, all this stuff for social media. And they're just, they're very just giving and willing to help us through all that, you know, I
cannot stress enough how important this information is. And the reason I say this is because your home is probably your most valuable asset. So when it comes to and just buy it or sell it, you want to maximize on either side, whichever side you happen to be on. You guys have a consultation. Melanie, you have that book. And if you just show, I mean, we don't get
to purchasing your home. It's amazing. And we walk you through this. Yeah, we walk you through this in a buyer console, we break it down, we tell you, you do not have to memorize all this. We are there for you every step of the way. But it just kind of gives you a guide you can go home with
so as a buyer or seller, it's important to have a consultation. Yes, sir. So what should people expect? If they say okay, I'm getting ready to let's say you're a buyer. I'm getting ready to buy a home. How much time should they spend with you? And what kind of questions can you answer, Susan? Well, I
think first off, they a buyer console is going to take 45 minutes to an hour. And we literally sit down and talk to them about this and walk them through every step that this has. Okay, this is just a smaller footprint of what all of this is. But it talks about, you know, get pre approved, here's your, here's your early on cost. Here's what is going to cost you while we're in the contract, here's what you bring to the table. So we really just walk them through the entire process. And we even do that for our sellers that are getting ready to buy and they haven't bought in 10 years because the markets changed so much. So we ended up and say okay, we're going to walk you through a buyer console, you know before we even list your house so you'll know what to expect on the other hand,
interesting. Yep. Because I think there's a lot to be said, for peace of mind. You know, if someone is this is so valuable to you, and it's such a, it's a life changing decision. I want to know every little detail I can. And it's kind of exciting. I mean, you know, first of all, if you're moving to a new home, that's exciting. But if you're selling a home and you're trying to maximize, and let's say you bought the home, but I don't know 150 And now it's selling for 400,000. This is all good news. And you guys are happy to deliver that. Yeah. So consultations aside, okay, let's talk about, okay, I'll give you a scenario here. Let's say, I'm a seller, I want to sell my home. Okay, and I'll ask you, then, Melanie. So what kind of thing should I do to prep my home? For people to come over and take a look, see, what should you do?
We have a checklist we get for sellers. I actually had a friend recently and his mom was like, all the houses that we see that you list. They're so pretty you don't you don't list ugly houses. And I'm like, No, we just really prepper sellers. So we go over if we walk through, go over our comparative market analysis with them so they know what to expect price wise, we really study our comps to know what things have sold by sold for in the neighborhood or nearby. But we also have a Get Ready for pictures checklists. So really just decluttering depersonalizing little bit, a little bit. Yeah, we try to be there on picture day, and we kind of move stuff around just a little bit. But yeah, just having a picture ready. Pretty much. As soon as it goes live on the internet. That's That's it showing start?
I think, like, I think what Mel was talking about is we literally walked through with them to each room. And they're like, what do we need to do here? Do we need to paint? You know, do we what do we need to take out? Do? How do we how do we stage it? You know, they want it to be because y'all let's get real. Everybody's looking online? First and foremost, 99% of people are, you know, and that's what captures your eye are the pictures.
You know, you mentioned online. I think that's interesting, because I think now whenever someone shops, there's a lot of online shopping with that being said, the home is such a big decision that I want to see it I want to touch it. I want to look around a little bit. So let's talk about things you can do to enhance your home for that person who comes and gets that personal experience. I have heard correct me if I'm wrong here. Okay. Susan, it's they say, carpet lighting, paint. True letter. Declutter. Okay,
a little bit about that. I want to say that's probably been our biggest thing when we've gone to list some houses, because you get in with people that have been in these houses, 40 years, they have 40 years worth of stuff. And stuff are junk. Which one are we? Yeah, we just we just have to be careful and caring also. Because you weren't into, like, my parents were in the same boat, you know, they were together 50 years. And you know, I was going through their house like, oh, my gosh, you know, because there's just so much stuff, right? So we declutter is probably the first and foremost, and then another easy way to brighten it up as paint, you know, so that, that would probably be the two things that we really hone in on. Okay.
Melanie, are a follow up on that, or is there anything else where you say, okay, might be nice. If you did maybe some new carpet flooring? Is that important? Or does the buyer automatically kind of inherit that expense?
I think that in the crazy market, we were in in the past couple of years, the buyers kind of inherited that expense, because of how quickly houses were going. But I think for sellers, that has slightly changed, and they actually need to prep their home to sell it now. So I would also say depersonalizing is, is at least big for me. And I know, for a lot of buyers, I want to be able to see myself in the home. So if you see a ton of family photos and everything else, you're like, Oh, that's cute. And then people just get kind of distracted. You know, they're like, oh, that person, you know, they're, they were in the military or whatever else. So you just kind of want it to be their own personal experience.
I want to talk a little bit now about the importance of a budget. I think sometimes you you go in with this mindset. Okay, here's what we need. And then suddenly you go, you know, one fireplace is nice. This one has two. Okay, this one's got a really big patio or screened in porch. Okay, I want that too. How important? Is it Susan to stick to a budget? Or can you be a little bit more open minded and say, You know what, I'm going to get away from that, how important is it?
Well, obviously, strictly important, because they have to be able to afford the house or so. And Mel and I were talking about this too. We talked to our people you might be able to afford 400,000 in but you want your house payment to be this. So that's gonna bring it down to this. So you need to, we're not going to look up there
another advantage to having you because you can tell them exactly Absolutely.
Like, like when they get pre approved. And they say I want my I'm gonna throw a number out. I want my house payments to be $2,000 but they they're pre approved for 500,000 Well, their payment is not going to be you know, $2,000 Unless they're putting a lot of money down. So I mean, mail You can you can speak on this too, because we've talked about this.
Well, I think too, it's very dependent on if it's our first home, what what budget that we're in, but I don't want somebody and I know she doesn't either to be to be house broke, I love to travel. So a lot of my budget goes towards travel. And I want my buyers and sellers to be able to experience life like that as well. And
that's part of this this buyer consult that we do you know, like, what is your interest? And what is important to you? You know, do you have six kids? I mean, that's gonna cost you money. You know, are you married and you don't want any children? Or you don't have children? Well, what are you going to do? I'm going to travel a lot. So we we personally dig down deep when we do our consults, whether it's for the seller for the buyer,
I haven't personally experienced this, but I hear about people who have committed themselves to a home they really couldn't afford. So perhaps you guys have seen that you go into a home and perhaps it's, I don't know, 700,000, a million dollars, whatever the case may be. And there's hardly any furniture in it because they overextended themselves. You're laughing. Melanie, have you seen it? Yes.
But I mean, again, in our homebuyer consults, we set them up on a personalized search. And I tell them, I say, Okay, well, where's your where's the top of your budget, we might go 20,000 under that in our search, because inevitably, what happens is buyers will send us something off of, you know, one of the websites out there and it's 40 grand over budget. And I'm like, Okay, well, this is why we have this search setup, so you don't go over budget. But again, it just, yeah, it's our job to bring people back in, we
do have to reel them in. And that's okay. You know, that's what we're here for. And, and we just like you said, we wear many hats, we probably should have a degree, every psychology so. So I'm sure but it but it's great. You know, that's the that's the fun of it. And honestly, we get a lot of people trust us, when we sit down. That's a big thing with the buyer consults to and sellers. They, when we leave there, they trust, they know they're going to be taken care of.
So you mentioned the psychology of it all. So let's talk about I think old school, we thought it was an adversarial kind of buyer seller, you know, I want to get maximum, you want to pay the least and that kind. But it's really not like that. It's about a meeting of the minds, right? So talk about a little bit about that about how, hey, this doesn't have to be adversarial. In fact, it can be good for both parties, right? Well,
I think what we tried to do is, is just have a win win situation, a win win for the seller, win win for the buyer, and so we can we can move on it, it's hard to do sometimes, you know, a repair request. I mean, there's there's so much they want more earnest money down. I mean, there's so much that goes into a purchase contract, and steps that we have to that we have to take. And we always tell our buyers and our sellers, we make our money in negotiations. So that's where we get paid. So when we're negotiating, you're experts there. Yes, there's a lot of times I'll say, Look, you know, I've been doing this a long time. I know, this is what we need to do. And we are very lucky that we have people that trust us. So because they know we're going to take care of them. I mean, we're not going to let them do something that is going to harm them financially is going to, let's say we have seller is going to do something that is not really going to be fair to the buyer, you know, you can't cross any of those lines. And again, it goes back to the law and in representation, binding contracts and having representation. Yeah, speaking
of contracts and commitments. So whether you're a buyer or a seller, there is like you have to qualify quote unquote qualifier. So what are the steps there? Let's say we have a baby boomer out there, and they're saying, You know what, I'd like to sell my home and downsize kids are gone. And that's a scenario you probably see quite often. So what do they what do they need to do as far as with the financial institution? Or with homepage? What do they need to do to qualify?
To take that? Well, I mean, first off, what we would, what we would do is go do a listing Console, go to their house, go to their home, walk through it, see what kind of condition it's in, see, you know, give them any advice of the things that we do see paint, carpet, flooring, all those things, declutter most of the time. Give them that advice and then they'll have to talk to their financial you know, institution first
that we hope we do.
There. Let's go back so when we do do listing contracts, we also do a seller net sheet so we find out if they owe any money and if they do, we break it down and I didn't bring one of those but we break it down. Like here's the seller net sheet let's say we sell it this and we break it down like this is what goes to the title company. This is what goes you know, commissions blah, blah, blah and go all the way down. And then we ask Do you Do you owe anything on your house, you know, or condo or whatever? No, I don't. We'll see. And with that being said, their bottom line is gonna probably be pretty big. So okay, let's say you're, you're gonna make 300,000 Because you don't owe anything, do you want to go into a patio home or downsize at this price point, you know, and if they they're like, I don't know, I don't know, we always say you need to talk to your financial person, because they're going to know what's best for you. I can tell you all the houses in the world, but they're going to know what's best for you. So that's that we kind of push them off, so to speak on their financial person when it comes to something like that.
Well, and financial situations are confidential. So a lot of times we aren't privy to that information. So their lender, whoever their lender is, and we do have a list of preferred lenders and preferred contractors that we have. So you have a selection there if you don't have somebody in mind.
So what's the trend? Now? You know, you hear a lot of stories about people saying, Okay, I want an urban lifestyle. I want to go downtown where things are vibrant in stores and walking, etc? Or are people moving more to the suburbs are a little bit of both? Susan, what are you seeing out there? Is there is are people gravitating towards more rural area? Or they say no, you know, when unlike downtown living,
I see it everywhere. Both sides, I do see both sides of it, because like Norton Commons was huge. For a while, and you know, and now it's just kind of like, oh, no, I want to be more in a subdivision where I have more space in my yard. You know, so and a lot of it depends on age. You know, where where they are in their life. You know, do they want to go to one floor plan? Do they have kids and they want, they want to be away from home. They want their bedroom on the main floor and them upstairs. So it just, I see it everywhere. I see people moving out of Jefferson County to go to Bullitt county or moving out to go to Shelby County because they want more space. So I'm
originally from Bullitt County. So my Bullitt county people, I think that Bullitt county is getting very busy and it's growing a lot. So I think that a lot of people have seen Taylorsville booming. Shelbyville, so a lot of new areas popping up.
I was surprised. How do you guys feel about the success of Norton Commons? The expansion continued expansion in Orange County. Are you surprised by that? Do you see more of those kinds of communities being built?
Yes, I do. Even a new development even in Jefferson County, when you can find you know, five acres like little bit of they put them as close together as they can. And it's a different type of person that wants to live like that.
It's about amenities. Isn't it walk distance from everything.
It is definitely about amenities. Yeah. Norton Commons is great. You know, I can't believe they just keep building and building and building but they've got people moving out there. Yeah, and it's great. I mean, we go out there you know, I don't want to live out there but we go out there because I love the amenities so I
can understand that. Yeah, I see the allure. Don't know if it's for me, but I do see the allure. Okay, this would never happen with homepage Realty. Just just let you guys know, but you have had to have seen a few open house night nightmares, catastrophes, something that happened. Your smile in your mind? Like, I don't know if I want to tell this. But But I think it's interesting to people. So listen, I guess it's a don't do list. What have you seen any go? Don't do this, please. For
open houses. I can say we talked a little bit about that. I can't say that. We have that many issues with open houses nowadays, because our deal with open houses is safety. So we make sure there's two of us, or at least the three of us, at an open house. The craziness of an open house, they're not as crazy as like if you're showing property, like there was this one house I showed. And I know I'm getting off to open houses and I apologize. But there was one house I show we went into the basement and there was like a crazy person. Like, on on the on on the basement door and it was like a like you could open the door. It was the weirdest thing.
And I'm sorry, crazy person is not gonna help you sell that home. Well,
no, it's not. Yeah, I mean, it was just like, oh, but, you know, you we run into all kinds of all the things showing showings, like, you know, you, you got I think Melanie had one where she went in and some people were sleeping rooms, you know, and we've got a family that wants to see this house and we can open doors, you know, because there's
language barriers. So that was a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah.
So it's, you know, I think our biggest thing on open houses though, really, John is, is safety. You know, it's not. We really watch out and watch the people that are coming through the houses because you know, you I've been doing it a long time. And probably 15 years ago, I was in a really nice house out in Brentwood, but we had some different people that were coming through Were there and you had you just have to be very, very careful and pay attention. You know, 15 years ago, it was just me we didn't have I didn't feel like we had a safety issue. We probably I've always had a safety issue, but you just, you just have to be on. So when
you say safety issue, someone who may be coming in for other reasons other than buying a home. Yes. And, you know, let's just be direct somebody coming in and wanting to steal or Oh, yeah, well, you blasted
all over social media. So if you just have one person on your flyer, then you know, somebody knows that there's somebody hosting this home today. And they're in there by themselves. So we really try to stick together.
Another reason to have homepage get involved homepage URL. Yeah, make sure that they do that. Yes. Okay. Before I let you go, if someone else I want to give you this scenario, because I'm curious. As you all you both have trained eyes, obviously, you're professionals. So what are the things? What do you look for when someone says, I'm selling my home, and you're kind of somewhat of an inspector, so you're going to look at the home and talk about the bones of a home and the foundation and inspections and the importance of that?
I'm gonna let you do that. All right, Melanie, it's my
buyers kind of joke with me about about how nitpicky I am but I tried to look around at ceilings, floors, look for cracks and stains, and all of that, all of that stuff. In real estate school, they taught us to look underneath big rugs to look at the condition of the floor. We're not inspectors by any means. But I don't want buyers to be brought surprised an inspection and a you know, you get to inspection a and you're, you're excited and as scariest day of your life, because it is just such an important purchase. So we were there at inspection days with our buyers, we meet the inspectors that we use and go over all the issues and stuff we find. But most of the time, it's it's always rewarding to hear, Oh, Miller, Susan's already pointed that out to us. We we've seen that. And we know that that's
there, too. And I tell Melanie all the time, look, we're not gonna worry about anything until we have to worry about something. So if that inspector comes in and says, you know, look, this is this is what's going on, you know, we, a lot of times we've already seen it, and the buyer is somewhat aware of it because we've we've toured the house, you know, so
there's, there's so many layers here. This is fast, because it isn't such a big decision either way buying or selling. So if someone wants to have the experts on hand, from S to Realty homepage Realty. How do they do this? What's the first step that they call you? They go online a consultation, how does it all work?
It can be a phone call, it can be text, they can go online to our website. I mean, we've got QR codes that we let everybody scan, you know, just to be able to get to our website and either look for homes or contact us. But I mean, the biggest thing is we we try to love on our clients and really get to know them to where they've trust us and feel comfortable to where they can call us or text us in anytime. So
whether you're a buyer or seller, you get that price that you want to be on either side here. So do you guys bring the champagne on that day, because that's three days.
All the closing is like we did bring a basket and we really try to listen to what people say is through the houses, whether interest is and we try to pay attention to that and we probably come
to Yeah, when we come to the closing. We're like, oh, they like bourbon, you know. So we tend to Yeah, we do pretty well at listening to all because
all these steps we forget about the adrenaline rush and the joy of buying or selling a home and the excitement. So I think that's something important to remember. So again, it's s two Realty Group Homepage Realty. And of course, you've met Susan, you met Melanie, you'd like to know him a little bit. Well, if you're thinking about buying or selling get to know him a little better. It's important to have expert advice. Once again, we are gaining interest power by legato Financial Group. And thank you so much for joining us.