Good Neighbor Podcast South Charlotte
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of South Charlotte.
Good Neighbor Podcast South Charlotte
Ep # 143 Lakefront Living: Insights from a Charlotte Real Estate Expert
Mike Sposato brings nearly 25 years of real estate expertise to this fascinating conversation about Charlotte's waterfront property market. The owner of Carolina Realty Advisors shares his unique approach to client relationships, focusing first on establishing genuine connections before applying his diverse skill set across multiple market segments.
What sets Mike apart is his innovative approach to showing lakefront properties. For potential buyers coming from out of state, he conducts property tours by boat, allowing clients to experience homes from the water while learning crucial information about lake depths, navigation challenges, and ideal locations. This hands-on approach demonstrates his deep knowledge of not just the properties, but the entire lakefront lifestyle his clients are seeking.
The conversation reveals surprising insights about timing in the waterfront market. Unlike traditional real estate that follows predictable seasonal patterns driven by school calendars, lakefront properties maintain consistent demand year-round because buyers are typically empty-nesters or second-home purchasers. Current market analysis shows a healthy "conveyor belt" of inventory moving every month, with properties taking about six months from listing to closing. For strategic buyers, the November-January window might offer slight advantages when dealing with sellers who've had properties listed through the busy season.
Most valuable is Mike's candid discussion about buyer representation. He explains why contacting listing agents directly through real estate websites can be a costly mistake, comparing it to "going to court without an attorney when the other side has one." This becomes particularly problematic in North Carolina with its unique due diligence fee requirements. His passionate advocacy for proper buyer representation serves as a crucial reminder that real estate transactions remain complex negotiations where professional expertise matters tremendously.
Reach out to Mike directly at 704-619-7070 or visit CarolinaLakeFrontHomes.com to explore waterfront properties and learn more about Charlotte's lakes. Whether you're ready to buy now or just beginning to explore options, his expertise can help you navigate these specialized markets with confidence.
Carolina Realty Advisors
Mike Sposato
is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Regina Lee.
Speaker 2:Good morning everyone and welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. My favorite thing to do is to chat with local business owners and my goodness, mike, this is maybe our fourth time. Welcome back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:So this is Mike Sposato and he is the owner of Carolina Realty Advisors, and you are quite the powerhouse in Charlotte. Do you specialize in any type of real estate?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do. I do you know. Let me first start off by saying you know, after doing this for almost 25 years, after doing this for almost 25 years, how we built our business and why we call ourselves Carolina Realty Advisors is we really look for a good fit with our clientele. A fit means, it's pretty obvious Do we like each other? Do we feel like we'd be able to work together in a longer business cycle, because real estate sales can take quite a while? That being said, if we feel like there's a fit, luckily, through time, you know, developed a lot of different skill sets in different markets, so I can help people do a variety of things, which is unusual for our market because most of the time when you take your average real estate agent, they may work for X, y, xyz company and they only work in a given area, like South Park or Ballantyne or et cetera. That's all they do, that's what they know and that's where they're proficient.
Speaker 3:But there's so many opportunities if you have the skill set and the negotiation ability to work in different markets. So I do commercial real estate, ability to work in different markets. So I do commercial real estate, I do traditional residential real estate. I also like to do a lot of the 55 and what I call 55 and better real estate. Love it and then you know, but really I specialize a lot in waterfront property. That's where I'm most passionate and if anybody is watching this and not listening to it, but just watching the video, you can see I've got the raccoon eyes.
Speaker 2:Oh, you do. Yeah, that's from being out on the boat all the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so when I when I like this week I've got two different clients coming in from out of state and when they come in one of the days, we actually go out on the boat and we'll come up to the houses that we're going to look at, tie up on their dock and go out that way so I can teach them what they need to know about different, like Lake Wiley or Lake Norman and places to go to, places to avoid where the water is shallow and all that good stuff like that that you would need to know.
Speaker 2:That is amazing because you're absolutely right. If you want to buy a boat, if you're planning on bringing a yacht versus a pontoon totally different needs Well, here we are. In the heat of the summer, Is this a bad time to list your lake house?
Speaker 3:No, actually there's this, is it with the lake properties? There's really not a bad time to do it, and the reason is what I'm finding. Most of the clients I'm working with are coming here from out of state. They're usually cash buyers which set that aside. The big reason is is that they're typically empty nesters or this is a second home, so schools aren't that critical to them most of the time.
Speaker 3:So when people are thinking about the spring market, they want to get their house listed. When people are thinking about the spring market, they want to get their house listed. Frequently those people would be, you know, families or in a neighborhood or area where the school it's. A lot of it's generated on schools and timing around schools and things of that nature, but on the lake, you know, it's constant. In fact, I was doing a little research just a few minutes ago before a conversation and what I found is, right now, if you're looking at waterfront property on either Lake Norman or Lake Wiley, both of them combined, there's 223 active listings, which you know, take it for what it's worth.
Speaker 3:There's 76, though, that are under contract, and there's 218 that have sold in the last six months, and so if you break that down with 223, well, 218 sold properties.
Speaker 3:That averages out to about 36 properties are selling every single month on either one of the lakes that are waterfront, and having 76 under contract assuming it takes two months from contract to close, that means 38 properties are currently selling every single month, and with 223 properties that are listed, that means there's an average of about let's put it like this way there's an average of 37 different homes getting listed each month.
Speaker 3:There's an average of 37 different homes getting listed each month, and so it's like a conveyor belt. It's a nonstop conveyor belt. When you put your house on the market, on average, it's taking six months to go through the process, so you list it. It takes probably four months to get it under contract, another two weeks or two months to get it closed out, and so that's a healthy inventory. I've always talked about buyer market versus seller market. Seller's market is when you list it and it takes you like 30 days from list to close, and a buyer's market is when it takes 12 months or longer from list to close, but when you're in that six month area, that's the sweet spot, that's when you have a healthy market and that's really what you have when you're looking at waterfront property.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and let's say we were just talking about listing a home. How about buying a home strategically? Let's say you're not in a big hurry. Is there a certain time of year you should think about looking? Yeah.
Speaker 3:If you're not in a big hurry. You know on average, these are just the laws of averages. But when you get to the end of the year, you know right around the holidays. If anybody's home is still on the market then, and they've been on the market for four or five, six months, that seller's probably experiencing some amount of pain, frustration, stress, anxiety, and they may be more willing at that point to take a little bit of a lower offer just to get it off their books. So you know, if you were going to try to pinpoint one time, if you're the buyer and you want to get the deal today, it might be to come out, you know, late November into early January to try to see what you can find.
Speaker 2:But then again, most of the time the inventories have been picked through and it's almost like a rummage sale yeah, it seems like lakefront purchasing is such an emotional decision and when you see that house and you think, oh my god, this is it. Well, so are a lot of other people. So do you find that you ask people hey, this might be it. How do you work with them when you see a property that's a good fit?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, it's really. It's kind of first starts off with active listening. You got to really seek to understand what they're saying and what they want, because people come in initially with all sorts of different thoughts, especially if they're not from our area. You know lakes where they're at, or you know they're shaped different, they're smaller, they're this or that, the houses are different, prices are different. But once they get acclimated and you go out and you kind of look at properties with them, you do have to be able to walk in their shoes, side by side and kind of understand really what's important for them.
Speaker 3:For some people it's all about the view, some people it's you know, they want there's, you know some of the lakes, or not some of the lakes, but some of the homes have really really steep declines from the house down into the water, you know, and if they're elderly or whatever, that's a, you know, a no-go, it's a showstopper. So just things of that nature. You just got to understand what's important for them, you know, and make sure that you're you know doing what they really want you to do in order to provide the service that they need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I guess being patient is part of it from the buyer's perspective. So, what's going on in the whole Charlotte, you know, with Lake, not just lakes, but give us an update on the Charlotte Metro area market.
Speaker 3:Well, that's kind of a loaded question, because there's. So you, you really, when you you have to look at little sub markets as an example Uptown or South Park or even like Matthews or Mint Hill each one's slightly different because the buyer pool is a little bit different. As an example, the uptown crowd or the south end crowd might tend to be a little bit younger maybe and maybe wanting that city life, so to speak, whereas you might look in South Park and again it could be going around schools and timing around schools and things of that nature. So the healthier markets are still. It's crazy that the higher dollar markets like I had a listing that I put on the market five weeks ago for two point five million and had 30, some showings and got a cash offer on it, which was crazy, because then I have other listings that are listed for 320,000 and in 30 days they get three showings.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's just and it's a lot because of interest rates. I mean, when you work with the people every day and you see these like when their predictive payment comes out, if their credit is not the greatest and they don't have a lot of money to put down, sometimes when they get that, well, here's what your payment's going to be once we show them a house and they kind of factor in taxes and everything. It really is. You know, it's a showstopper for some people, even though they're going to own it and it's going to be write off and all that. Cash. Buyers or people who have quite a bit at least 20 to maybe 50% to put down. That's the market that's moving. It's the first time.
Speaker 3:Buyers that have kind of slowed down quite a bit just because of rates. But they keep saying rates are going to be better. All the economic signs are saying they should be better and once they are, I think the bow is going to break and the cradle is going to fall again and I think we're going to be in a position where the buyers come rushing back in. And who knows when that could be. It could be tomorrow, it could be next year, it could be next month, I don't know. No one really knows, but you know rates get down in the low, low sixes or even mid to high five, something like that. I think it's going to be. It's going to be back on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when a lot of us think about we want a different house, we look online and then we call that agent that is with that listing and that is not oftentimes the agent that even made the listing correct. How does that work?
Speaker 3:Well. So it depends on where they go. So if they go to Zillow or Realtorcom, what those companies will do is they have premier agents in different zip codes and cities and so forth that they put on those listings. They're not the listing agent, but that's good for the consumer, because if you buy and sell real estate every year or every other year and you do it a lot and have a lot of experience and you maybe you can do it on your own, that's one thing, but the average person doesn't. The average person at this point is like every six and a half years they'll make a move, and the real estate commission, national Association of Realtors and so forth, they change all the contracts each year. So the terminology changes, the dance moves and putting a deal together they change and if you're not up to speed, trying to represent yourself could be problematic.
Speaker 3:The way I always explain it is this If you go out on the Internet and you think you're going to go directly to the listing agent, you're walking in the door with somebody who's already working with the seller and they've got a signed listing agreement that stipulates they're going to get them the most amount of money and represent their best interest, not yours. Another way of looking at it is if you ever had to go to court on a civil matter, you know you could be completely right on everything, the reason you want to go to court and you might have documentation and you show up and you believe in everything you're going to say, but you don't have an attorney and that other party does. Probably 99 times out of 100, you're going to lose. And so finding your own buyer agent who you like and who's got the skill set that you need and somebody you trust, is the best way to go, I think, because you're going to have somebody who's going to represent your best interest. They're going to be loyal to you. They're going to discuss all the material facts about a property before you make an offer, and in North Carolina it's really critical that they do that because of our due diligence fee that we have here.
Speaker 3:So for those people out there listening and they're not familiar with North Carolina real estate, in our state when you make an offer, there is a due diligence fee that is due at the time of contract, per the contract, and so that due diligence fee is not refundable under any circumstance. So if you were looking at a house for four hundred thousand and you wanted to put it under contract, you might give the seller you know it's a negotiated amount it could be as little as a thousand or 2000. And if it's the house, it's in really high demand it could be 20,000 or even more. But if your agent isn't looking out for your best interest and reviewing documents and looking at things like the roof, the HVAC system, the water heater, the foundation, if they're not doing all that prior to you writing that offer, and then you get under contract and you pay the seller that fee and then find out three or four days later that there's a lot of problems, then you lose that money. And so, going back to your internet question, you know everybody can do whatever they want.
Speaker 3:But if it were me and I was buying, especially in an area I wasn't familiar with or I hadn't bought property in several years, I would seek out the help of a very good buyer agent who's going to represent my best interest and be loyal to me and formulate a working relationship and teamwork, versus trying to go to the. And when people come to me when I'm listing property, they don't have an agent. I mean, you know I'm not obligated to represent their best interest, because I already have an agreement with my client. I can help them a little bit, but they're not going to get the full level of services and it could. In the end it'll cost them thousands of dollars. And the law of agency is a critical thing, and knowing who's on your team and who you can trust and all that is so, so important.
Speaker 2:You know, we could probably do a whole show just on due diligence on our next one, because it is so unique in North Carolina. Well, mike, thank you so much. Tell our listeners how to find you.
Speaker 3:So the best way to find me, obviously, I think, is just to make a quick phone call, even if you're not right in the market today, or me, obviously, I think is just to make a quick phone call, even if you're not right in the market today or tomorrow, but you think you're going to be, just call me. We can talk for a few minutes and just help. You know, see where things go from there. But my number is 704-619-7070. And if you're interested, in waterfront property.
Speaker 3:You can go to wwwCarolinaLakeFrontHomescom. That's CarolinaLakeFrontHomes. com. You'll see all kinds of different interesting information, articles, listings, things about the lakes. All kinds of great information If you're thinking you might want to buy something on one of the area. Lakes like Lake Norman Lake, wiley Lake, hickory or Mount Ninal Lake.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today. Mike Appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPSouthCharlotte. com. That's GNPSouthCharlotte. com, or call 980-351-5719.