Evolution of Real Estate

This is Marc Graves's perspective podcast. I'm Marc Graves with Courtyard Realty where my job is to be your guide. So we're going to talk about the evolution of the industry as a real estate agent, broker, salesperson. So when I first started out, it was really, really different. It was much slower. We would list a house for six months to a year, and if we sold it in the first three months, that was great. That was right up there as, as the top 10% timing-wise every now and then you'd sell one faster than that same thing. Then as now, though, what I, I don't want to lose sight of this is as soon as we would have one, let's say the property stayed on the market for 60 days and we hadn't had any offers on it. Within the 24 hours of the first offer.

Many, many times I would get a second or even a third offer all within the very same timeframe. So it seems like once somebody wants something, everybody wants something the same for something for that. That's where the phrase time is of the essence really came alive for me back then we would drive to get signatures back and forth until it was what we call now, a ratified contract, where you had all the signatures and all of the initial details hammered out. That was just the way we did things. Then we didn't have a document sign. We didn't have a lot of the conveniences that we do now, but I find that that's true today is even currently when our market is much quicker. You know, I hear the phrase all the time now where the property has been on the market. 30 days what's there must be something wrong with it.

It hasn't already sold well, back when I first started the availability, to market a new listing was through MLS once every two weeks. So everything that had happened for two weeks came to life twice a month. Now I put something on the MLS and within 10 or 15 minutes, all of the peripheral sites have it uploaded with numerous pictures and so much information about it. And then the older days where you'd have to be acclimated to different neighborhoods and different, and all of the little nuances there just wasn't the availability to find out so much information so quickly. We didn't have any of the inspections that we do now. Now it was so much more buyer beware. You should investigate the property to find out what's wrong with it. So many of the properties come today with three, four, or five different inspections on them, letting you know what the foundation looks like.

The roof looks like the wiring, the neighborhood, the noise, how close it is to enable station or military installation, EMF, electromagnetic fields, power lines. So many different things. It's really nice for a guy like me though, because when I started, there were just a couple of pages and it was pretty simplistic. So I was able to learn all of these things through full immersion. You know, it, maybe two, three different aspects grew each year. So after 20 plus years, I'm able to understand all of this because I learned it over a gentle period of time.

But the other difference is that economically home values, have soared. So inflation has not been universal. The amount of gasoline has gone up. The amount of wages have gone up prices for cars. All of that I feel from my personal view is all behind real estate. So what jobs used to be able to afford different lifestyles can no longer afford those same lifestyles in those same areas where blue-collar workers were able to live in a particular neighborhood. Now only highly skilled professionals with incomes, tripling, quadrupling. Those of the people that were first coming in are now taking over. So where maybe a truck driver, maybe a cement truck driver, and a school teacher would have lived in a neighborhood. Now, both parents are physicians, research, physicians, professionals, and all kinds of aspects. So those are some of the changes, how fast things move. Obviously that's a big, big change.

One of the things that's really nice is for my little group, I've built up a reputation where, you know, I didn't really always help nearly as many buyers as I did sellers. I'm starting to help so many more buyers now. And I think that's because so many people can understand what I promise. I talk about how my last transactions went, how we closed them. I have a 98% closing average, 98% of the escrows that I opened closed. And that's because I have a lot of history to draw from. And I implement something every time I have a hiccup, you have hiccups in every single deal. And so I've implemented something and I have history to draw upon on how to, how to get around that. I think my son would say, you know, there's a hack for that, and that's what I do.

And so many people know from past experiences that my, and they can check it out online now, too, that my deal's closed. So I just had somebody again, the other day call me and said, you know, I've been looking for a house for a year and I found the house I want, I don't want to miss this one. So will you help me get it? And I said, yeah. So I helped him and we got it. So that's a great one to refer to it. It doesn't always go that way, but primarily it does. I'm selling a house. That's another thing where again, I'm able to look at the situation, refer to so many situations that are similar to it for the sale of a house that I can paint a picture of what to expect. And we almost invariably adhere to that verbatim. So what I mean is I tell somebody, Hey, I think their house is going to sell for X amount of dollars, and this is what we need to make that happen.

And if I have their cooperation, which I do phenomenally, I don't know how so many people are just able to say, okay, Marc, just do that. So I do that and we sell it for very close to the circumstances for the price for the time duration that I said that I expected us to, I try to be helpful. So all of my colleagues, all my fellow brokers, real estate agents know that always going to ask for help. And I'm always going to try to provide that. So if they're alone on their buyer and it's, my seller is having an issue. If something happened, we put our heads together and try to come up with a common answer and what my goal is and what happens again, almost always. And the only reason I say almost is it's like, I can't think of one that doesn't, but it's a win, win for everybody.

And these are things that my stepfather helped me understand before I got into the business, all of my transactions primarily can be done on a handshake. They're not, we adhere to all of the legalities and paperwork and paper trails that you should, but everybody wants to have happened. What is going to happen? The seller wants to sell the house. The buyer wants to buy the house. We want everybody to understand what they're buying and what they're getting and what all of those little ins and outs are. So once that's all established, all we all have to do is work collectively to ensure that that math is followed. So it's pretty simple. Things happen. Somebody will find out that the air conditioner doesn't work when they thought they did that. They, their child isn't guaranteed to go to the school that they thought they were guaranteed to go to. That somebody has a barking dog next door that they just can't live next to.

But primarily 98% of them just go smooth as silk. You know, we do a lot of prep work. We've vetted for a long, long time. So I have safeguards and, and situations so that all of the things that have ever created an issue before we do something preemptively before they happen to try to mitigate that, to not have it happen, to balance that now that's pretty easy to do, especially if you're willing to ask for help and you're willing, willing to receive it. You know, if you're going to actually fight the wind or fight the tide, that's probably going to be an issue, but I don't, I don't find that to be true. So in the old days, you know, having a color photograph on a flyer was state of the art. Now you can have booklets with virtual tours and so much UV protected paper for goodness sakes.

It just goes on and on. I do like it though. It's just getting more and more fun. The houses get prettier and prettier. Most all your homes are staged. Now. I've been sort of staging since day one. I think, in the beginning, we used to just make suggestions to pull their pictures off their refrigerator and to thin out the amount of furniture that was in a house. But the more of these things that you do to dress up our house, the more you can see, and I can give people the, sort of the grassroots understanding that if you, if you spend $25,000 painting walls, floors, and ceilings, you'll attract a better price. Because what I find is that the general public doesn't have a lot of vision. It's difficult for them to see the potential, especially at pivotal points.

So if the house was atrocious and all you do is scoop it, all of the debris out of it, and you make it so that it's clean and fresh, you may receive 25% more than you would have without doing that. And when you're looking at things like a million dollars, that's $250,000, and it may cost you only 30 to do that. And just recently the house that I'm actually sitting in, we took it to what I felt would have been the most productive point. I was giving them really carte blanche on this home. I think we spent 45. And what I said is if we try to spend any more than this, we will only receive a dollar for every dollar we spend. We will only break even. There's really not a financial gain in spending more. And today the same floor plan that I'm sitting in that has been taken to the next level.

It would cost right around $150,000 and their home sold for $150,000 more than this one, but it has the brand new kitchen, the brand new bathrooms, the brand new windows. And, and so it's really kind of fulfilling, gratifying to see a projection come, come true. So vividly. So perspective wisdom comes from doing something and knowing what happened in the past, knowledge comes from learning about it without experiencing it. So if it were me and I always knew, I would talk to people who have been there and done that and try to get their wisdom. And if you're like me, you've done it for kind of a long time. Now I would just let people know why I think the way I do that, it comes from past experience. I don't tell them what I would, what will happen. I tell them what has happened in similar situations, hand over fist. And I let them know whether the situation we're dealing with varies and by how much, and I most recently was asked to look at a property that's substantially more expensive than this, and a really big, big, beautiful home.

The buying pool for that home is far less than it is for this one. So it's not exponential. That house is 4,400 square feet. This house is 2,400 square feet, a little less. That house has high end everything in it, but the amount of people that would be available to buy it as far less, the set of circumstances is it's much more of a unique situation. So it's got to land on you properly. The upkeep of a house that I'm talking about is considerably different from this one, this one for a hundred and a half or less a month, you can just have somebody else do it. That one, you would need $600 a month. So if that house lands on you correctly, it's great. But the buying pool is so much smaller than this house sells for 115, that one sells for 175, possibly 185.

I mean, it's just a tremendous amount of house, but for the money difference, but it's just not right for everybody. So typically the house that is the smallest in the neighborhood gets the largest price per square foot and the house that has the least amount of done to it because it's your way to get on the floor. The purchase price floor is very high and the ceiling is actually kind of low. So what happens is, is if you're able to buy the house that is completely redone, you're able to save some money as long as you're comfortable with all the finishings that are there. I think it's a great way to go. If you're like me, I struggled to get into every new neighborhood that I could until I just decided this was a great spot. I'm going to stay here, but that's because I wanted my children to spend all of their schooling years in the same house.

And that happened. So I, I still pine after some of the homes I looked at that were 20% more, and I ended up putting that into the house we bought in the first year and a half, but it was so much more than on a monthly obligation than the previous home that I just was scared. I didn't have the history to understand that's what happens in most cases is that perspective is brought to light. That if the, by the fixer-upper, you'll put a lot of money into it versus if you just buy when it's already done, and then you will save yourself, all the aggravation too, unless you're just somebody who likes to tinker with stuff. And that's really not me. I like to buy stuff that's done. So that's my perspective. And that's what this podcast is called Marc Graves perspective. And so don't forget to visit me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, like my page ring, the bell, tell your friends. I also have the Ygnacio Valley Community. That's a site primarily designed to promote and highlight all of the things that are available from John Muir hospital to the town of Clayton on the Roth, the Ygnacio Valley border schools that happened to be Clayton Valley and North gate. That's what I have the most familiarity with. So again, thanks very much. I appreciate your time.