It’s October 2019. What is the Charlottesville – Albemarle real estate market doing right now?

• Is the Charlottesville market slowing?
• We’ll know in 18 months what today’s market is doing.
• Greg speaks in depth about the Charlottesville new construction market
• The value of slowing the client down
• Seeing beyond the online filter; knowing what your buyers should consider.
• Which builder is #5 in volume in the Charlottesville market?

Listen to the podcast here. Subscribe to RealPodVA here.

Jim Duncan: Sitting here with Greg Slater of Nest Realty. I’m Jim Duncan with Nest Realty, just looking at where the Charlottesville – Albemarle regional market is. We’re in the first part of October.

Jim Duncan: And it’s funny with Nest we’ve got 50 some odd agents here. And I think collectively the sense is that the market is slowing, not just seasonally but systemically. Even though we have an interest rates that are three and a half, 4% whatever, and the buying power for a lot of people is increased. But it feels like we’re in the first week of October that we’re seeing a slowing down that we’re accustomed to on an annual basis. But it also feels familiar from a decade ago. But what are you seeing from a data perspective? And what’s your sense?

Greg Slater: Before I get to the data, the feeling side was the summer we go through July and August and things feel pretty slow.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: It’s like, “Okay, it felt this way last year and then we had a nice little pickup in the fall.” Well, that little pickup in the fall of showing activity at least isn’t there, at least in my inventory listings. Which is pretty broad spectrum of price points and the area in general. I wish we could get that data you guys worked on years ago of the lockbox activity. That would be very helpful right now, because all these sales start with showings. And I have a lot of conversations with agents that are talking about how they’re counseling their home sellers through a lack of traffic.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: Right?

Jim Duncan: It’s hard.

Greg Slater: It’s hard to read. No activity. It’s easier to read showings that don’t result in offers than it is to read no activity.

Jim Duncan: It’s harder on the seller to, because the seller, if they’re a good seller, they’re leaving the house every day and showing condition and and that’s work.

Greg Slater: Oh, it’s stressful. It’s stressful to be on the market.

Jim Duncan: It’s hard.

Greg Slater: And especially if you’re one of those people who really wants to present their house, has every light on as good as possible. Every day is a routine that becomes a little strenuous.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: But from a data level, we’re not seeing the same thing yet in the numbers. And so maybe we’re just feeling the bleeding edge of a shift. But this year by the time is all said and done we’re going to look at some numbers that looked pretty consistent with last year.

Jim Duncan: I mean, you look purely at the data and sales numbers are up for the most part.

Greg Slater: Yeah. No, the builders are doing well. Sales are up just contracts written this year are up 13% for new construction. And that’s, that’s part of the challenge for some sellers. They may not realize they’re competing with new construction, some segments of our markets, the builders are doing very well.

Jim Duncan: I mean, my sense is that for new construction, most price points are competing with new in our market. Whether it’s head to head you looking at, you have a $650,000 resale and you’re definitely competing with new construction or you’re $500,000 resale and you’re competing with new. Or you’re a 300 and you’re competing people who are… It’s odd that I see people will, will look at three to three to 400 for resale, realize they don’t have the 50, $80,000 cash to do the renovations to make it quote unquote modern. And then they end up spending 500 or 550 on new. So it’s hard to make sense of what’s actually happening sometimes.

Greg Slater: Yeah. So one of the indicators I’ve always looked at was the percentage of new construction to just the overall market as a percentage of sales. And coming out of the recession we were always hovering around that 20% mark. By 2016 it got up to 23%. well we’re up in the 26, 27% range now for three years running.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: But you break it down further and it gets even more interesting. Under 500 it’s 21%. but over from 500 to a million, the builders are getting over 40% of the sales. And that’s a pretty telling figure to me because what it tells me is, I think the builders are responding to the market. They’re getting a high percentage of the sales in the lower segment of the market, because we need more of that product and they’re scrambling to find places to build town homes and things that can sell.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: They’d love to have stuff to sell in the two hundreds that’s not really achievable around Albemarle and Charlottesville.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: It’s happening in some of the other localities. But honestly they’re trying to find places where they can build town homes in the three hundreds, because that is about as good as you can do right now.

Jim Duncan: Right. I’ll reference the the most recent, With The Details podcast with Jessica louts and we were talking about longevity in homes. Like when I practice started in ’01, people would stay for three to five years and then it was seven to ten years and it was never during the crash. And now I think we’re back to people who are staying for seven to ten years and longer. Because a lot of the first time home buyers I’m working with, that’s not their three to five year house or their five to seven year house. That’s their seven to forever year house. So with these new construction stuff, my sense is that a lot of these guys are looking to stay for 10 years minimum is their goal.

Greg Slater: That’s the conversation. That’s their goal. And unless their employment’s interrupted or something along those lines that causes a move, I think they’ll stick to it. Personally, I have a lot of conversations with people that want to make that elective move. They don’t really need to, but by the time we really look at the situation and evaluate everything, they choose not to.

Jim Duncan: To not move?

Greg Slater: Right.

Jim Duncan: Yeah, I do a lot of that too.

Greg Slater: Well. And so the most common one I joke about, it’s folks our age that have kids in high school or just graduated from high school and they are anticipating or just become what they consider to be an empty nest. And I’m like, “Your kids are just going to college. You’re not an empty nest yet.”

Jim Duncan: If they’re lucky that they are.

Greg Slater: Right. But they’re forecasting that need to make a housing change and I’m like, “Pump your brakes. It’s maybe not quite right time to do that yet.”

Jim Duncan: But also I mean, I do counsel people that the kids tend to not come back as often as the parents would like them to. When the kids go out and have their kids, they don’t come back. I mean they don’t generally come back to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and holiday, whatever that might be.

Greg Slater: Yeah. So, but my point is less about whether or not they come back and it’s just the emotional experience they’re going through causes them to be impulsive.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: Have you ever worked with a medical resident who just got finished with nine years of education and got their first salary? They’re ready to go buy something.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: And sometimes it’s a little too early and you need to figure out what’s going on with what you really want and how your life might change in the next 10 years. Because it’s hard to make a 10 year decision for a lot of people and they do it impulsively and things change quickly.

Jim Duncan: Yeah. I think it’s before we run into the numbers a little more, I mean, one of the things I think that we do if we do it well is we slow people down. We’ve done this before and we’ve seen this before when they’re seeing something new for the first time and we’re able to say, if they… most of my clients trust me. When the clients trust you, you’re about to say, “Hang on now. Just get through the next nine months or ten months and figure out what life is and then we can have this conversation.”

Greg Slater: Yeah. And even if they get further into the process. How often do you have someone looking at home, and you ask them about a home and they’re like, “Yeah, we saw that online but we didn’t want to see it”? But you knew that was something they should see whether just for context.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: And you have to make them go see something they re-… The online filter can be good or bad. I often find myself telling people, “When in doubt go see it because things can feel very different in real life than they do on the internet.”

Jim Duncan: Right. I mean part of our role also is to, I call it giving them data points. I know they’re not going to buy this house, but they’ve got to see it. They’ve got to see this house just to throw it into the equation. So when they do make that buying decision, they’re able to say, “Okay, I feel better about this conversation.”

Jim Duncan: Looking at volume resales versus new construction, but total. What are you seeing in the city and county?

Greg Slater: What do you mean total volume?

Jim Duncan: Yeah, year over year. I want to see if our numbers match up.

Greg Slater: I don’t track that to be honest with you.

Jim Duncan: Really?

Greg Slater: The last number I pulled related to volume was I was just getting ready to run the September new construction sales.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: Because what I follow is the contracts in new construction each month. And I actually go back about five years comparing like March, March, March, March, March, over time. And we’re having a another really strong year with growth. But for example, last September there were 60 sales for 25 million. And this September they were 66 sales for 29 million. But as far as the overall market, I know the home volumes are going up.

Jim Duncan: Right. So I did, I pulled the totals for ’19 and ’18 because I think that there’s a lot of value for, for that conversation about looking at the longterm trends. But just getting a sense of what’s happening in the market today, I look at the year of a year. And I looked at January through September. And in the city last year they had 386 sales, 49 of which were new construction. And this year there were 421 sales.

Greg Slater: How much were new construction?

Jim Duncan: 47, just in the city.

Greg Slater: The city’s tough because of the difficulty to find places [inaudible 00:09:28].

Jim Duncan: In 10 square miles, I mean, and they’re not adding land.

Greg Slater: Yeah, he city’s tough.

Jim Duncan: In the county, it was a 1387 last year and 1365 so far this year. And the new construction percentage was up significantly in the county, because there’s so much and there’s so much building going on in all areas with the growth areas. It’s interesting to see that that percentage continues to grow of new construction year over year.

Greg Slater: So the number I was following throughout the year when you came in and you look at the first quarter sales year over year closed sales was off.

Jim Duncan: [inaudible 00:10:03] the fall?

Greg Slater: Right. And it started getting smaller and smaller and smaller where we haven’t completely closed the gap. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. The new construction sales take longer to close.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: Right? And when they are a greater percentage of the market, there’s going to be a longer lag time each year for those closed transactions to hit the data. I really think by the end of the year we’re going to be talking about negligible differences in closed transactions.

Jim Duncan: I’m looking-

Greg Slater: It’s pretty even.

Jim Duncan: In November, I’m going to pull the pendings to see where, God it’s 2020. Where 2020 might be, because I think looking at the actives and the pendings I think gives us a better sense for me, is that what’s actually happening. And not the new construction. For me for getting a sense of what a lot of my clients are, because it is looking at the resales.

Greg Slater: You have to break it out, for sure.

Jim Duncan: It’s harder because the new construction also. I mean what, we have four big builders?

Greg Slater: Yeah, so we have four big builders and I pulled the numbers this morning. Those four big builders represents 70% of the new construction market. And then there are 28 other builders competing for the other 30%, outside of the top four. Well, you want to see just contracts written year to date, Ryan Holmes has hit 167 through September and Stanley Martin has hit 154 those are huge numbers.

Jim Duncan: Do you have last year?

Greg Slater: They’re ahead of last year’s pace. I don’t have it in front of me but they’re a little bit ahead. I want to say last year Stanley ended, these guys ended pretty… They’re going to break their numbers from last year is the point. Southern and Craig are a little more stable in their year over year activity. And different builders had different sales plans. Right. And the Ryans and the Stanleys are their sales plan as many as we can get.

Jim Duncan: Pure volume.

Greg Slater: That’s right. Outside of those top four, Liberty homes is up to 42.

Jim Duncan: And they’re in the outer areas.

Greg Slater: They’re going to be in the lower price points in the outer areas. Can you guess which builder that’s emerged in the last five years has moved up into the number five spot?

Jim Duncan: Ooh.

Greg Slater: It’ll be obvious to you when I say it.

Jim Duncan: I mean, I would almost say almost say Peak.

Greg Slater: It’s Evergreen.

Jim Duncan: Really?

Greg Slater: It’s Evergreen.

Jim Duncan: Well, they had all the CNO stuff.

Greg Slater: Well they’ve just made 10 sales in Highland Park too, in the last 60 days. You think of the timing of half acre lot communities.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: You had Highland Ridge hit all by itself and it was a forest fire and then you had Oak Hill farm hit by itself, it was a forest fire. And now Highland Park is hit right when Oak Hill ended. if all three of those hit at the same time, it’s a completely different environment for sales in there.

Jim Duncan: Oak Hill just annihilated that market.

Greg Slater: They sold 30 or 40 homes before they got the street in.

Jim Duncan: Yeah. And it’s also that that impacted the Moseby and Red Field for that short period of time, significantly. It’s conversation with clients a lot is, “What in fact is, is that new going to have on my resale?”

Jim Duncan: I’m like, “It’s going to probably kill you for about 18 months.”

Greg Slater: Yeah, in the higher end of [Crosette 00:13:06] when you start looking at the 7, 800, 900 stuff and what you can buy in West Lake from Craig and Stanley. And what I’m finding is there is still a person… Some people will take new, have a little bit less or quality location or neighborhood.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: There’s a premium for Old Trail, right. And there’s a premium for Brownsville versus Crosette Elementary, honestly. But I find people are choosing shiny and new with a bigger square footages. Maybe that full finished, awesome basement is more important to them then that premium for a better location, or even a higher quality construction.

Jim Duncan: So on that I looked at the average square footage in Crosette and Brownsville last year, if I did my math right, it’s about 3,100 square feet for just single-family. Take the pool and the townhouse and out of it in Crosette and Brownsville in 2018 and so far this year it’s 3,500.

Greg Slater: That’s not surprising. Big in a vogue again.

Jim Duncan: It’s sad, it’s sad and it’s distressing and it’s awful. But, it’s not surprising. We are Americans.

Greg Slater: If you bring it all the way back to the demographic conversation you had with the lady from the NAR. Building big homes may not be the best long term prospect, because that’s not what we’re missing in the market place.

Jim Duncan: No.

Greg Slater: What we’re missing in the marketplace is smaller homes for smaller families.

Jim Duncan: Well, and it’s also for people who value their lifestyle of being out of the house. And I think that a lot of people, at least through my lens and my clients, they want smaller, better spaces in better locations so they can go and have fun. Instead of spending their time heating, cooling, cleaning, 3,501 square feet.

Greg Slater: Big giant bedrooms they sleep in only.

Jim Duncan: So why don’t the builders build that?

Greg Slater: Look the parade is coming up this weekend in Nex, right? It’s always a great place if you want to go kind of figure out where the builder’s minds are, this is your best opportunity. Because they’re going to lead with things that they, where they think the market is going or what’s hot right now in all regards, whether it’s stylistically or floor plan wise. And they’re feeling the demand for the bigger stuff on these. When they find the places to build these half acre, these half acre home sites-

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: … people still want big traditional homes. When you get into the smaller home sites, things start to get a little more efficient and the home sizes get to be a little more right sized. The other thing they’re chasing though, just like Pleasant Green is they’re all looking for places where they can go build town homes that will hit those lower price points. And a couple of these builders, they’re not going to reflect in our numbers, but they’re over in the valley now. They’ve moved over there and started buying property. Stanley Martins moved to the Valley, Ryan Holmes has moved over into the valley. This is probably hearsay, in a world we live in, we have to be careful about hearsay. But the land manager for Toll Brothers is under contract to build a home and Old Trail right now. And I’m told they have made offers for lots in communities where they’re actually selling lots before the development work has started.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: But I’m also too, they haven’t been successful yet. Now, when we talked about the height of the market back in 2004, 2005 when we got to the number of sales, when we get into that 5, 600 new home sales per year, that’s when we attract bigger builders from out of the area. Because they start to perceive this market as having enough activity for them to worthwhile to be here and operate.

Jim Duncan: Stepping back a bit, do you think we’re nearing a recession?

Greg Slater: For in general economy?

Jim Duncan: In general economy. And I say that because reading a lot of… you can read anything, you can read that the economy’s booming. NAR says that the inventory for the foreseeable future, “We don’t have enough inventory on the market and we can’t we can’t produce enough. And so we’re not going to have a housing recession.”

Jim Duncan: And real estate is saying that, “Job market is not quite as stable as we would want it to be and that we might be looking at a recession.”

Greg Slater: It’s so hard to answer. We have to try to remember the last time we went through a major recession, it was so cataclysmic. It’s difficult to look at it and think about some of the really crazy things that caused it. There were a lot of clues we missed back then.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: There were some crazy… But as far as I’m concerned, the recession now, if you’re going to say we’ve had 10 or 11 years of economic expansion and it’s the longest that’s ever happened. Sooner or later the market is cyclical and we have to slow down. And then once you start slowing down after I’ve run like that, the bears take and, yeah artificially.

Greg Slater: One of the smartest things I ever heard said was there was actually an economic summit by the realtors Alan Greenspan spoke at in like 2009 or 2010 we were kind of the depth of the challenges. And he said, “Everything’s going to be okay. You know why? You can’t hold the American consumer down but for so long. 80% psychological.” So I think for no other reason, there’ll be psychological reasons we enter into a recession here at some point, because it’s just been going on. People get to the point where they’ve bought everything they need to buy and they feel like they need to start saving money. And even just when saving rates go up, you can spark a recession. So yeah, one’s coming.

Greg Slater: But on the real estate side, I just hope… I think some of this data is going to show us that appreciation if it hasn’t slowed all the way to a stop yet, it’s close. The question is how far past appreciation slowing till we get to a point it’s receding?

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: And it’s going to be impossible to predict. And like you’ve said for your whole career, “We’ll know after it happens and we look back and figure it out.”

Jim Duncan: Yeah, no, I mean I think the sense is, at least my sense is that it really hasn’t changed since the crash. That buy a house for minimum five to seven years and you should be fine. But I think, if you’re looking at it as a commodity that you buy it in, we’re 2019 and plan to sell it in 2021 you should expect to lose money.

Greg Slater: Yeah. And one of my challenges with people in that regard is the lack of understanding they have for how much the transaction really cost. And they think whether or not they lost or made money is whether or not they got more or less than they paid for the house.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: And that’s definitely not the case. When I got into the first place, I sold a new homes in a model home was in the late 90s in Lake Cranobia. And we told everybody that came through that door that you buy a new home, you can break even if you own it five years.

Jim Duncan: Yeah.

Greg Slater: Yeah. I think that’s still true. And, you get back to people staying in their homes longer. Some of the more analytical people I work with, like my next door neighbor who’s a CPA, his family’s right at that point where he could move up a basement would change his life, he can afford to move. He’s owned his home for over 10 years. He was one of the pioneers of Old Trail. But you know what he looks at and why he doesn’t do it. He looks at how far he is into his amortization schedule. And so, if he’s down to 60% of the payments to pay his home off, he doesn’t want to go back to, “I’ve got 360 payments to go to pay my home off.”

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: He’s figured it out that every month he’s paying so much. It makes more financial sense to stay put.

Jim Duncan: Being able to pay principal over interest is kind of nice.

Greg Slater: Sure.

Jim Duncan: After that 10 year period, you flip that switch if you will.

Greg Slater: Yeah. But so many people’s mindset or just whether or not that monthly payment fits into their overall budget. And honestly, this is a lot of times builders sell new homes like they sell new cars. Right. Monthly payment, “How much do you make per month? Well, if you can get your payment here, wouldn’t that be comfortable for you?”

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: Yeah.

Jim Duncan: Yeah. But it’s everybody’s selling something. When you’re advising your clients, I’m curious of your answer. When I have a buyer making an offer. I look at the actives and the pendings more than I do the solds to help establish value.

Greg Slater: Sure.

Jim Duncan: Are you the same?

Greg Slater: I look at all of them for sure.

Jim Duncan: I mean I’ll look at all of it, but if there’s a soul from four months ago. That market from four and half months ago, it could be very different than the one that we’re looking at today with the actives and the pendings.

Greg Slater: Look, I look at all of it and I make my client aware of all of it so they can make as good as decisions that they can. Because with any negotiation for a buyer, it’s hard to really figure out their motivation level. And always say, “I don’t want to help you make an offer that causes you not to get this house and then you hate me because you really wanted it.”

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: At the end of the day I give advice, you make decisions. But yeah, you look at all of it and then when you present that offer and you start negotiating with the other agent, you use the data that helps your client the most. And if there were three other listings in a comparable price range that could be suitable, you use that information to your advantage, for sure.

Jim Duncan: That’s why whenever someone comes to me with a question, my first question is, “Do you have the buyer, the seller?” It depends on your perspective.

Greg Slater: Yeah, it really does.

Jim Duncan: New construction. Where do you see next 2020 being… good, bad, ugly?

Greg Slater: Really strong year. I think it’ll be good. I don’t think there’s any slow down. The builders have the right lots in the right places. There’s enough of it in the heart of the market for them to keep going. I’m very interested to see what the impact of Crosette guys. And you’ve got two apartment complexes that will open in the next 12 months for rent. And then you’ve got Pleasant Green, they broke ground at Pleasant Green. That’s 200 town homes and a hundred villas. I mean that’s a significant amount of inventory in Crosette, right there.

Jim Duncan: They’re going to improve the schools and the roads right? Never mind.

Greg Slater: No, I thought people weren’t making, we’re not making any more kids. We don’t need to improve the schools.

Jim Duncan: Oh, it’s fine. I was at the Crosette meeting this week and it was interesting. The county had this round table type thing and breakouts, they had put up a picture of the types of housing you would support apartments and single family and fourplex and duplex and all this and all that. And nobody chose apartments. Sadly, too many people chose single family homes, but whatever. And the moderator from the county said, “So I saw nobody picked apartments.” Ans she said, “Why?”

Jim Duncan: And four or five people said, “Because they’re ugly cause they’re awful.” And just went on this tirade about how bad these two massive, gargantuan apartment complexes are. And people listened and voiced their opinions.

Jim Duncan: And then one guy says, “So yeah, on managing the one on Blue Ridge Avenue.” And he said, “We’re doing the best we can. They had a plan for these apartments and we’re trying to find our footing and what the rents are going to be.” But it’s going to be interesting to see what happens with one and two bedroom apartments in Crosette when you’re dropping, what, 400 units-

Greg Slater: Yeah.

Jim Duncan: … into the market in the next 12 months.

Greg Slater: It’s interesting. We talked about those three communities if they all showed up at the same time, how different the world would have been.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: It’s happening in Crosette right now. Some of this is showing up at the same time, which will impact how these things go. There’s some pretty healthy rents on these. We haven’t seen the numbers for the one in Old Trail, but we’ve seen the numbers for the one on Jarman’s Gap. But yeah, we’re just going to have to wait and see. I tend to think these folks aren’t making investments that big, if they don’t have some very strong data that shows we need more one and two bedroom houses.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: Because, another demographics that I forget where I got it. Oh it was the NHB economics guy was here earlier in the year. And he was talking about the percentage of four bedrooms homes that were occupied by one or two people. Right? We’ve got a bunch of one or two person households living in very large homes with three, four, five bedroom., And at the end of the day, if we really want this all to work out, people need to live in the right size.

Jim Duncan: You mean people need to make better decisions about where they live.

Greg Slater: I guess. But it’s a free country and everybody gets to do what they want. Right?

Jim Duncan: Yeah, absolutely.

Greg Slater: It’s their resources, I believe in that.

Jim Duncan: On that. I think I’m going to just close it out and say I think that 2019’s been a healthy year from a data perspective. I think we have some psychological challenges we need to work through as we end the year. I think 2020 is going to be interesting to see the number of transactions and the number of agents that are participating in transactions. I think that my advice to anyone listening to this is from a consumer perspective, hire your representation well. If you find somebody who’s done one or two transactions in the last three years, my perspective is they probably aren’t competent to represent you. Because you need to be doing a lot of transactions to know this market.

Jim Duncan: An agent that I won’t name who was kind of a mentor to me years ago, he said, “You need to be doing…” I think he said, 10 or 15 transactions a year. And in his words was, “If you’re doing less, you’re not screwing up enough to get better.” And I wouldn’t put that on my business card.

Greg Slater: Right.

Jim Duncan: But you need to be doing enough volume to be good at what you do. I considered myself practicing the craft. You need to be practicing on a daily basis.

Greg Slater: After 22 years of doing this, I think I’ve figured out when I watched the agents that are getting into it and doing less or the people that dabble in it, you don’t know what you don’t know.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: And it’s the experiential element of whether it’s negotiating or managing the emotions of your client, and helping them find their way to the information that helps them make the best decision for them. All these things you can’t really read about in a book you have to experience it.

Jim Duncan: Right.

Greg Slater: And yeah, after hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of transactions, you just start to get a feel for things. It’s hard to explain. And one of the things I find myself trying to work on the most is, is taking 22 years of market data and the peaks and valleys and trying to put it in a context that someone who only wants to deal with it for about 30 or 60 days. Why they have to interact with the market, help them understand just their small little window of it so they can make a good decision for them to make.

Jim Duncan: To make a meaningful context. I mean I tell my clients that one of the many roles that I feel is to make them as knowledgeable, if not more so on their particular market band than I am, because they’re the ones that are spending 600 grand. And when that time comes they need to be able to feel comfortable with their decision. And so we need to give the right information at the right time so that it’s interpreted accurately.

Greg Slater: The best example, I was in a negotiation for a home, it was in the eight hundreds it was, it was a hard challenge for my clients to let go of this. And they were at the point, they just were going to not take the offer and go back to the market. And I did a unique analysis, in that window of time where they are making that decision and say, “Okay, this is what it looks like. If you go back, we’re listing today. Let’s go look at it again.”

Greg Slater: And in less than five minutes and said, “We’ll sign it.”

Jim Duncan: Yeah. The right context, the right timing matters.

Greg Slater: Yeah.

Jim Duncan: So Greg, thanks man.

Greg Slater: Thanks for having me.

Jim Duncan: Appreciate it.