October 2024 Monthly Note - Helene, Home Values, Charlottesville Market update

Archives of my monthly notes; this is the Jim’s Note for October, 2024, and read all of my monthly notes at Substack, or here at RealCentralVA.

You can subscribe to them here; I try to write each note as if I am writing to only you. Hopefully you find it interesting and useful.

This month’s note has shifted a bit due to the Hurricane Helene disaster; I removed a story, a photo and changed the first topic.

Disaster Relief Information

It’s been an inconceivably disastrous few weeks. I don’t have the words to describe the destruction we’ve seen in North Carolina due to Hurricane Helene.

This disaster will affect all of us in so many ways, and at some point, our society needs to have a reckoning with how we live and build our communities and economies. Nest has offices and people in Asheville, Greensboro, Lake Norman, Morganton, Raleigh-Durham, Wilmington, and Greenville. We have people whose lives are irrevocably forever altered.

The people affected need our help. If you can donate money, because that is what they need, please do so. My initial sense is that this is a generational disaster; recovery will take years.

We have partnered with MANNA Food Bank, which supports over 16 counties in Western North Carolina. Money donated will stay local to Asheville, Morganton, and the areas hit hardest by Hurricane Helene.

Quick Market Look

Albemarle County:

New resale listings 1/1/24 – 9/30/2024: 1,065 | That period in 2019: 1,325
New resale listings 7/1/24 – 9/30/2024: 321 | That period in 2019: 315
Contracts/Days on market: 7/1/24 – 9/30/2024: 463/22 | That period in 2019: 504/36

I use 2019 as the comparative baseline as that’s the most recent not-Covid-affected market. New resale listings are down about 20% year to date, and new contracts in the most recent quarter are down about 9%.

Why? Rates, fatigue, seasonality. Most of my conversations right now with buyers and sellers are looking at the 2025 market.

City of Charlottesville

New resale listings 1/1/24 – 9/30/2024: 380 | That period in 2019: 446
New resale listings 7/1/24 – 9/30/2024: 108 | That period in 2019: 116
Contracts/Days on market: 7/1/24 – 9/30/2024: 155/18 | That period in 2019: 181/30

One of the more difficult numbers to track is the “de-listings” — the sellers who put their home on the market, usually for a relatively short period of time, and then withdraw it from the market when they don’t get the number they wanted. More on this next month.

I explored Mcintire Park for the first time. Only took me 25 years.

“Exciting, Scary, Overwhelming”

That is how a buyer described the first-time home buying process, and that’s one of the most real descriptions that I have heard.

Buying a home is a commitment — an expensive one, and one that can help bring some life and financial stability and grounding.

Even when prepared, buying or selling a home can be exciting, scary, and overwhelming — and that’s one of the many ways in which I make my best efforts to help my clients.

Proof That Some of My Clients Listen to Me

“This might be TMI, but we just moved to a new apartment, and I just installed a new toilet seat. I always think of you when I do it because that was the first purchase you suggested in 2018 when we bought our house in Cville ?”

That Market Does Not Matter

I told a new seller client today recently that next year, there will no longer be “the old way” or “the new way.”

There will only be, “This is the way.” We don’t need to complicate things.

Hell, the thing shown in the photo below used to be the new way.

I was *furious* when my clients asked me what this was. Furious, I tell you.

A new twist on an old thing – Transfer Switches

I’ve known about transfer switches for generators to houses. Just recently, I learned about transfer switches for car/truck to house.

New things every day, and highlighted by Helene. I now think that having a transfer switch that will allow you to charge your house with your EV should be an absolute must-have.

My buyer said they wanted a converter for what we thought was a generator. He was talking and I was hearing “a transfer switch for a generator.” The builder rep heard the same thing. We started talking about the need for a propane tank because generators need propane. How wrong we were.

The client explained that they wanted the transfer switch so that they can plug their electric truck into the house to power the house when the power goes out.

Helene and climate change are changing everything.

I am now going to recommend this to all of my new construction clients, because we probably aren’t as protected as we’d like to think.

Checking in/Real Estate Review

While Zestimates are fun, and often accurate enough for conversations, the human look is often better, more accurate, and better contextualized

I’m starting to do annual real estate reviews for clients (and not-yet-clients if you’re interested).

Curious? Ask me.

If your gutters are doing this, listen to Tim Walz and fix them.

A personal note on housing’s value

Last week, my older daughter’s power went out. She, her husband, two kids, and dog came over to spend the night. I made dinner while they settled in, and my wife was managing/wrangling/playing with the boys.

I looked up and had a moment of, “This is good. We have a home, a place, for our kids to come to if they need us.” I want this same thing for my clients.

The power came on a few minutes after dinner was ready, and they went home. So we got to see them, give them food, and the boys went home before bed/meltdown time.

All is good.

Answers to “What do you wish you’d asked before you bought your home?”

Two of the answers sent to me (thank you!):

How many years will it be until this is all built out?

What do I wish I’d known?

To look at neighboring plats. We chose our lot for three features: 1) it was the flattest lot in the neighborhood, 2) flatness notwithstanding, it was at the confluence of two ridges which created a lovely little dell as the two ridges crossed each other, and 3) there were trees, hundreds of glorious trees. As we toured, I asked, “Y’all are building behind us, too, where will those houses be?” The answer I was given was that the two lots behind us were huge and the home sites would likely be deep in the woods. The reality was that they built three houses almost on top of us, obliterating the ridges, destroying most of the trees, and turning our flat lot into a basin for all the other houses.

I don’t know that we would have changed lots, but I would have spent a lot more time talking about protecting the trees, enhancing the drainage, and incorporating swales into the terraces they built so that the water moved evenly across the lower lots rather than dumping all of it on us. Across four efforts to make it right, we only paid for half of the final effort, likely eating into the builder’s profit on our lot. Then again, the builder built all those terraces and destroyed all those trees to enhance the view from their own house that I can see through my office window.

I’ve said for many years that if you don’t own it, it’s going to change. We do our due diligence and make decisions based on the best and most relevant and accurate data we have available. And even then, sometimes the decision is a fait accompli because we have a relatively low inventory and few choices available.

*Also, fewer riding photos as I’ve been stuck riding the trainer as September has been so rainy.