The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Candice Van Der Linde, Kerry Griggs & Chris Ketcham Joined Keith On "Real Talk With Keith Smith!"

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Candice van der Linde, Kerry Griggs and Chris Ketcham joined Keith Smith live on “Real Talk With Keith Smith” powered by YES Realty Partners and Yonna Smith! “Real Talk” airs every Friday from 10:15 am – 11 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Real Talk With Keith Smith” is presented by El Mariachi Mexican Bar & Grill, Fincham & Associates, Inc., Free Enterprise Forum, Intrastate Service Co, Mejicali and YES Realty Partners.

Look at me running this all by myself without Jerry. So as you can see, the set's set up a little bit different today. Welcome to Real Talk with Keith Smith. Jerry is out enjoying some family time. I think, Judy, he's out a wedding, right? I think he's out of wedding. So he'll be back in this seat a week from today with me across the seat, the table, where I've got a couple of rock stars sitting.

Today we're going to talk. I've been doing this. I've been wanting to do this every first Friday of the month where we're bringing in a bunch of rock stars and talk a little bit about the housing market and how it's been for the last five months or six months or whatever months prior to that. I do want to take a little bit of show owner and production producer prerogative today. last night was a pretty emotional evening for me. It was my last board meeting of 15 years of being on the Thomas Jefferson Pending District Commission, the Regional Housing Partnership, and the Pima Community Land Trust. So 15 years of public service or that chapter has moved on. And I'm excited about my next chapter in that world that I've been. I've been working on.

I've been gracious enough to be X to speak publicly around the country on housing affordability and particularly the four pillars of housing affordability I created a bunch of years ago. But anyway, it's, I was rather emotional last night. So today you guys are going to have to pick me up a little bit because that was a big move for me to go ahead and move on. But in saying that, do yourself a favor if you got to take it. time, get engaged, show up to meetings. You don't have to have all the answers. You just need to show up. And you can make a difference. I learned that last night when I received my recognition and they

listed the stuff that you did. You don't realize how much you're involved in until you do that. But anyway, I'm going to try not to pat myself on the back too much on it, but please get involved. So today, we're going to have a lot of fun, at least hopefully. I've got Candice across the street for me, across the table from me. Candice is going to be my tempo setter today. She's going to kind of keep the conversation moving in the right direction. We've got Chris

to his, her would be right, because I'm used to sitting in that chair, got to get my, and then to his right is Carrie. So we're going to talk a little bit about it, but first I want everybody to go and introduce himself. So you want to start? I'm Candice Vanderlinda. I own

Bynselseville. It's my real estate company, but I am so blessed and fortunate to be part of Yes, Realty Partners with Keller Williams Alliance. And this gentleman sitting across the aisle from me here, I will congratulate him and pat him on the back because he's so modest and would never say anything about it. But amazing work, amazing mentorship and help. And one of the things we need to get around this globe each year is a roof over our head.

And that's something that we all here get to take part in. And we're very grateful for that. So I think everybody else knows me for the most part. If you don't, look me up. And I'll pass the mic on to Chris here. Your name came up at the board meeting, commission meeting last night. Are you volunteering me to do something? In a good way.

In a good way. Some of the folks, commissioners, which are elected officials, are following some of your social media stuff. Oh, wonderful. Great. Well, that was so eloquent. I don't know how I follow. Chris Ketchum, the only thing I'm thinking of is your statement

of having to pick you up, but I think Yon has been doing that for a few years. Yeah, thanks, Chris. I appreciate that. You said. So Chris Ketchum with Ketchum in real estate, also Ketchum in Focus Photography. I joined Yes a little over a year ago, one of the best decisions I ever made. Second. Second best. Sharon, I think, is number one, right? I'm in trouble.

Yeah, absolutely love it, yes. surrounded by rock stars here. I met Carrie a little while back. Following what he does is absolutely amazing. And Candice, I could always rely on her if I have a question. Anything real estate, anything photography, she's a rock star as well. And Keith and Yanna, nothing but praise.

And I'll leave it at that. Wow. You're welcome. Top it. Yeah. So I'm Carrie Griggs. I am the owner of the Griggs group. I have an amazing team that I get to work with.

I've been at Keller Williams for about 10 years now. I've had the privilege to help serve a lot of folks in my community. Like he said, he's not one to pat himself on the back, but I will. He's been a great resource for me. If I have any questions, I can ask him, especially in the commercial space. He's well-rounded, and congratulations on your 15 years. Stop talking about my weight. Yeah, I hear you.

Congratulations on that. And now that I know that there's a space available for a young man like myself, I might try it myself. There you go. I would love to be involved in something like that. 100%. Your voice would matter. Your voice being at the table would be the thing. You've got the skills.

Everybody here has the skills because in order for us to do what we do well, we have to bring people of difference of opinions together to kind of get to a endpoint or what everybody's trying to achieve. and that's really where the skills, you'd have some great skills in that. So let me say, Kerry Volunteer. You did. I would love to be a part of it. You know, I might talk to you after the show about that. Sure, sure, sure, sure. I think I do, before kicking off too far out of this involvement in being involved in the community

and creating the community, we were all also at a conference in Richmond a couple days ago. And one of the key factors that I really took away was, you know, what, what do we do? Of course, everybody is doing something to better their own personal lives and their family and their situation. However, we actually really get involved with people's personal lives and their families and their situations. And we build a community, even if we're not taking part in these, you know, philanthropy or volunteerism. But it's amazing how much realtors just across the board in every aspect of life. So what do you think that is? What do you think of all, and I know I want...

Usually we're people pleasers, right? We're typically from some other industry have had success in things and have drive and ambition and like helping people, and we want to get out there and do it and how else can we do it? At least, you know, the people that I enjoy working with and get to see and experience doing transactions with, like you say, who on the other side matters.

And when everybody's involved, yeah, we all represent our own clients in their best interest. But when you're communicative and you're doing an AHIP project or helping somebody as a first-time home buyer, I'm getting goosebumps. It's not just cold in here. But helping somebody, you know, Keith and I help the young man who was able to buy his first home

and start to gain equity and go through this process. So when people, when we get to see and help and get hands on, sometimes picking up a hammer, sometimes just picking up a pen, or a napkin helping someone through a hardship. I mean, you know, the community aspect of it is really important. So thank you, again, for your volunteering. But that's what realtors do, and that's what we create. And that's why we're involved in, you know, ASPCA

or any type of organization that can help people and families and community. Well, you know, to your point, I was at the conference with you, and Jason brought up a pretty neat point in the sense that he says, why do you do what you do? And you normally get the answers, oh, I'd love to help people get into a house. I love the fact that I could go ride that journey with them. Maybe their first house or downsizing, whatever they need, helping an elderly parent. But he said, realistically, you're doing it for a paycheck.

And I kind of went backwards a little bit. Everybody's nose kind of stood up a little bit more. We're so used to the answer. Actually, he used the word cash. He didn't use the word paycheck. So I was a little taken aback, but you know what? We are, just like everybody else out there. We're out there.

We're in careers. We do it to make money to better ourselves, better our family. However, the byproduct is what I like. So you do that for the money, right? You do that so that you have a better life and your kids have a better life. And now my wife, thank you, who's going to have a better life after that comment. I also think that... I also think that we get to spend at least 30 to 45 days with each client that we interact with when they're going through a home purchase.

And we also get involved in whatever. Sometimes longer than that. Sometimes it's years. Yeah, it can be years. But even just in the transactional stages, we get to know them a little bit better. We get involved in their lives too. And so the things that they think of interest and then we kind of get sucked into that world as well in a good positive way. So we also get to be involved in the community through our clients.

And so as they bring things to us, we get to do it with them and go through that. And so I've gotten to experience a lot of good things through just the transactions themselves. I don't think I've ever asked you this question. But why is your why? Why do you do what you do? I want to change my family tree. I want to change my family's trajectory. They say I may not have come from a millionaire, but a millionaire family will come from me.

And it's not about the money because I consider wealth in four different categories, health, wealth, love, and happiness. And so if I'm lacking in any one of those, it's really kind of, I don't know, teeter-tottering on something. It's easier to set on a four-legged stool than a three-legged stool. And so I think if you're overloaded in one and you don't have the other three, it may be a little bit different. Dude, you're dropping some good bombs here, man.

I need to take notes. You show up late end. Oh, man. That is my worst quality. ADHD at its finest. think that I can make it there. I know it takes me 30 minutes to get somewhere, but for some reason, I think if I drive fast enough,

I can get there in 25. I'm like, I can do that. I can do that. Hey, you know what, though? The best part about all this, we all do this for cash. Absolutely. But you know who also makes cash?

Our clients. Equity growth. You know, 43% more financial stake in value of lifestyle, the four pillars, for our clients when they are not renters. Because when you're renting, you're paying somebody else's mortgage. Thank you. My investor clients

are really appreciative. We still need you. But let us help you learn how to do that on your own. So we are making you money. Like the Earpies. Thank you, Alex. Thank you for making me money because it makes you some too. That's what we do for our clients. So yeah, it's a job, but also our

contractors. But we move the needle for everybody because when we're out there moving and shaking, escrow companies get paid. That's right. Contractors get paid, mortgage companies get paid. We kind of move the needle by helping our clients. And getting in and seeing all kind of cool things. I mean, you know, talk about who knew some little country girl from South of D.C.

would know so much about country septic systems. Yeah, yeah. You should share that picture. She's in a sun dress in a septic tank. Oh, wow. Well, shoot, my Spelunkin outfit is in my car. I'm not sure sure that was AI, General. rated or not. I'm going to do that. So, Chris, you've got a second business, right? And your

business is photography and real estate photography in particular. And, you know, today's topic is about, okay, what's the market looking like? Where was it? Where is it going to go? But you're kind of on the leading edge, particularly, you know, you get to see people, get to talk to agents and see homes that are not quite ready to be on the market and all that. So how you're you seeing the tempo out there because we're going to talk about sales tempo going up, but medium prices of kind of softening a little bit. So how are you seeing it out there? What's, uh, I think the best way I could describe this is if you, if I went back maybe

a year and a half ago, uh, agents would call me up for photography and it would be, hey, I just need you get in, get interior exterior, let's get the shots, because they wanted to show value to their clients. They wanted to at least do that. However, they knew, for the most part, a lot of those homes were literally press the button go active and that night you're getting... Well, it didn't matter what the condition looked. It didn't matter. But they did it for their clients to show them, hey, I'm still adding value for what I do for a living and how I'm going to help you sell this home.

But it was strictly interior and exterior. All the extras just didn't happen. And today, what I'm finding is a lot of agents now are, you're competing, right? You're selling your home. It's a balanced market, maybe even leaning more towards a buyer market. So now agents are saying, listen, what do we do to make this pop? So talk about why you think it's a buyer's market. Why do I think, well, I mean.

Why do you think that's happening? There's a lot of different reason. In my area, out in Spring Creek, I can tell you that right now we have a, approximately 30 homes on the market in that one dollar. Out of how many lots? Right now, I believe it's just shy of 1,100, right around 1,100. So we're at the lake, Lake Monticello, I think we're at or close to 50, which is just a tad over 1% of 45% of 45% of 4,500 lots.

Well, what's amazing about this number two is everybody always talks about competing with new construction when you're in a development like this, and you are, however, when I ran the numbers, I was a little surprised that right now, about 65% of those homes are resales. And about 35% are new construction. So out in Spring Creek, to your point, what you were bringing up, there's more inventory, but buyers are being very selective now. Oh, yeah. Right?

They're going in. They want value. And they want certain upgrades, certain. certain amenities that they might not get somewhere else. And when you're one of 30 out there, you're competing. And bringing it back to the photography side, that's where I find agents are trying to look for that extra. How do we get this out?

How do we market it? How do we push it? And I'm not going to turn this into an ad, but the very first thing I started doing when I saw this was I started opening up a marketing company to market those photos, to help market. agents to get their home sold. So yeah, I think it's definitely more leaning. I still say it's balanced it is, but it's leaning more towards a buyer's market. I think they have more options now.

They don't have to move into a home and they get to be more selective when they're going into it. And so a little bit, it feels harder for sellers to sell their house, especially resale because they do have the new construction options. And, you know, I think everybody here at this table knows that I come from the construction background, and I actually gravitate towards that because there's nothing better than a new home. You're the first client to use the HVAC system, new roof, new things, and they're offering a lot of incentives right now. So the resale market has got to compete with that.

So when you're in a new development, the best opportunity is the first one in and the last one in. When you're in the middle, it makes it really difficult because, you know, you know, new construction will outsell the existing. It's just why would you buy a home, the same exact home, almost on the same exact lot with the same exact setup that's five years old, right? Yeah, and I got a young lady $19,000 in incentives to help with their closing cost and to buy down the interest rate. And in a lot of areas right now, because they're not coming off the market so quickly,

they're building the homes. You're not having to wait eight months, nine months a year anymore. A lot of these, I know out in Spring Creek, there are homes that are built that are literally... Yeah, down setting. Well, that's not normal, right? That never used to be that way, right? And so that tells you a little bit... Jerry and I talk about this all the time.

If you really want to track how the real estate market's doing, pay attention to the national builders. Right? They're generally ahead of the curve on everything. And I had a great Facebook message exchange with Lonnie Murray, one of the folks that watches the show. He's a great Albemar County Planning Director. He's on the Planning Commission. You know, 10 years ago, builders were building homes roughly 3,000 plus square foot. Right now, they're at 2,200 square feet.

So they're reducing the size. People do not want as McMansions. They want homes a little bit more user-friendly, for lack of a better term. But since we're on the topic of new construction, we're about ready to talk a little bit about where the market's going here. And if you don't mind getting slide one ready, I'd appreciate it, Judah. What impact you think overall new construction is having on the market? Is it causing it the averages and the medium prices to jump up or jump down?

What kind of impact, Kerry, you think it's having on the market? I think it's helping the price points be more affordable. I think it's helping real estate agents have that conversation with resell sellers and letting them know that this is what they're competing against. The new constructions, they want to be affordable for buyers in this market. And like you said, they're downsizing on the square footage of the homes that they're currently selling. And so when we're competing up against them, or at least I know when I go on listing appointments, I have to just let it be known that you have somebody right down the street that is selling new construction.

And if you want to be competitive, you have two options. You can either price it appropriately or you can keep your home. For everybody at the table here, how do we have with sellers these uncomfortable conversations about, you know, the market isn't exactly what it was 24 months ago, right? How do we have that conversation? because obviously they probably want more money than the market can currently demand for the home. How do we have that? And particularly how do we have that conversation

about looking on days on market? We're going to talk about that here in a little while. Whoever wants to jump in first? I would love to talk. I saw you squirming in. I saw you're squirming out of my chair here. Go ahead, go. Okay, the next person?

Yes, I know, right? Shut up, Candace. It, realistically, I have had so much success, and Chris knows, because he's my go-to, you know, when can I have you come do my photo shoots. I have had so much success in communicating with people who want to sell their home or are interested in selling their home, in going through and doing, I also part of my business, I do staging and consulting and things like that. But for my clients, going through and really, like Carrie said too, we, you know, a lot of us, realtors have, again, experience, background, education, and other fields of expertise,

but especially, like, you know, coming from the construction field in having a design kind of element, talking to your photographer, talking to your stagers, talking to furniture design, you know, talking to different people if you don't have those skill sets, in understanding how to present it to your client, how to present their home, which is worth $80 million in a $400,000 community. That's a great way to put it right there. How do you convince them that that lovely bite

in the wall from Snooky-Doo, the pit bull, or not even Pitbull, I'll say the Rottweiler or somebody, you know, that is not what a new buyer wants to come in and buy your house for. Let's go ahead and fix these things. Your front porch, inspection items, you can have pre-inspections, anything to

identify and introduce the idea that what is a buyer going to say or think or feel intangibly when they come into your house? How is the photographer going to capture it? How is it going to look online? And then how are we going to get people here? What are they going to see and feel when they walk through and your vent has three feet of dust hanging off of it? And your smoke detectors are more yellow than my highlighter. These things matter. Intangibly, they matter. But they didn't matter. I disagree. They did. people who were stomping on it and getting it.

I'm in trouble. I know that look. Yeah. No, no, it's, well, I respectfully agree. I know. I respectfully agree and I would state there's a further perspective. No, I don't disagree. Never invite Candisagic.

Yeah, no, but for real, for real. When things were moving, all you had to do was take the sign and go like this in the yard and you have 10 offers in hand. All 10 offers weren't identical because only one person got it. And you know what? In 2023, how many transactions were released that never hit the media and never hit our friends and never hit our clients? We were getting things under contract for a few years there and they were going by-bye because buyers were like, ooh, maybe I didn't realize the pantry was this big.

Maybe I do want that. Oh, no, no. Now you're bringing up a whole different topic about, and we're seeing this now, buyers remorse a couple of years later. But back then. What if you had 10 offers and you could get more because you did do the thing? So you are correct in the fact that, yes, just even hinting that you were going to have your home on the market, it was gone instantly. However, how much better could it have been? How much more could you have gotten?

Yeah, but the reality, Kansas, the reality of the market at that point is what it was, right? It sucked. It was horrible. Yes. And I've often said this publicly and multiple times before. I'm actually more excited about real estate now than I've been in a long time. Because this is when the pros have to show up. We need to talk about, okay, sales were up 7% in the first five months.

The total volume was up 3.7%. But the median was down 2.5% and the average was down 3.6% in the car footprint. Well, why is that? We've got to be skilled enough to be able to explain that. Why has volume gone up, the total volume gone up by almost 4%, 3.7%, and closed sales have gone up on 7%, but average and medium is down. You want to jump in? Yeah, I think I'll chime in.

It really boils down to communication, knowledge and communication. If you do your homework, you know. But why did those numbers drop? What do you think that is? By your desirability. Where's their, if our dollar today is really, worth 75 cents. You know, a $1.25

four years ago you know, got to, you know, a dollar today was $1.25, four years ago. It's now $0.75. So the dollar is not, inflation, all of that fund stuff, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. However, Fluvana is down 5% in sales.

All the other counties are up, a good bit. Nelson's down a little bit. But the median price is still half a million dollars. But I think you're also dealing with We came from a market that was gung-ho and everything out there was just selling as soon as what you said before put the sign in the yard. Today I think we're dealing with a few different things. Yes, the perception of interest rates, which is a whole different conversation.

I think that's one we have to have. You're dealing with people a little concerned and worried about gasoline, prices, groceries. We need to have that conversation. I think that slows things down. So you're already coming into a balanced market. Now you have people worried about the economy and say, is this the right time? Forget about the fact that's... 26.6% of all the sales year to date was over a million bucks.

That's part of why that math is skewed, right? That's part of why there's almost over a quarter of all the sales, and it's interesting, eight out of ten of the million dollar plus was in one county, out market. You know what, though? this just hit me too as Chris was talking. The reason that that super bidding war type of thing

was just a horrible thing that had happened and we're seeing it now. But that's still happening Candace. Well, I know, I know, but listen to this. All those people that bought back then, right? She did this one, then she sent it over to that one. Look, I'm in Keith's chair. I'm allowed to hear up with Jerry. So all those people that bought, you know, site unseen,

cash, no inspections, we'll take it as it is, all that. Well, guess what? A couple years later, your septic system had failed, but you didn't do any inspections. Now you've got to pay for it. Your windows, your roof. All these big maintenance items that people have had to put into their home. And now when they want to sell, they go, I put $100 grand into this house that I bought with no inspections. Now I want to get my money back. And it's not real. Or I bought it, didn't deal with it. A next buyer has to do that. And the philosophy of the buyer has completely changed, right? Even at the million

dollar plus, right? Oh, gosh, yeah. You know, they're doing home inspections, you know, they're doing all the normal processes, but the mindset of the some sellers are still there. The buyer's like, you know, look, if it, we talk about this all the time, the six rights, right? Right location, right price, right

features, right condition, right timing, right folks on the other side matter, right? If it doesn't, if it, if it hits all of those items, drop number six in that, but if it's the first five, you will get multiple offers. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's still happening.

And of the million, just to throw another number out there, of the, the coffee is kicking in, by the way. Of the $1 million and up, 50% of them were cash. And oh, by the way, 30% of all the transactions were cash. So all of that somewhat, that doesn't impact so much the average in the medium. I think by the end of this year, and maybe we'll kick into ball it a little bit, I think you're going to see sales up, sales volume up, and I think you're going to see year over year,

the median average that kind of balance out like it was 2025. I don't think you're going to see these huge climbs year over year, which is actually not a bad thing. Right. I think it's the market adjustment. Do you think that the median sales price are going down because of days on market and buyers see an opportunity to make a bid lower than what they use, lower than what the list price would be?

It could be, right? Because we're talking like 2.3% here in Abilmore County. It's not a huge number, but if a buyer has the opportunity to... No, so actually, if you don't mind going to slide two, Alamar County's up. Oh, in the median? That's the whole car footprint. If you go to slide too, the next one. Actually, Alamore County is up 2.2% in closed sales,

up 1.8% in the median sales price, and up just shy of 1%. on the average. But, you know, 93 of the 114 sales that are a million dollars and up were in Albemar County. Yeah. So that big top ticket number is impacting that. Do you think the reason why they're buying it with cash is because the other investments that they were parking their cash in was worse? Well, I'm going to throw that to the table because folks that are working with buyers,

at that price point that are bringing cash, my experience is they've usually sold something else. Yes. Right? They have cash. They have more cash than what they're buying, buying it for, and then they put a little bit of cash in the thing. I don't know what everybody else's experience is. Exactly their same thing as nationally speaking and into our micro markets. the baby boomer generation

typically have bought, sold, or have equity in their home, and or they're helping the generation that are buying in that now. Or they've had businesses, or they have different creative Roths, or different types of ability to access liquid funds to then gift to their kids.

Again, with Buffini in that, we look at more of a national scale of the demographic and age of people selling homes and buying homes are 62 and 65. It's because you've had experience. You've had now some people. Why are you looking at me when you say? As because your eyes are just shining and matching that shirt right there. It's so good.

But yeah, so, you know, a lot of people are now under the idea of, okay, you know, grandkids or nieces and nephews or whatever family member, they're doing good, they're pursuing. And because grocery bills are up, you know, four times what they were. a year ago, they can't, they're having difficulty saving the money for a down payment. So someone has equity, someone has sold a business, sold a property, maybe moving in and buying a multi-generational type of home. So the style of home, the size of the homes being built, the locations of the homes and the condition, but if you have multiple generations living in a home, maybe the kids

are fine living with... But nationally, that number went down. That number, I expected that number to climb, but it actually went for multi-generational. You want to jump in there? You got some. No, no, I'm just listening to you. When you're done here, I want to go back to a point you brought up earlier. Now, you jump in. You said the difficult conversation.

How do we have the difficult conversation? Oh, you're still on that. I am. Uh-oh. Well, because it, listen, I. So raise the hands, who has attention deficit syndrome here at the table? Oh, I think all. He's the one that don't.

Because the three of us? We moved. Yeah. No, I love, I can see the hamster spinning. Chris has got the gleam in his eye. I'm listening to everything that's going on, and I'm still like. That's really Jerry's job, by the. Jerry's job is to keep my ADD under control.

I was going to bring it up earlier. That comment was like a century of that. Wait, are we supposed to switch chairs now? I think he needs to sit there. Go ahead. The difficult conversation, I just want to go back and touch on that. You know, I owned a business. back in Florida for well as a family business over 50 years I didn't own it for 50 I'm not that old Keith

I was saying you look amazing I thought you thank you but you know we'll edit that so we just hear that I know can you get to the point yes yes what point was I bringing up so the difficult conversation when I first got into real estate in talking to a lot of agents I couldn't believe the amount of agents that really have difficulty talking to going to a listing appointment and talking to I've talked about money, which I found that weird. I find it very weird. Now, you talk about, I talked about milestones earlier, so I owned a wholesale retail bakery. One of our biggest parts of our business was wedding cakes.

So I met with people during one of their first milestones of getting married and believe you can work with brides. I can work with every person selling and buying home. But the conversation, I just couldn't get over how difficult it is to have the conversation. If we study and we know the market and we know why or how people are reacting to the market and what's pushing it and moving it forward.

Even more to that, add to that, ADD, I got to do it. Know what we don't know. That's way more important than knowing what we know. Well, and the thing is, so you talk about the one thing that I was told when I first got into

it was, you know, you're in your neighborhood, you're farming this neighborhood, make sure every single day you know numbers, you know what's going on, because people are going to stop you and ask you how the market. Yes, you should know those things about that area. But things are volatile. They're changing all the time, right? So what I do is when I have a listing appointment,

I do all my homework. I get everything together so that when I do go in there, I don't have an issue talking about Paris. I don't have an issue saying, Okay, I understand Mr. Mrs. Sellar that you want to sell your home because you feel it's worth a million dollars But I'm going to show you all of that I'm going to show you what has happened not in the last year or six months What has happened in the last 30 days? And bring that conversation to him

That's where reality is That is and if it if it's not Listen if you want to sell your house for a million and I'm showing all the data And I'm saying yeah, I think we're right around 500,000 Then maybe it's not a good thing that happen and it really happens. I think that you come at it from a good standpoint, though, you come at it from a value standpoint versus I think a lot of salespeople are agents in general.

They want to be liked, so they want to please the seller, but they're not actually providing the value, and that's where those hard conversations come in because the data doesn't lie. I always go on listing appointments and people say, well, what do you think the house is worth? Well, I don't know. I haven't ran the numbers. I can give you an idea of what I thought it was worth before I came in here. Oh, you never throw one.

They're like, well, you know, what do you think we can get? Just ballpark. And I'm like, I don't really do that. I'm like, you actually think I can think. Yeah, right? I would rather just go back and run the numbers for you. And I can tell you because there was a whole, you know, basement finish section that wasn't on the information that I was able to pull from it.

And was it permitted, by the way? 100%. 100%. 100% something got built. Yeah. No one told me about it. It's great for tax purposes. Not so much for me.

So I think a lot of, like you said, those hard conversations, you've got to just come at it with value. If you're not coming at it with numbers, the data behind it, actually provide them value of how you're going to get the house sold for the client, then you're just going in there with an ego and you just want to be liked. And that's never really... You know what? Like me after the transaction. Yeah. And you'll like me after I saw it for you.

And I'll tell you what, if we're discussing the price and you're a bit more than where I'm coming in at and we discuss a price. and we'll listen for that. I want you to point your finger at me. If I say that it really should listen to 550, it really should listen to 550. And we get $580 or $600, you can point to figure out me. All day long. Even better than that because I've seen you do it.

You decide not to take it or you lose the listing and it sells more. You picked a phone up and said, you know what? I'm so glad I was wrong. Congratulations. Yeah, that's nice. Like me after the sale. Become friends with me and refer me. So I do want to go back to the little bit of data stuff,

an interesting number. Slide number three, if you don't mind you, just leave it on for like a minute and then the city of Charlotte still? Yeah, so it was funny. Jerry and I were talking the end of last year. The sales volume was down in the city. Right now, we're up 24% year over year.

The volume of sales. Now, they're not super huge numbers, right? They're jumping from 150 to 186, but you're also looking at the median prices are softening a little bit, 2%. The average is down a big number, 12%. I took a look at the back end of it

And this is one of those cases where we have not huge volume of transactions, there's just a little bit less of the million plus happening in Charlottesville, which you would think there would be more sales, but there isn't in the city of Charlottesville. And that's skewing that number down. I think if you pull out those million-dollar sales, you'll see the averages and the medians climb back up. But it's really in single-digit numbers that the million plus.

So I just wanted to see what. everybody was, you know, is thinking about the Charleston market. I know Candace, you're pretty heavy in the Charleston market. So what do you make of these numbers? That is a great question. And I love tangible information, statistics, and also understanding that people put their money on the table when it's emotional as well as conscious decision-making. So the fact that the zoning

Scuttlebutt had happened for a little bit of time over the course of last year, I think that... No, it never really produced anything up at this point. I'd say delays in timing and decision-making with confidence for a variety of individuals dramatically impacted the city for a number of months. Personally, I had that happen to me with one of my properties. and trying to hustle and hurry and get something approved,

and then it was on the back burner, and then, oh, I'm going to sell it, but now what's approved? What can we do? Is there a buyer that's interested at the price I'm willing to sell? So the whole intangible aspect of confidence in buyers and sellers going, shoot, what if I hold out for a few more months and I could get twice as much?

Or what if I hold out and it drops and totally empties out the bottom? the bucket. So there was a lot of that, I know, last year. Well, I think it goes back. You can see it on your home sales. It's up 24%. But it goes back to the six conditions that you talked about, the right location, right price, right conditions, features, and timing. And so I think that's why we're seeing it. When you see the price point, the average sales price go down by 12 percent, that's that right price that you were talking about. Well, and it's connected to condition because obviously you have to take a deeper dive into each one of them. It could be some of those houses we're not in a right condition back in the, you know, the unicorn years, as I call them, it didn't matter.

They paid top dollar because either they were borrowing money at two percent, right? The money was free. They just, they had enough capital to work with. Now they don't at almost 7%, right? Six and a half, whatever we are at the moment. They don't have that. And I'd like to go into the buyer conversation here in a minute. But the buyer, you know, you've got to move it.

That house has to be spot on ready to go. And it's not just a fresh coat of paint. It needs to have an updated roof. It has the updated HVA system in it. You know, it has to be kind of brought a little bit up to at least the 21st century. That's what I was saying. With the course of the, you know, we all have rose-colored glasses in the moment when everything was crazy. Now looking back and setting and kind of seeing what had happened, again, to me, people bought things.

that needed major functions replaced, updated, or repaired. And now over the course of 2020 to 2026 or 2025, people have been putting money into a property. And if you're taking out an equity line or you're restructuring your loan, you're not getting that 3% interest. And money isn't free and cheap anymore. And you might have put all your cash into it. And now your expendables need to come out of an equity line

that's at 6, 7, 8%. So people put a lot of money into something that they just grabbed up because they could and they want it. And now when they're looking at selling, they're going, oh my God, I'm going to take a dump because I paid too much, I put money in it. And if people didn't do that, sorry, if they didn't do that and do those things that were necessary, buyers today are going, I'm not putting new windows roof, HVAC, and everything else in this. And you can go to the county, you can go to other places and get new construction for the same. And we're going to talk about the impact and new construction in the Flavann and Green here in a second.

But how are you continuing that conversation? Are they just saying, well, we're going to wait? Right? Is that the conversation? Well, babies. What is it? Diapers, diamonds, death, divorce, and diplomas, right? Something like, I always do death, downsizing.

But all the... Diamonds? Yeah. Diapers. Divorce. Downsizing? Check, check, check. I'm sorry.

Look at you. I didn't have to downsize a few more years, man. It's not being an overachiever. Downsizing, and then the last one is death. Yeah. So for reasons out of your control, people are now going, you know what? We can buy somewhere because prices might be down. We can sell ours because we've done those major mechanical features.

We have $400,000 worth of equity and stuff like that. What about interest rates, guys? Is that impacting decisions at this point? Again, I think it's perception. I think people are listening to social media versus talking to professionals. And if you go on social media, what are they? Oh, 7%. I can't believe.

It was in 3%. It's never going to get back down to 2% again. It's not going to. 7%. What did we hear the other day? Jason brought up if... In 1980s, it was like 17%. Exactly.

Don't remind me. If you go back 20 years ago and go to 2006, and I ask you today, back in 2006, would you buy up all the real estate in your town? Yeah. Absolutely. But back in 2006, would you have done it? Not knowing what you know now? I tried that prior to 2006 and then lost $17 million. I think the part of that solution didn't know.

Real estate is ascending. Okay, the interest rate, and I'll get pushed back for this, it doesn't matter. I'm going to push back on that here because I think it matters at certain price points. Yeah, okay. First time homebuyers, excuse their monthly payment, that matters a lot. It's not even first-time homebuyer. I think it's at a certain price point. But when you're talking whether they're pushing off and waiting or not, no, they then can look at, okay, what house can afford?

Now, back in the day, maybe, yeah, you could go out and get that million-dollar home. But now that that million-dollar home is 1.5, and you talk about, and now I'm the 80, when you talk about prices, it's got notes and highlighting and everything. When you come up with the question about homes being reduced, I think that's a lag effect. We, as agents, we run off comps. We look at what things we're selling for. And when things started slowing up, I think we didn't shift or we didn't go in that direction. But that's the seller, though.

That's the seller and how we strategically have the conversation about, okay, and we've all done this at this table, right? But then that goes back to what I was saying before. But then what we're doing is we're just agreeing for a listing. You can't do that. You have to educate the seller. Well, you've got to walk into it a strategy. Right. And you've got to have the seller's buy-in on that strategy.

Because you know what's happening is you have all these reductions. Then that's a domino effect because then what are buyers doing? Now, buyers being more selective. So buyers are saying, okay, let's take Spring Creek. Out of those 16 or 17 homes that are resales, 14 of them have price reductions. What am I going to do? I think I'll just sit back and wait for the next one. I'll take it to another level.

I was having a conversation with a Nest agent. And we were talking about our listings that we have on the market. said if we do not, he did the research, if it did not go pending within the first days, the average among all those listings set on the market for 42 days before going pending, if they did not hit that price point. So that's interesting your BOMs, but I want you to let you finish your train of thought. No, no, go ahead. I'm good.

Good, because I just lost what I want. Days on market. Days on market, thank you. It's interesting. I've been doing this for several decades, right? And it always was, you know, the, the turning number was like this 90 days on market, 60 days on market. It's now two weeks, right?

And back to a strategy, right? So if we don't have positive activity within two weeks, then something's wrong, right? We got the wrong location, the wrong price, wrong features, wrong condition, you know, which is tying into the timing question on it. And then we've got to have this hard discussion, you know. A shout out to Michael Guthrie. I learned this from him. You know, an initial conversation, either as a seller or a buyer, do I, and what person would say no to this?

Do I have permission to be honest and be, you know, be direct, right? And who's going to say, no, I want you to lie to me? But it's an important question to ask because sometimes people just don't want to hear the truth. Yeah. Right? and our job is to convey the truth. You want to finish your train of thought before I move on? You are doing a great job.

Really? This is why I do. Tell Yona. Can I be honest with you? Can I be honest with you? No, so, Carrie, I prefer to be lied to. Guy, Candace, you want to jump in? I was going to make a joke.

I'll hold it. There's no rules here. This does come back to what Carrie was talking. about and what Chris was just now talking about as well. And, you know, shout out to Woody Fincham. Having an appraisal standpoint, and I really like what you were talking about, we are looking at comps and things. And I always talk to people about, okay, an appraiser is going to come in,

you know, look at it from a tangible aspect of comparable homes in the same condition, in the same size, in the same whatever it is, school district, street, community, whatever. But micro markets matter. micro locations matter, right? You can have the same house side by side across the street. It's very too different. Exactly. And that's when like Carrie was saying, when you go into that

appointment and you have this communication and you are honest with them and you say, look, here's four places. Here are the photos of the main, you know, the main living area, the kitchen, the bathroom, whatever. But Candace, my neighbor, three houses down, 12 months ago sold their house for $50,000

more you're talking about. Yeah, exactly. And they also just replaced their roof. The four windows that I saw that were, you know, failed sealed in your house. You did the homework. You did the homework before you went to. Yes, exactly. So like, you know, the world. Yeah, but I don't want to hear that, Candace. I'm like $50,000. You know what?

Maybe you're not the right client for me either. And that's a thing. You know what? Let go of the ego. I don't care if you like me. I'm going to be honest. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do and I'm going to produce what I say I'm going to do. And I expect the same from you. And if that is the case, and this is a great

transactional relationship. Now, if we go, you know, have s'mores later and take the kids to the Christmas tree lighting, great. But that has nothing to do with me as a professional doing work for you to get you your best goals through this real estate transaction. I think, I agree with you with the appraisal part of it. But honestly, it comes to, is a buyer willing to pay that for the property? Is the seller willing to sell at that price?

Right. And so I have an agent on my team currently. right now that just put in an offer on a property yesterday, it appraised for $599. They had the appraisal done prior to it. They're offering less than that because it's been on the market for 90 days. And so it's really depending on what a buyer is willing to pay for a seller's property. The day's on market right now. Yeah.

They're looking at it. They're saying, okay, well, it's been on the market for 45 days. What's wrong? Why hasn't nobody else bought it? And that's where, like Keith said, you have to have that conversation up front and go, look, Right now, the data we have is from the last three months or the last X amount of time. The numbers don't lie. I keep the seven-day market monitor that we're doing.

Right now, car footprint, all product types. We've got 119 homes that came on the market in the last 70 days. 82 went pending. So we are now, look, I've been sitting in that chair for a long time, and everybody's been chiming in. And by the way, my apologies to folks. watching and listening. We talked about ADD for a little while. I cannot have a conversation. And make notes and look at people making comments. So my apologies for that. That's what, you know, Jerry's just a phenom and the ability to do that. So my, my apologies to folks watching and listening. But I've been sitting in that chair for years where we're in our eighth year of doing this. Everybody's saying, well, when is the inventory going to pick up?

Well, guess what? We got 119 that came on. We got 82 went off. That's a ratio going in the right direction. So that kind of impacts pricing a little bit, and I think the seller's a little bit slow and coming along. You wanted to finish my train of thought. So you had talked about strategy earlier,

and I want to circle back to that. And so I have been telling my sellers as we go through this process, if we are on the market, no matter what the numbers say, if we're on the market, we're not getting any showings and we're not getting any offers, we're about 5% over where we need to be. If we're getting showings but no offers, that tells me we're about 3% over where we need to be. Well, that's assuming in the first conversation you didn't start a little higher than the number you thought it was going. So that does make it.

That's the catch here, right? So we want to be careful with that, that you know, you're thinking the number is here, the client's thinking it's here. You kind of split the difference. right? Yeah. Because we want to get the ball rolling, you're still that much higher.

Right. Yeah. Well, I tell you, though, honestly, I mean, I know Chris has seen this because he does help my photo shoots. I literally will have conversation I have had in the last few weeks, months.

Conversations, run the comps, everything like this is, there's no comps. There's nothing like this. This is a safe net. You know, like there's buyers that will pay this. There's nothing else available. This is a really cool property.

And the day before we go active, there's three that pop on the market that are priced or condition or give some kind of factor to just totally blow what I had said out of the water. But that wasn't available before. That information and knowledge and those properties were not available. So now we have competition. We have to readdress this whole thing. Chris, you want to jump up?

Well, I was just going to say, but that all boils down to what I said in the beginning about clear communication. You not only have the communication up front in educating your seller, you have the conversation, whether it's daily, weekly, as things come in, and you advise them through the whole process, not just until you get the signature on the contract, right? So you have that, and you let them know, hey, listen, you know, we've been on the market now two weeks.

We haven't had one call, not one showing. One of the things I love about doing this show, outside of talking to awesome folks and helping people, it makes me better at what I do. It forces me to crunch the data and do that. The other thing I love about the show is the long format of it, the long show format we do it. You know, we're approaching almost an hour, and that goes pretty quickly.

I do want to talk a little bit about Fulvana and Green, right? I love it. So these are counties that are kind of in the sweet spot of, let's call it, affordability, even though I think the numbers are rather high, but, you know, as far as the market overall in affordability. So, Jude, if you don't mind, I'd like you to, if you don't mind for like about a minute, bounce between slide four and five on it while we chat a little bit about it. So, you know, Fulvana County, you're going to take a look at this. You know, we're down 5.4% median is down 4.6. Average is down about 12%.

So we went from about 186 sales year-to-date in 25 versus 159 now. We've dropped from 375 and 258 down to 358 on the median, and we dropped 465 to 406. I'm going to go to green for a second. I'll tell you what I think is going on here, and I'd love to hear everybody what's going on. One is more of a structural thing. There's one subdivision, new construction.

it was cranking out. They're literally, because I work with these folks, they're literally a few months done from wrapping up. They are pretty much done. And that new construction impact for the last 24 months really ramped up what was happening as far as volume and sales go. The other thing, and the pushback on that with Chris, these are the rate-sensitive price points, right?

you know, a half a point up, a half a point down, a quarter point up, a quarter point down, impacts what one can pay tremendously. Then you throw in $4 worth $4.4. I left Lake Monticello. This one was 4.12. Very interesting. On the other side of hill is $0.80 cheaper in Fisher'sville. I did the matter.

Well, I think, you know, when I was mentioning the interest rates, and I knew I get pushed back, the interest rates don't matter in the sense. of what type of home you may be able to afford. In other words, if you're looking at, I want to have 5,000 square feet, five bedrooms, gourmet kitchen, okay, well, maybe at that 7% you can't, and you're looking at yes, but only a couple of years ago, at 2% I could have. But at that $350,000 price point, it's usually impactful unless it's a rancher, you know, somebody who's a boomer has a bunch of cash.

I'm going to go do this. I just sold something for a million bucks. I'll buy something that gives me all I want for 400 grand. I put a bunch of money in a stock market and move on with my life. But the typical buyer that's trying to move in there, they're financing it. And that rate makes a huge difference. I think, too, the creativity in the lenders, you know, buy downs, assuming loans. You know, the creativity we have seen in those price points and the people where the interest rate does make a big impact.

It seems also typically in homes that are more affordable for people to buy at a lower price, there are homeowners associations or some type of dues that may then bump them out. It might not be interest rate, might not be price, but maybe the extra dues and costs in living more can bump a amount of them. Every time I say this, I have to give a dear friend of mine Robert Liberty five bucks because I plagiarized and stole this. It's never a silver bullet. It's always a silver buckshot. It's always multiple things at either cause something or go ahead and fix something.

So rates are not the only item. But it is making an impact, right? So particularly if the house doesn't meet the first five rights, right, it's not in the right location definitively not in the right price it doesn't have the right features it needs a new roof and I'm at 6.7% I did some quick math

I just wanted to go over it when I bought my house what we paid for it versus the area medium income the ratio was 3.5 so in other words it took 3.5 years of my income to pay what I bought it for it is now at 4.5 even at 139,000

whatever that the balance of that is. It's called it 140 grand of area medium income. It sure as heck wasn't that in 1988. But so it is, you know, it is in, you know, the prices are definitely increasing

that. So the last, and we're almost wrapped up on time here, but the last Friday this month, I'm going to bring in Scott Morrison a couple of lenders candidates, and we're going to talk about options on that. Green County real quick, and then we need to

move on. on with our days here. Green County, I've been talking about forever. It is the rock star. Yeah, it is. We're up almost 40% in sales year over year, 37.4%. That is new construction, it's showing up in a big way. It is. Median sales prices are reducing a little bit. I think that's the market balancing out a little bit because these are new construction numbers, but it's a number one sales growth in the car footprint. It will continue to be the number one sales growth. I want to be a thorn in your side on this.

I would love more education and transparency about infrastructure in Green County. Sure. Especially Stannardsville. And proposed the comprehensive growth plans and where the water is coming from, where the school systems are going to be. You know, all of those types of things that have. have real costs and that is what I would really love to learn more about for the future outlook of green we've been talking about that actually came up in the commission meeting

last I was watching that we uh since the since since 2019 Green County school system is about 8% down in students I've learned last night the meeting last night the empowerment program that they're doing over there is is actually a ahead of schedule. So you're going to start seeing it as far as water and sewer infrastructure goes. A lot of changes happening. This capital is there to do it. Things have been approved and permitted and go through. And the other thing I learned for our Science Crossroad folks and our Palmer and Louisa folks, water is finally coming to Science Crossroads from the James River. They actually gave us a date last night. I'm going to move it to a quarter.

somewhere in the fourth quarter. It was a date given, but I think it was a little aspirational. So finally, and I've been involved in this since I got here in 1987, about bringing water from the James of Zion's Crossroads. This is going to dramatically change the impact and the growth going on in the Zion's Crossroads. Do you think alternative systems are going to be the thing? What companies and businesses should we start investing in now to look at in the next five to ten years are going to be booming? So that's a whole septic conversation because God knows you like to play in the septic tanks.

I love that stuff. It's a little weird, Kansas, I'm just saying. But we're at 1123 and I do not want to take Judah's goodwill and stretch the show a little longer than than we're supposed to. This was awesome. Thank you for keeping me on track. Thank you for replacing Jerry. It took apparently three of you guys to do that.

He does have high energy. He does have high energy. And we still couldn't answer the online questions. Yeah, yeah. He's good. I got a quick question before you close this out. Sure. Are you getting good with AI?

That looks great. No, right? Like, even the picture. I like these slides. So do we want to talk a little bit about AI and A-H-D-H-I-H-I-I-H-I-C-I-H? I can even say it. ADH-D-H-D? It is your new best friend.

It is my new best friend. It is your new. Anything that my brain can think of in like that 10-second span, it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, it keeps up with me. And that's the best part. So I will close with this. I set this on stage in Vegas. I was asked the question about what I thought about AI. and here's the deal.

AI can make a guy who got kicked out of high school, intelligent IQ just go off to charts. You think I write all this stuff? No, I think it and I ask AI to write it, right? Collaboration. But collaboration. It is my built-in editor. Oh, yeah.

But what's really going to matter going forward is EQ. You know, AI is going to make everybody an F and G. The people that can master and articulate and communicate in a one-to-one fashion, face-to-face, voice, face-to-face, your EQ, emotional intelligence, are going to be the rock stars going forward. Because AI is... Excuse me? More important than ever before. More important than ever before. So if you want to...

Don't all freak out about AI, right? Grow your EQ. If you can grow your EQ, you're just going to be rock stars going forward. So in saying that, Candace, thank you. Chris, thank you. Thank you. Kerry, thank you. This will be housed on the website, go and listen to the conversation.

For real estate agents out there listening, every first Friday of the month, we're going to do this. If you'd like to sit down and have this conversation and reach out to me, there's a seat there for you. So thank you very much. Everybody, have a great weekend. Have a great day, folks. Thanks, Judah. And he'll let us.