The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Keith Smith & Jerry Miller Were Live On “Real Talk With Keith Smith!"

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Keith Smith & Jerry Miller were live on “Real Talk With Keith Smith” powered by YES Realty Partners and Yonna Smith! “Real Talk” airs every Wednesday and Friday from 10:15 am – 11 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Real Talk With Keith Smith” is presented by Charlottesville Settlement Company, LLC, El Mariachi Mexican Bar & Grill, Fincham & Associates, Inc., Free Enterprise Forum, Intrastate Service Co and YES Realty Partners.

I don't want to. Maybe come over there. You come over there. It took seven years to say that. Welcome to Real Talk with Keith Smith. My name is Jerry Miller. Thank you kindly for joining us. Good Friday morning to you.

A lot we're going to cover on the program today. Real Talk with Keith Smith features a gentleman that is a friend, a colleague, a professional mentor, and Keith Smith, who's been in real estate since 1987. Not only is Keith one of the principals and co-owners of Yes, Realty Partners, a boutique real estate brokerage here in Charlottesville, Almaro, and Central Virginia, but Keith is a Class A general contractor. He's built more than 600 homes, and many of those developed in the Lake Monticello neighborhood. I believe you've built, was it one of the first homes in Glenmore?

I did, actually. One of the first homes in the Glenmore gated community. We will talk on today's show the entire corner copia of real estate topics. But one of the topics we will discuss today is the tragedy that impacted the gated community in Keswick. Glenmore. By now, you may or not know, I would think most in this community know, a home on Furndowne Lane tragically exploded, resulted in the death of one person and the significant injury of another who is currently fighting for his life in the VCU burn unit. That's right. They transfer him. Transfer them there. In total, along with the tragic death and the tragic burning of another person, 13 homes, including the one that was eviscerated, are unsalvageable on the brink of uninhabitable.

I would say that. And now basically in the hands and the judgment of insurance adjusters, which is a terrifying position to be in. So we are going to unpack this turn of events not only with a realtor, not only with a co-owner of a boutique brokerage but a man who is a class A general contractor in Keith Smith. Judah Wickhauer, studio camera, and then

two shot Keith Smith. Goodness gracious. What a story. Yeah, you know, we first and foremost want to put our prayers and best wishes out to all the families. You know, this is just flat out tragic. And I

thought this morning, you know, we talk a little bit about it and maybe brush off this little Class A contract license. I keep in my wallet. He's got it in his hand, the Class A contractor's license. And, you know, one of the classifications I have is a gas fitters license, right? So I kind of know a little bit about this topic. But what I wanted to do is I kind of wanted to take it more from an approach of not, you know, what happened and how did it happen? You know, look, the investigation is going to kind of hopefully get to that point. It's not going to bring anybody back to life.

but what I wanted to try to focus a little bit on is okay look you know if you're going to go away what are some of the things you should do right and just have like a conversation you and I conversation about that and maybe kind of tie it a little bit into real estate because after all this is a real estate show you know I did some research in the last couple of days like preparing for this show

and we'll talk about this a little bit later but according to the Wall Street Journal if you go ahead and service, and we'll talk about the portions of the house that you should service annually, if you do that, right, keep copies of that, you will actually increase the value of your home when there's time to go say,

according to Wall Street Journal, it's 1% per year. They have a number in it. If you don't do it, you reduce your value of your home by 10%. I don't necessarily agree with that. But I do agree that you do increase the value of home, and particularly, again, putting my real estate hat on it, if I'm going to have, we're going to sit down at a kitchen table to list your home, particularly in today's market, right?

We talk about features and condition. Well, we're talking about condition right now. If I'm able to go ahead and present to the agent on the other side, here are all the services that you have done in this house religiously once a year. It makes a negotiation's a whole bunch easier. It gets you a little bit more money and move on. So we'll talk a little bit more about this. specifics, but, you know, just as a takeaway point, if you're not doing that, you should be doing

it, and we'll talk a little bit about, you know, who you need to call and when you need to do it here a little on it later in the show. Kate Schartz, welcome to the broadcast, the Queen of Ivy. Lonnie Murray, welcome to the broadcast. Katie Pearl, hello, Cully Baggott's, a real estate developer, Jason Noble, Scott Thorpe is in the real estate game. Viewers and listeners, if you want to ask questions about the level or explosion, please put of the feed and I will relay them live on air.

Again, we're talking with somebody who's built 600 homes as a Class A contractor. And got a gas fitters license. It has a gas fitters license. So let's talk about gas. Let's start off with gas. Right. So that is a scary thing as we just experienced, right? And we don't know what happened, right? You know, I can tell you

it didn't happen external from the home, right? Because if it would have happened between the tank and the regulator or part of the regulator, so those who know the regulator is the thing that mounts on the house that regulates the fuel, that puts into your home, neighbors would smell it, right? Because what do they do with natural gas and LP, liquid petroleum gas,

is they put an additive and it makes it smells like rotten eggs. So somebody would have smelled it. So somewhere internally, there was a long-term leak, water heater, gas water heater, furnace, connection to a fireplace maybe along those lines. And that just built up. and what gas does is it always goes to the lowest level right gas is heavier than air so you know from what I understand and talking to neighbors and the people at the emergency services it filled up the basement there was an ignition of some sort it could have been a simple light switch and unfortunately

it was an instant explosion for anybody who ever had their gas grill and walked away from it before they lit it for a minute or two and lit it that instant flame that happens, well, just think of that of 250 or 500 gallons worth of propane. That's why you see the debris field that you do. It was an instantaneous explosion. So let's talk about propane. So that's the easiest one to shut off, right? So if you have propane, there's a, and you've, you know, you're either have an above-ground

tank or an in-ground tank, the larger tanks are in-ground. That's a simple thing of finding that. top. You say if you want to shut off the gas for the house, lift the top up. It's a, it's a regular like faucet valve. You shut it off and you've now shut off fuel from the tank to the house. You know, the winter, obviously that's a little bit different. Right. If you heat with it, but if you're going to go away for a couple of days, that's a great thing to do. If you don't want to put hands on it and I get it, you know, hire a plumber. That's a gas fitter. Call your company, if it's the, you know, the propane company, or if it's the city gas, whatever you

should live, and have them come out and say, look, I'm traveling. How can I do this? But what you really should be doing is twice, particularly with gas, gas appliances. That's, you know, heating systems, ovens, hot water heaters. Some people have gas ports on the back of their deck for grills, right? You should have somebody come in twice a year and inspect these. And then have, like I said earlier in the intro, keep copies of them. Because on the sales side, on the real estate side, these are always great things to do. But just for safety purposes and peace of mind, that's what you should be doing.

If it's city gas is a little bit different, you know, there's a meter out in the street, right? And my suggestion is don't open that meter and mess with it, right? You could go ahead and ask the gas company to do that. And secondly, if you don't want to do that or you don't have time and you run out, every regulator that mounts to the house below it is a shutoff valve. It's a little hint, right? You know, if you've got a line going vertical and you have a shutoff valve on it, If the valve is parallel

with the line, then it's on. If it's perpendicular to the line, then it's shut off. You could just shut it off there. That stops gas at least going into the house. So, you know, I kind of wanted to kick off a little bit with the gas side of it since the tragedy that we've had.

I showed a house yesterday and that's all these people we're talking about. My wife's been talking about too. Yeah, so, you know, safety first Batman. when in doubt make a phone call you're going away for a couple of weeks a couple of days

whatever it is and if it's in the summer you don't need the gas and nobody's living there just shut it off either at the tank at the regulator or call the gas company or the propane provider and say look I'm leaving for a couple weeks I'd like to have my gas shut off so we don't have any tragedies

I mean I only can imagine what these people must be going Kevin Yancey and Wainsborough, his first comment. He'll get the comments started, and they're coming in now. Kevin Yancey and Wainsborough says, as soon as it exploded, the pressure valves on the tanks activated and the shot and shut the tank off. 100%. Unless the tank totally dumped all the gas into the basement. Well, to Kevin's point, it never really ever completely, to play,

there's always a little percentage of the tank left in it. So it does, as soon as it came. it, there's mechanisms that shut it off, but somewhere along the line, there was a leak. And, you know, so Yon and I travel, right? When we go away for an extended period of time, we always have a house sitter. So if there was a house sitter in there, they would have smelt that gas long before 250 or a half, 500 gallons of fuel. I mean, that's a lot of fuel. And it all sits on the bottom.

it starts, you know, like gas, right? The liquid doesn't cause the explosion. It's the fumes. And that's what happens is gas starts generating all these fumes. When you're in the Marine Corps, he's a Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Bob Seffick, welcome to the broadcast as well. When you're in the Marine Corps, you were military police.

Yes, but my primary job I was attached to the U.S. Embassy's security behind the Iron Curtain. Why do you think the homeowners for the Glenmore home on Furndowne Lane that exploded, who were out of the country traveling, why do you think they got in touch with the neighbor to go check on this house? Do you think it was because somehow there was notification that there was gas, newly deposited gas by the gas provider? Was it just a random check-in with our home? The fire marshal has confirmed the woman that was found dead in the rubble smelled gas upon checking the house.

Then she contacted a male who was walking toward the house and got caught up in the explosion. Judah's pastor was within 100 feet of the house, and the explosion was so significant that Judas pastor, who was within 100 feet of the house, was blown off his feet and then got on his feet and pulled the male, who's in the bird unit at VCU out of the basement rubble. So let's, so I'm trying to figure out the tie-in to the Marines. So I'm thinking you're probably trying to tie in situational awareness and paying attention to what's going on. This is all your skill sets. Yeah, so I, you know, my, you know, my, my job is protection of classified material

property and personnel, so, and I was in the Soviet Union at that time. look like something must have tipped the homeowners off yeah so to call the neighbor to check on the house so let's unwrap this a little bit so first off if you do not have

a CO2 monitor and a gas monitor in your home go out and buy a bunch of them you can get them out of lows I'm gonna use I'm trying to trying to keep some of the contracting lingo out, but, you know, they'll lick and stick.

You pull it off, you stick it on the wall somewhere, and it'll sense CO2, and it'll sense gas. You can get different kinds based on if you've got natural gas or LP gas, right? My suspicion, and this is just a wild gas, and based on some conversation, is they probably had some integrated system, you know, like a security system, that had all the bells and whistles in it and they got a notification on their phone. That's something that was going off. They got a notification on their phone

is probably what happened, right? That seems reasonable. Yeah, this is what I've heard from emergency service folks. That's what happened, right? Then the phone call went to the next door neighbor, neighbor come in. Look, I'm going to try to be

uber delicate about this because somebody lost their life in a very horrific and tragic way and somebody's fighting for their life right now. But what I've taught both my daughters, if it don't feel right, smell right, sound right, you walk away from it, right? It's all about situational awareness.

So, again, this is tragic, and we want to pray for the families and pray for that. But there's a reason why they put this odor in gas. What, he's saying it's, Mercaptin. It's odor with Burr-Captin, which smells like rotten eggs.

It smells like rotten eggs. And yes, I would imagine they got a text or an email that the fuel supplier had filled the tanks. Could be. Look, we don't know, right? The investigation is going on.

My information was as it came from the alarm went off and it was, hey, go check the house. If it's true or not, the investigation is going to find out. But what we want to send home here, you know, if you walk onto a piece of property or if you're around your house, right, and you smell gas, call 911, right? Don't move forward. If you smell that smell, then there's combustible gas somewhere present where you're standing, back up, get safe distance, hit 911, the fire department will come over. that this is trained to do this and then take it from there and most people don't think that way right

you know oh i'm going to help out a neighbor or whatever it is but you know we it there is a very clear reason why that chemical and that smell is there it is a hey you've got a problem make a phone call and unfortunately that didn't happen in this case, and unfortunately the tragedy not only to life, but the property, has happened because it's substantial damage.

I mean, 13 homes damage, these homes, viewers and listeners, I mean, to say these are a million-dollar homes is an understatement. It doesn't really matter, right? So you're probably looking at somewhere between $13 and $20 million in damage.

It's going to be more than that because you've got to clean up all the debris, right, you know. I mean, the other questions I have foundational damage. How uninhabitable are these homes? Are these legitimately tear downs at the neighbor's homes now? I mean, you have neighbors that are on the street that have done interviews with the media, that all the windows were shattered,

the hinges were blown off the door. That's usually the first thing that goes, because, you know, I've been around enough explosions in my life and got blown up a couple of times. It's the compression that gets you, right? The windows were shattered, hinges blowing off doors, second floors, two or three inches move to the left or the right, you know, prior to the explosion. So.

Or because of the explosion. This is going to be a long, drawn-out process. And somebody's going to ask, well, how does that impact the real estate? Well, I was going to. Literally my next question. How does that impact the values of the neighborhood? How does that impact the values of the entire street? how does it impact the value

let me here's a basic question a home that is in a state of remodel that is across the street from the home that was completely destroyed and is no longer there how does it impact the value of the home that can be fixed

well so nobody knows the answer to that so that's the first response right because if somebody tells you it's going to decrease this or da da they just don't know because how many times this has happened right So there's no history that you can go back and look at it. I can tell you, it has impacted the market at the moment, right?

It's impacted the market from a buyer's perspective. And this is why I wanted to talk about this today from the sellers' perspective, right? Particularly what's going on here, guys, you know, make sure you get your stuff service, right? And, again, we'll go through the list on what I think you should do, right? But hey, look, we've got this done. I literally did a home inspection yesterday. Yona normally handles them. the client

you know we we split our clients up right so you honestly look I need you to be there because he's very this particular buyers freaked out about gas and stuff like that I said cool I got it I went there and went through it and all of stuff and there's shutoffs and everything is fine and everything is operating as it should

on it but yeah so the buyers are concerned about that right now because of this incident It's kind of logical, right? If you have an explosion of that thing and you damage, how many houses are in Glenmore? Over 900.

Yeah. Back of the napkin estimate, it's about 950. Yeah, so you had 12 of them. 13. And I think that number's bigger than that. Potentially. Right now we know there are 13 homes, the blow site, and 12 others.

Yeah. So people that are going to be around that are going to be calling their insurance company. They're going to be sending instructional engineers and blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, it could be, you know, as much as 10 percent, right? Not 10 percent. 10 percent would be 100.

It would be 1 percent of the total, right? Hold on. We got 1,000, 10 percent of a thousand is 100. So it's roughly 1 percent, 1, 2 percent of the property. Yeah. You know, here's the thing. This was not specific to a subdivision, right? This could have happened in Lake Monticello.

This could have happened in any, name any subdivision, right? That's where it could, it just happened to happen here, right? You know, places that have particularly propane tanks, right, or any gas to it, you know, gas is combustible. And as we can see it, it happens. So this could have happened in any subdivision, just happen to happen here. This comes in from a class A contractor and builder that's watching the program. That is saying, Jerry, I watch your show often. I respect that you don't utilize people's names when they ask for discretion.

Please don't use my name or my company, but this is important that is heard by the viewers and listeners in your audience. The key point I made to you on yesterday's show is these homeowners should not be negotiating with insurance companies or adjusters now. They must get structural engineers to look because the damage is way beyond cosmetic or, what the eye can see. The damage is potentially structural. That's a great piece. That's a great piece of advice. If you can afford to hire an independent structural engineer, I'm just going to give a shout out to a guy by name Alex Rayfield. He's a home inspector and also a structural engineer. I'm sure his phone is ringing off the hook at the moment, but that's a great piece of advice, right you know bring in a structural engineer to take a look at it what i'm trying to talk a little bit

about is the front end of it right make sure this doesn't happen make sure you go ahead and have your h-wayac system and your gas systems service twice a year right we don't know the circumstances maybe that happened maybe it didn't happen maybe they haven't looked at it for a couple of years who knows right you know we don't know but you should get these systems serviced bi-annually. It does two things. It does more than two things. One, particularly on the HVA system, it kind of extends the life of the units. It extends the life. The second thing that it really does. I mean, just changing the filters on these damn things, guys. It's such a basic thing, but it's so important. And some of these filters require a little bit of knowledge to change

them out, particularly if the HEPA filters and the whole house filters. It's not like the old school where you'd slap it in a register on it. But still get a professional in there to go ahead and do it twice a year depending on your on your filter systems within within the house the second thing that it does just you know I've always make a plug with buyers to go ahead and do this particularly new time new new home buyers you know when does your system usually crap out the worst time possible yeah if it's in the middle of a of a the hottest time of summer the coldest time of winter and you know what happens if you're on a on a bi-annual service with Almar Heating and Air, whoever you happen to use.

I'm not making a plug. It's just one that popped into my head. You get on the top of the list on the call. And that alone has value. It has a tremendous amount of value. But back to the folks that are in that community and back to this gentleman that chimed in. And he's got more comments. Even if you are outside of the blast radius, because that's what we're talking about here, right?

The ATF, ladies and gentlemen, is a part of this investigation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's because they specialize in explosives. It's explosive, the blast radius. But that's how significant we're in. The ATF is investigating this right now. And I'm, you know, but they are the experts that can look at a blast radius and then we're going. But if they, somebody magically draws a line around it and goes, oh, by the way, this is the blast radius.

And you're outside that line, still call a structural engineer. Hey, take a look at my house. It's worth a few hundred, whatever the fee is going to be, and then you could take it from there. Very similar to the earthquake. Remember when the earthquake? It was 2011? I had structural damage in my house, and I was substantial distance away from mineral where the epicenter of it was, and, you know, I just, I called in a structural engineer, and then

a structural engineer wrote a report, and I called my insurance company and said, here's my report and then it's pretty hard for them to ignore it at that point. Here's viewers and listeners we have real estate agents left and right watching the program. Canaan Mancini Hello. I do want to talk about water. Logan Wals-Claylo hello. Yona Smith, hello.

Lloyd Snook, hello. Folks on the car, board, hello. Katie Pearl, hello. I'm going to ask a very straightforward question. I have a Class A contractor that is saying the impact on foundations and the structures themselves, not just on the street, but adjacent streets,

should not be underestimated here. He said, you know I don't need the business, Jerry, and I'm not doing this to gain business because I ask you not to use my name. I'm doing this from a good place. They should talk to a structural engineer before talking to any insurance adjuster or gaining any kind of settlement.

Do you know why he's saying that? Well, I have a follow-up to that. Tell me why he's saying that. So, everybody, you know, this is a great time to pull out your home insurance, homeowners insurance policy, right? You're saying, if this is covered in the policy? No. Foundations are typically not covered in homeowners insurance policy.

Well, here's a, go ahead. This is great content. So if there's a structural damage to that. And the reason I know that is, one, as I read it, and I'm kind of in the business a little bit, just a little bit. But when I had the earthquake thing on me and I had the structurally, all my structural damage was to my slab, my basement slab, and my wall. My insurance company wouldn't cover it.

This was the Louisa earthquake? Yeah. So. That damaged the school and then radiated throughout, yeah. Yeah. So the suggestion of having a structural engineer taking a look at. at it is an awesome one. And he's saying that this kid is not just tied to the street, that this could be many streets over. 100%. Yeah. Well, that's the point I'm trying to make is, so somebody's

going to draw a magic line around this house and say, here's your blast radius. And it's going to be between the ATF, the insurance companies are going to fight it. Lawyers are going to go eight, you know what, all over. I mean, this screams class action here. All over this stuff. But if they draw this out and you have any question, it's well worth the money, hey, let me have a structural engineer come in and take a look at it. Whoever this is, he's spot on.

I got to ask you a very point of question. You ready? I got a pen. I'm ready to write. Is this a known material defect? Yes. Any home on the road near the

crack near the explosion site? Known material defect should any of these homes be listed on the market? That's a tough question to answer, right? Can you put in perspective first known material defects? Yeah, so

what a known material defect is so I am listing your house and you tell me, hey Keith you know this explosion that happened and I got a bunch of cracks in my foundation then I know that's a material defect.

I don't have to be an expert. My real estate license isn't going to allow me to be an expert, but a reasonable thinking person would say, okay, that's a known material defect. And then you go back to your structural thing. Back to the structural engineer, and if you're trying to sell a house in Glenmore, let's just assume this doesn't impact the market.

I think it will, but let's assume it doesn't. And I have a house that's even outside the radius, and you call me the list and the first thing we're going to do is call Alex Rayfield and get a clean bill of health right and I'm going to shove that in the listing documents so we now know I've got a clean bill of health right

because what's the first thing a buyer's going to say is there any damage to this house from the explosion or any damage from this house from the earthquake at that particular point in time I'll take it a step further this I'm going to get the war to the explosion made national news

yeah sure did now so it's I mean, international news, my assistant law in Austria said... International news. So it's common knowledge because of its reporting. Yeah. Does that go beyond known material defect in any way? No, I don't think so. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, I got you. Okay, so explain what I'm... Because I didn't do a good job of presenting that. No, you did a great job of it. So what you're saying is because of some national or regional event, it's directly related to an individual property. That's a, I don't see that happening. I see it.

So as far as no material defects, it's a disclosure, right? If I know something, I have to disclose it, right? If I don't know it, obviously, I can't disclose it, right? So how do I know things, right? I know things by you telling me, or walking through a piece of property in a reasonable thinking person or somebody that is not an expert, it's obvious, right? You know, the wall is leaning this way, right? There's black substance growing all over the inside of the house, right? A reasonable thinking person would go, hmm, we've got a material defect here, right? You don't have to have one of these things that I've got his class eight contractor's license in his hand. Yeah, to do that. You know, I'm in a little bit of a different animal because That's why I like working with you. Because of that.

But at the end of the day, it's about what you know and what you don't know at that end of it. Flipping at the other side, if you're trying to sell in Glenmore, I don't care if you're a mile away from the explosion site and you're trying to sell it, you better call a structural engineer and just get a clean bill of health. Real estate, we're kind of tying it back to real estate, right? Real estate, I think in the unicorn years, I don't think this would have mattered. people would have said, I'll buy the house and fix it, right? Now it's different, right? It's location, price, features, condition. We're talking about condition right now. Well, the location is good. Well, you and I can talk to Glenmore market outside of this differently, but...

I live there four years. Glenmore has a history of up and down, a very, very steep up and down. Yeah, a swingy history. Much like golf. I was trying to tie it to... I was trying to tie it to golf. That was a dad's joke right there. That was a dad joke, thanks. Okay. I respect the effort, though. I tried. I respect the effort. I tried.

I tried to make a funny. I respect the effort. But, yeah, so, yeah, there you go. I was trying to figure out a way to improve it. I don't think of it's good. I will leave it alone now. Yeah, leave it alone. Shut up. Go on, dad. Go on.

Smith doesn't do really good on learning when to shut up. You're doing a great job. It's good. Do it a great job. But, but I just lost my train of thought. What we were talking about. talking about known material defects and the swing of the Glenmore market. Got it. Swing into someone. Thank you. It can be very hot and cold. It was very hot during COVID. No, within a year. Yeah. It goes up and down. Yeah. Right. And Glenmore's always been a very...

I mean, front of the program, Jeff Gaffty said it comes down to the golf course. So when the grass starts turning green. Brother, our chemistry is not as on fire. I was literally going to give Jeff a shout out that if you're trying to list the house and the brown, the grass is brown, you're going to be down. I'm trying to recover here. You're going to roll his eyes on that one. This comment, if the sound waves on that explosion traveled all the way to Holly Mead, imagine how far the sonic waves went.

100%. So back to my point of somebody's going to draw a magic line. And if I'm in Glenmore, and I own a piece of property, I'm calling Alex Rayfield. I don't care if I'm thinking about selling, not thinking about selling. I want somebody in my house and take a look at it. If you can't get Alex, find somebody with one of these things, a Class A general contractor say,

I'll pay you to get an eyeball on my house, right? Is my seals working on my windows, right? You, you know, you may be far enough away, and, you know, there's a lot of things that happen to a windows other than shattering or fracturing, right? The seals can be blown, right? Sometimes don't really know that until the temperatures start changing, right?

And what I mean by seals, windows that are double-paint or triple-pane, but around here we typically have double-pane windows, there's a seal between the two pieces of the glass. And usually you can tell when they're blown is when they start fogging up like you would do like a mirror in a bathroom. And the weather differences need to happen, you know,

cotton cold kind of thing. But it could be something as simple as that, right? So what does it do to the Glenmore market? There's another specific question. I was hesitant to ask the known material defect question. But the reason I'm asking the known material defect question is because it's a real estate show and you've become the water cooler of real estate conversation.

I literally heard that from Jeff a few days ago. He said that. is because of the show he's become the guy when it comes to real estate locally exact words he said a little bit of pressure literally exact words he said

Jude was there and heard it too somebody called me a guru okay so I don't know if I have to dress up play I don't know we got to get cost of responsibility yeah it does the known material defect question

another comes with responsibility question is what's it due to the glenmore market well it can't be good right you know again back to my comment earlier you know we'll break out the crystal ball nobody really knows right but i can tell you and i'm not trying to scare people in glenmore right

you know people are trying to sell their houses and buy whatever it is right i'm just going to point out facts here right today's we're not the unicorn years right unicorn years he's alluding to the time in covid whereas yona smith says even turkeys could fly in the wind one of my favorite yona isms ever is that one she's watching the program i love she knows she knows knows I love Yona. Yeah. Even turkeys could fly in the way. She made me throw turkeys up in a storm, I'll tell you.

I love the... I can tell you, they went. It was amazing. Now that is not the case, ladies and gentlemen. Now that's not the case, 100%. So even though we're in this weird buyer-seller market... Transitionary period. We'll use transitionary.

It's becoming a more balanced market. Balance market. And in certain locations, it's heavy buyers' locations. Certain locations, it's heavy-seller... on the seller side. If you don't hit all the, I call, I have six, right, location price features, right, condition, timing, and who's on the other side matters.

If any one of them are off, and now we've got a condition one that is really off, it's going to impact that market, right? To what extent and for how long? And also, you know, if this happened, let's say, God forbid, in Lake Monticello, God forbid, right? It'd be easier to run the stats on it.

But Glenmore, if you historically take a look at Glenmore, it shoots super high, then it hits the bottom and it shoots super high. And that does that in like three-month cycles, right? And if you really take a hard look at the sales chart on that, you'll see these huge Ws going at, where in Lake Monticello you might have a little bit of that, but it's constantly climbing. That might be an easier impact,

particularly, right? We did this for a show the other day, right? The number one highest volume of sales in the region is Lake Monticello. Well, it also, that's a skewed number. That's a skewed home. It's the second largest neighborhood in the Commonwealth. And it's got 4,500 homes to sell.

It's got the most homes. But that makes, that makes Crystal Ballin that answer a little easier. That's fair. It's a hard. to do in Glenmore, because it's regardless of this particular event, God, horrible

event, timing Glenmore market takes a lot of skill. Well, and on top of that, and again, I lived in the Glenmore market for almost four years. I know this market intimately. The homes are so different in Glenmore because they're all custom builds. So you have a lot of different floor plants,

a lot of different builders, a lot of different styles. Also, you have the, um, the, um, there's choice lots in Glenmore. Some Glenmore lots are golf course lots, green lots. Some are phase one, which is West Derby when you pull in. West Derby's got the choice lots. Some are positioned closer to the club, position closer to the pool.

Some are on the main drag piper way, which could diminish some of the value potentially because the traffic and the eyeballs that go by it. So it's just not where Lake Monticello has this as well, but that is... It's more of it. litness test, the baseline is more predictable. Well, that's a reason why. That's what you're saying. That's what I'm trying to say, right?

And you have the same thing. You've got waterfront lots, golf course lots, the acres, which is the one I developed inside Lake Monticello, right? There's some different thing. But for the most part, it's a kind of consistent property type. And in Glenmore, you even got different property types. You've got, you know, cottages. You've got cottages.

you've got the preserve in the back, which is the bigger lots. You have, I mean, you have a ton of different property types. Comments coming in quickly. Yeah, so I just think, I mean, a logical thinking person, we just got to call it like, this ain't good, right? It's not going to be helpful. So if you've got something that you're trying to sell in Glenmore during this time,

so what we're going to get to this particular list, my suggestion is you better have this list. list. You better have something from an Alex Rayfield, which every time I say his name, I'm going to have to charge him. I mean, Alex Rayfield, you owe Keith Smith, probably $500 at this point. You're buying Keith and Yonah Tavala dinner today. There you go. There you go. With martinis. Yeah. I've been good. I haven't had. Well, it sounds like I've been drinking yours for you. Well, yeah, I've been trying to dial that back a little bit. I'm in training. Okay. So get in

Structural Engineers report, get all these different reports. It's a good idea in today's market period to have a pre-home inspection. Wow. Right. In Glenmore, you better do it. Get a pre-home inspection. You include all this package in it. And when Keith rolls in with a buyer, you know, you're going to give everything and you're

going to take every guess away from the buyer on it. Again, under normal circumstances, not the global. Landmore Market. If you do the things like once a year, right, your HVAC, your water heater, your plumbing, your gas appliances, your electric panels, you're roofering and gutters, the chimney, which is actually one that I really want to take a dive into,

things like smoke detectors, CO2, gas monitors, these are things that have to be inspected, particularly by a third party. I would encourage that. Some of them are twice a year. You know, the HVACC

and the heating is twice a year. but you know get these things inspected put together in it get your structural engineer get your home inspection done and it is a nice beautiful package and you've just taken the guess out of it and not only that you've taken the questions out right here you go and then this whole question about known defect goes out the window because everything is there um Mike Plecker one of the Shando Valley's finest backstops played in the form system with the New York Mets no one regionally with a quick release from behind the plate, a gunner who catches runners at second base and third base. Look at you. Fantastic hands and knows how to work a pitching staff, Michael Plecker. He says, I can only imagine how much infighting is going to take place there among the various insurance companies.

Oh, good Lord. I also wonder who the fall guy is in this scenario. I think you're going to be multiple. The fall entity, whatever. Who's going to catch the hatchet in the back here? I also wonder who is galvanizing the 13 homeowners right now in any kind of class action scenario because I would bet that is happening right now.

It's a creepy, crawly business, I hate to say. So I'll tell you who's going to do that. The class action? It's going to be the insurance companies. Of course. The homeowners might not have anything to say about it. The insurance, I mean, I, Keith, you want to know something crazy? Since that's happened and we've been talking about this, I've probably had half a dozen to a dozen companies in my inbox or DMs saying talk on the show that we're here to help, offer free inspections, all that.

Yeah, sure. The, the, that, this version of ambulance, Jason. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Which is sad. But if that's happening right now, there's a contractor right now who I'm not going to. going to say, who is literally walking down

the road, trying to make contact with people and saying, I'll offer you free estimates of what you're looking at. So I hear you. That's a nice new watch. I think I've seen that. I've had it before. Offer free estimates. That was squirrel. So look,

I'm going to take it from the altruistic level. Maybe he's trying to do the right thing, right? So maybe these folks are trying to do the right thing. We're trying to do the right thing here, right? We're just talking about something. Yeah, I know that, but I'm making

recommendations. Yeah. But, you know, let's use the term trusted advisor because we like using this. If you've got one in your life and you live in that area, you should call that trusted advisor. If it's a real estate

agent or a general contractor or whoever, I would give that person a call to go ahead and take a look at it. But you know what's a, and I'll let you chime me on a question, but I do want to kind of talk about water and chimneys

when you get it. Greg Bartleski watching the program right now, one of State Farm's finest. There you go. Well, he would know. Greg Bartleski, would if any of the insurance agents would be willing to talk on the show, we'd love the host. William says this,

on the insurance thing nearly eight years ago, our back porch collapsed. It was a miracle my wife was not killed. When we were dealing with the insurance company, they set an engineer out to examine our property because our back porch did not meet current construction requirements

and there were no specific requirements when it was constructed. The insurance company denied the claim. Yeah. Yeah. And then he shared a link to his back porch collapsed and you can find this link in the comment section of my personal Facebook page.

Search Jerry Miller, look at the comment section and look for a comment from Bill. Again, back to this. contractor comment is class A comment and the one that's texting with me I know well and he's not soliciting business because

he's backed he's booked into 2026 he's generally trying to he's generally saying like dude don't do anything without a structural engineer looking at it well what he's also telling you is hire your own guy that's literally what he said yeah yeah and have them assess it first

before somebody comes in I immediately make that phone call immediately have somebody come in and do it. If you want to DM me after the show, I've got a list of people. There's not a lot of structural engineers in this town, by the way. You might have to bring them in from out of the area. It's literally you can count them on one hand.

So, you know, there's that. And they're extremely busy. They're always busy on that end of it. So, you know, you can reach out or do some Google in or chat, CPP, or AI, and try to find structural. engineers are going to do it. But the point that this gentleman's trying to make is, you know, trust but verify and, you know, I'll wrap it around a little bit into the real estate. It's like

when you walk into a new construction home sales center, that salesperson there isn't working for you. It's working for the company. Same thing here. When they send them over there, that engineer, that inspector, it's not working for you. It's working for the insurance company. So, you know, it's best to get your report and then, compare it to the other one and go, whoa, time out. We've got a problem here. And then we can move on. Okay. How about this question?

If you're one of the 13 homes that are known to be damaged, uninhabitable, or gone, exploded, what's your quickest and best hedge to keep you in front of the other homes that are in this collective damage? I wouldn't know that. I mean, my initial off-the-cuff response, says be the squeaky wheel you know just stay on it I mean it's hard but stay on it you know and you're gonna do the you know the old Potomac two-step people are gonna be passing the hot potato around but you know this now just become a full-time job right staying staying on time but you know just think about it you have now 13 families and I think it's more than that I think so too

I think it's way more than that I think we're we're gonna figure out how many it is soon I think conservatively double that number, right? I'm going to have some form of damage that may level to the point that it's not safe to stay in the home. So let's just use the 13. Can you put in perspective what the word uninhabitable means here with these homes? Yeah, so. I found that word unique. Here's why I find that word unique, because it would strike me that you could still live in these homes.

But they're saying uninhabitable. Yeah. Is that a safety? Yeah. Like if you have a foundation issue, can't you still live in the home? I understand from a resale standpoint, the foundation issue. So where do you mean different things to different people and different definitions, right? Unhabital strikes me as you can't even go in it.

Yeah. There's, and I'm waffling here a little bit. A little bit. A little bit. a little bit because it means different things that different entities means different things of different people, right? And it's also a comfort level, right?

I do not want to live in the house because I feel it's unsafe. Well, guess what? To that person, that's uninhabitable, right? Is it the actual definition of uninhabitable? Do you have to check these six boxes to equal uninhabitable? It doesn't work that way, right?

You know, if you don't have water, you don't have sewer, right? No water, no sewer is uninhabitable. Right, right. Mold, I understand, uninhabitable. I think where the word... Gas leak uninhabitable. Crack in the foundation doesn't strike me is uninhabitable.

Except under this particular circumstance... What, the house can crumble? Except under this particular circumstances, back to the sound wave, back to the actual impact zone. So do you know what most people die from, explosions? No. Internal

injuries, right? What happens internally is usually what kills you, right? You know, if you're that close and, you know, it's projectiles, you know, those kind of things, but if you're at a certain distance away, it's what happens internally

that gets you. So my point is we don't know what's going on internally, right? So you could see a visible crack, but you don't know what the hell's going on up in the attic, behind the walls, things you can't see. And that might just check that box, right? You know, this is uninhabitable, right?

You know, we don't know what's going on until you have somebody come in and say, okay, you're structurally sound. And I'll tell you what, until you start tearing stuff apart, it's almost impossible to determine what that's going to happen. This is a much bigger, longer term

thing than a simple, oh, this is uninhabital and move on. Does that make any sense? Yeah. That makes sense. But the bottom line is get somebody in, take a look at it. But, you know, sometimes, you know, there could be stuff behind the wall that you, anybody who ever renovated something can figure that out pretty quickly. Yeah, right. That's the truth.

Here's an interesting question. Does the blast site impact the real estate market outside of Glenmore and Milton, the Keswick area, the Clifton area? Yeah. I'm going to say no. Shadwell, they added. Yeah, I think there's going to be a question asked. Like, as time goes on, there'll be less questions asked, right? But there'll be questions to ask.

And, you know, if you're in a situation where you've got to sell right away and you are thinking this, then it's good to give a structural guy a call or get a pre-home inspection or get something done so that, you know, at least you have this safety thing. Look, I think the biggest impact is going to be to Glenmore, obviously. We still got an inventory problem, right? We still have people coming down from the Northeast. I'm meeting three people this weekend coming out of Nova, Northeast, and Florida, right? All phone calls that happened this week since the explosion,

all looking for homes in and around, you know, Charlottesville. So that hasn't slowed down. But I think it does impact Glenmore. Water. Please. Make sure you shut off your water main if you leave in the house. If you don't know how to do that,

there's usually somewhere where the water comes. If you're in a basement, there's a water line that comes in. Right after that, there's a shut off valve. You can shut it off, right? And that just stops water through the house. If you don't have something like that, call your you know if you've got a well right you can go ahead and shut it off at the wellhead right or somewhere along those lines but if you're on city water give the come give the city water

a call say look i'm leaving don't you can actually open up the box and there's a valve in there you can shut off i wouldn't touch the box because it doesn't belong to you it belongs to the service authority pick up the phone call the service authority i'm worried about flooding or whatever. Flooding, this is a tragic, instant thing that happened, but water is what causes most damage to homes, right? Hot water heaters exploding, right? If you got Quest pipe, that sometimes pops when you're traveling and you're out. So if you're gone for a few more days and you're not in the house, just cut off the water to the house. It's not going to hurt anything. The winter might be a little bit of a different story, right, on it, you know.

Because the pipes will freeze? The pipes will freeze and all that kind of great. So that's a different animal, and there's different ways around that. If you're going for a long time, you can drain all the water out of the house. You know, if you want to leave a, you know, valve open. Pardon? A little bucket with the valve open. Yeah, yeah, a valve open, that kind of thing.

Or in a sink and just let some water roll through it a little bit. But, you know, it's, it's, it's. you know, just simple PM stuff, right? Make sure your, make sure your... Project management. Yeah, thank you. Make sure that... Hose bibs.

It's actually preventive maintenance. Oh, okay. Sorry about that. You're going to go hose bibs? Well, no. The hose is that connected to your washer and dryer, right? They get brittle, excuse me, your washer. They get, well, it's a dryer too,

because we just bought a new one that has a steam thing in it. So they get brittle. those typically pop and they just will run until you show up and then you've got some real damage. So just get those things looked at on a regular and consistent basis. This is from a local entrepreneur and businessman Philip Reese. He says I had a small claim case against my landlord several years ago due to extreme water damage that meant the apartment was temporarily unlivable for two weeks. The judge defined the term. uninhabitable as a permanent condition like being destroyed in a fire.

Yeah, so there you go, right? But I think under different, I mean, I'm sure the insurance policies have a different definition of it, right? There's different definitions for different circumstances, but yeah, I mean, I do want to talk fireplaces for a second, because this is something that has caught a couple of people and buys and sells over the years with me. Gas fireplaces, we just talked about, makes sure everything is shut off and P.M. But woodburning fireplaces,

they're meant to be used. A lot of people don't use them for years or decades. Get your chimneys clean? No, what you really need to do is run a fire through it periodically a couple few times a year. Definitely get your chimney swept and taken a look at.

But what happens with that is if you don't use that, wood burning wood fireplaces unless it's metal they're masonry have terracotta flus well what happens if you don't use them

they dry out and crack and all of a sudden you throw a fire in there and all of a sudden these flames and this creosote and so forth and so on work its way into your structure and it makes you know you have a fire

so if you got a wood burning fireplace use it periodically get it cleaned keep a copy of of the chimney sweep thing, right? I've swept it, it looks good and all this stuff, and they'll inspect the flu. But we just recently had a situation, we were on the by side of it,

did a home inspection, we brought in a chimney sweep to take a look at it. The fireplace has not been used in 20 years. And what needed to happen was it had to be relined. It was about a $15,000 fix. Yikes. And we negotiated it in the home. inspection on it, because it was the chimney sweep literally said, this is a fire hazard.

You can't use it because you have all these cracks, the mortar between it. And what fire does and goes out, it actually creates moisture in the flu, which then moisture keeps the terracotta and the mortar joints good, and you don't end up with that fire. But that's a little tidbit out there. Fantastic, show. Yeah. I thought we were going to do stumps this. This is your, I mean, it's your specialty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, well. This is right up your eye. Yeah, you know, I was. This is why you work with Keith and you're on a lazy job. Yeah, stop it. No, I mean, I'll say it. You're too humble to say it. I mean, he's a Class A contractor as a real estate broker.

I was uncomfortable with kicking off like this because of the sensitivity of the disaster. Because I consider this a disaster. That's 100% of disaster. Right. I mean, especially if we find out it's more than 13 homes. Yeah, there's. literally no way. I mean, you're talking like tens of millions of damage. When this could be all said and done, we may be, you know, who knows how expensive.

Well, again, not necessarily put it the dollars, but impacting people's lives. And I was going to say this earlier and I didn't get it out. Just the 13 families, where they live in. Right. Right. Right. Right. So they literally have the...

They've got kids going to school. How is that going to... I mean, just the impact on people's lives. lives. The feds are involved in this, ladies a gentleman. The ATF is alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives. They're doing one of the leaders

in this investigation. Yeah, and that's because of the extent of the explosion. Right. And again, as I said earlier, they got the skillset. They got the people that can look at this and go, okay. And this is all trying to figure out how this happened. Right. Right.

And then once you figure out how that's going to happen, then it's going to be the who. right and then that's when the that's when the fund's going to start yeah on it but we're looking at a a multi-year process here my bet for what it's worth is that there was some sort of a appliance in the basement that had a leak some sort of leak right some sort of valve leak connection leak you know hot water heater you know who knows if it was a gas dryer down there, right? You know, you just don't know what level of glass appliances, and it was more than likely in the basement, right, because it stays low. So it could have been the gas furnace, you know. But there was a, some sort of leak. And that leak had to go on for a long time for that to happen. It takes a, the reason I know this. I mean, talking to the entire tank emptying? I'm doing.

Somebody can do the math on this, doing a renovation from my parents on it, because I'm super smart. I filled up my effing tank, 500 gallons of propane the week before I started my thing. So I had to pump out 500 gallons of fuel because I had to relocate my fuel tank. So me being... Do they give you credit for that? Yeah. They charge you $1,200 to pump it out, but you get

a credit for the fuel. And of course... So they don't charge you again for the fuel once they pump it out, right? Yes and no. So the way this works is they charge you $1,200. Oh, by the way, the only tank that there's only a couple

of rigs that actually can do that. They come out of Richmond. Because usually they're designed to put in, not take out. Yeah. On that end of it. So what happens? was, is there was a $1,200 fee that physically do it. Then

they gave us a credit to our account for the fuel. So it was 500 gallons out, an X $4 a gallon, whatever it was, on that end of it. Then we end up with a credit on our account. We've got it reinstalled. I've got to call them to fill it up. So whatever it's going to be at that point, they're going to eat up

the credit and anything above the credit. We need to pay. But what I wanted to say is genius, which would be me, I know a little bit about this. I know a little bit about this, let me just try to bleed this out myself, right? And then I realized that it would have taken two weeks to bleed that tank out. You know, you have to bleed it out. There's a way to do it safely and all this kind of great stuff. So my point is that leak had to happen going on for

either. There was multiple ports open, huge lines. I'm talking three quarter inch lines, one inch lines, which is probably not the case. That had to have been leaking for a very, very very, very, very long time, like weeks in order to fill up that basement with that much fuel, right? So anyway, and if somebody was living, they would have smelled the gas. You know when you do a good job on a show when, I mean, you get the realtors and the bankers watching, but when you talk about class A contracting and the class A contractors are watching, when you see class A contractors all over the feed watching that you know, you know you do a good job when they stay for the entire hour watching.

Well, and they don't say Smithfully, you know what. No, they're not. Yeah, you're getting the nod in agreement. Yeah, yeah. Well, 1122. Fantastic show. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for letting me do this. I did a great job. I wanted to kind of do a little PSA for people out there. This was, you know, not patting anybody on the back. But if you, you know, take care of your systems, document them, keep them somewhere in a folder, right, you will generate more money. money for your home, your home will sell faster, you'll make your life a lot easier when you can't come to the end, you might end up saving somebody's life. Keith Smith, yes, reality partners.

Keith Smith, yes, reality partners, did a hell of a job today. Yes, reality partners, who you can count on in that buying and selling process. Yes, reality partners. The show Archived at Real Talk with Keith Smith.com, click the Partners tab on the website. He has personally vetted these partners. All working. IAC is a great They're watching the show right now. You know, if you've got a thing, get them to come in and take a little.

Interstate service company. Home's best from. They'll be more than happy to do it, I'm sure. Yeah, he's personally vetted the partners on Real Talk with Keith Smith as a guy who's been working in real estate since 1987, ladies a gentleman. The I Love Seville show. Not 1887. The I Love Seville show at 1230.

So long, everybody. That's an old joke. I've got to stop talking about it. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I just just want to.