I need some real talk, oh, I need some real talk, give me some of that real talk. Today's real talk, the show focused on a North Carolina real estate Justin Kazephes, Claudia Ogresic of Compass real estate. Another week in the marketplace ups, downs, highs, lows, sideways, reverse, all the different ways you can ride the market. Are the trains still flowing on the tracks at all or is it pretty much just a discombobulation? On my way here, I was listening to a loan officer saying it's crazy and we know that. Some houses going for way above, multiple offers, crazy due diligence fee and some sitting on the market with zero showing. So we are all over the place. Okay. You mentioned due diligence fees for let's call it three years now, and I want to say astronomically the market will determine what it will bear very higher than normal. And are we almost to a new normal becomes the question, due diligence fees in contract, are we still seeing what would be at least in past here in our marketplace still high due diligence is being offered? Yes. I wonder if we'll ever be back to the low numbers that nowadays seem impossible like. 500 bucks. Oh, I can't I can't think of five hundred a thousand like you don't see that anymore. I we put a house under contract. I have the buyers and it was five thousand dollars and it's the house is four hundred and some four fifty and it's a five thousand due diligence. We try less, but I knew I'm like, look, just because it doesn't happen anymore. I had the conversation with my clients. Of course, I always say it's case by case. So we had looked at the house. We kind of knew what was coming in terms of repairs and I'm like, you have to be ready for it because they don't have houses in North Carolina are sold as is. So I'm like, they don't have to do anything and you have to be aware of it. But you have five thousand dollars easily and for a million dollar, one point five, two million, you see easily 50,000. I actually am closing on a house tomorrow and I don't know how I it's it's a very nice house and I made it happen with fifteen thousand. I never thought sellers would take it for the price of the house. I think it's pretty low post COVID prices. I mean, I know I've been out of the residential game for a minute, but my gosh, fifteen thousand on due diligence. I mean, I literally think of the days of a hundred bucks, five hundred bucks, a thousand bucks on due diligence. And again, there's no set number. It's all pre it's all negotiated. Every single transaction, every single deal, just like compensation always has been. It is all negotiated. But what you see in the marketplace consistently, that number is shifted dramatically easily, twenty five hundred, three thousand, five thousand, even for cheaper, you know, two fifty three hundred thousand dollars. I don't see like a thousand anymore unless the house is falling apart. You don't see that. I think twenty five is low due diligence fee nowadays. So that that must mean that buyers are coming to the table with the ability to have some cash. Because I think that's the other thing, right? Because if you think about an FHA loan, you think about a hundred percent financing on a VA product or a first time home buyer product, maybe at a credit union, there are not a lot of cash flowing at the table between the parties to make that happen. Do those deals still exist for those buyers that are cash strapped? Yes. Yeah. It's all negotiable. It's the beauty of having. And I was driving here thinking like you need to have two agents. I cannot imagine one party not having someone who understands everything about the deal trying to take care of everything. So have your agent, yes, because you can do it even if you're short on cash because you have an agent that knows how to move things around to make it happen for you. And here in North Carolina, right, kind of having a different specific requirement as far as agency goes, as far as representation, buyer side, seller side. You can have dual designated dual agent. You can have a sub-agent. There's other things that are allowed, but transactional brokerage, not being one of those things we see here in North Carolina, that other states do, meaning you have a neutral party, in essence, quote unquote, that just helps both sides get the deal done from a true representation perspective. North Carolina doesn't have that. No, you could kind of like, if I'm the listing agent and we get an unrepresented buyer. You still can't represent them though. That's the key. It's unrepresented. So all I would do was type whatever they offer, which again makes me think how crazy would you be as a buyer to not have someone who understands everything? But you know, the reality of the market is that people, as far as commissions go, thinking they're getting a better deal, they can do it themselves as if that's way. And since whether that's right, wrong and different upside down, backward, any of that, it is a real thing in the marketplace. But from your perspective, as the agent, as a broker in the transaction, whether you're representing the seller in that direction, or maybe you're representing a buyer going after a for sale by owner, do you feel like you end up doing double the amount of work in most of those transactions? Or no, is it actually better because, hey, guys, guess what? You got the best representation. They don't have anybody. This is smooth sailing. Or how does that usually play out for you? Of course, you end up doing more because, of course, if one side is not represented, you kind of have to type stuff and send them to be signed. Do you have double the work? No, because you're not helping the other side. So it's you work more, yes, but it's not double the amount of, but I just think it's crazy. I, ethically speaking, I don't, I don't like it. I've had it, but I was almost bagging. I had, let's say, a listing and the guy came saying I'm unrepresented and I'm like, please, please talk to someone. Please have your agent. And they're like, no, I'm fine. And my clients say, hey, make all the commission, get all the money. We're fine with you. We trust you. I felt bad and I bagged the guy not to, you know, to hire someone. I said, if you don't know anyone, they were coming from New York, I said, I can give you some names. You can call them. And they were like, no, we're fine. I think it's crazy, but, but it does happen. And I do know people think that sometimes they're saving money, which is not true. That's the perception. That's the perception, which is wrong. I have, I've had a client, I don't know if I told you he, he wanted to sell his house. I knew about it, I knew it was coming one day, and then he said, look, I'm going to try to save commission. I'm going to try to do it for sale by owner. And then he called me, I don't know, like a week later, he was like, I'm being bombarded with like ridiculous, lowball offers. And he ended up listing and after paying commission, he walked away with, I think, 50,000 more than he would have made that amount going for sale by owner. Why? Because I knew how to price, I knew how to negotiate, I knew how to say no to buyers and push and be firm. And he walked away after paying commission, after everything. I put side by side and he made 50,000 more to the right agent matters. It's also interesting and not in a politics kind of way, but from a policy perspective from this compensation whole shift that's happening, the idea being, okay, well, this is going to enable more competition and help people in the marketplace. I don't know what the idea was here because really, doesn't this just make it, okay, the sales prices aren't going down, the sellers are just paying less expenses at closing. And so in theory, the coverage of that difference is just going to go to the buyer and increase the buyer's expense overall. I don't know how there is ever an idea as if this would actually help lower home prices. And I don't know, maybe that wasn't even a goal, maybe, maybe I'm making that up and just assuming that that's always on everyone's forefront of their mind, but in my mind, it's not even that because again, market value always included some kind of commission that is negotiable as the market is holistic, it's not one specific piece. Yes. So it's been there all the time and I will keep saying over and over again. For me, it's never the seller paying. It's the buyer paying coming out of the seller side, but it's the buyer paying for the house. So it's one of those where it's like an accounting principle, as far as who side it's on, but practically speaking in the deal, where does the coverage of the funds come from? It's a very interesting conversation. In my mind, it's been always the buyer. But is it the seller's responsibility to pay for the buyer? So again, how it's listed mathematically versus practically how it flows, but what do we know? I don't, they don't ask me my opinion. Absolutely not. We want to find out about maintenance Monday. That's coming up later on. Today's real talk, the show focused on North Carolina real estate, Justin, because that is Claudia O'Greezick of Compass real estate. All right. So we've solved the market in the first segment of the show, already got it down. We understand how to bring balance back to what is the market value of the house. I'm so glad we caught that. If you missed that, you can go back and listen to it anytime wherever you get your podcasts and the WSIC News app. But for now, we've got to keep going forward with the marketplace. Part of the market, we left off last week with a conversation kind of about transportation. Do you remember us having the conversation on transportation? So the red line, the vote is coming up soon with the city of Charlotte. That's a big deal, right? Kind of this levy of a sales tax to pay for a mass transportation option, because there's multiple that exist. This is one specific option, though there's some subjectivity as far as the final mode of the transportation. What do you think? You think it's worth it? Do you think it's not? You have a take on it? I don't know if we've really talked about it personally for you. We have not, but I don't know. I come from a large city in Brazil that is extremely famous for having for its size and everything an amazing transportation system that's connected. So you can pay one ticket and go anywhere. We've always invested a lot of money and in Europe, the same thing I'm from Brazil if you are not aware. And I do think it's very important to invest. So because of my experience growing up in a city that always invested tons of money on mass transportation, I do think we need it. We do need it here. Not only in Charlotte, everywhere, in the United States, every large city needs it. So I'm foreign because I see it how it works in my city. And for clarity, city of Charlotte will be taking up whether or not to purchase the rights to the railroad line of Norfolk, southern and a particular territory. And part of that being that what needs to happen is to go to the voters of Mecklenburg County is a one-cent sales tax increase, proposed sales tax increase. I think it's one-cent. I think it's one-cent. So if that's what it takes to pay for it is trains and railroads are the right way to do it. I don't know if the future will hold it. It'll probably be over a decade if it even does go all the way through right before we see shovels in the ground. But for now, we've got to deal. And so when clients come here, and let's look from the buyers perspective, because besides you being the queen of new construction, you're also bringing every buyer from every outside place coming here. And as we talked about last week, because of the wages, and they're coming here. Do they say anything about the traffic? It depends on where they're coming from. So again, I have clients moving. We're closing tomorrow. They're coming from Europe. They are getting acquainted, and they're coming from the Netherlands. So tons of bikes and walkability and everything else. So now they are adapting to the car life. So it's a little shocking. But then we have- Everybody get in the car. Yeah. And then you have people coming from L.A. and saying you complain for nothing. Because this is not real traffic. So it really depends on where the buyer is coming from. Okay. And then is there still that belief in your mind that Belmont is the future of the area? Do you think that that's the best idea spot to be? One of them, yes. 100% sure. Yes. Okay. And what about price points? So let's go to, let's say, the more labor force buyer right now. Where are you seeing them having the most success in the marketplace? What is the price, any price point? You tell me. Yeah, labor. Yeah. Labor market. Are they willing to drive a little? I think most of them end up going further. I would say many of them, of course, are all of them, one easy access to highway. So yes, anything surrounding 85, for instance, Gastonia, Dallas, Stanley, Belmont, if you can find something affordable because those days are gone. And going the other way, Conapolis, China Grove, Salisbury, Rockwell, Granite Falls. So if you want to drive a little, this is where I see most people. Because the 77, I think it's pretty expensive already. So maybe Statesville, but other than that, I would go 85 and I would say most people on a budget or a tighter budget are getting the, on the 85, you know, 85, corridor, yes. Okay. So there is, there is a marketplace for them out here. There just has to be compromises. Yes. Location obviously is a factor of price and every, you know, our lives are all about compromise no matter what. So yes, for buying a house and I always say it's, especially first-time buyers, worker, this is the first house, it's your first step towards the one. So. And that's okay. It's okay. Super okay. And then what about sellers right now? Are they the ones still dominating having the most success in the marketplace, would you say? The one. The most success. Sellers. In general, as far as in a transaction goes, if you're on the sell side as compared to the buy side, you are still at a strategic advantage in the marketplace. If you, if you're doing the right thing, yes, yes, you, you can, you have tons of power if you are doing the right thing. What do you mean by the right thing? What would that include? Hiring me as your age. Number one. Preparing the house and I'll take, and I know I'm repetitive, but I, I know I'm super happy and I want to talk about it later. Okay. I know I'm helping many people and teaching because if your house is well maintained, it looks good and it gives the buyers this sense of like I'm, I'm buying a good product. You sell quickly, you get multiple offers and you move on with your life. So a quality buy is what buyers are really seeking right now that I guess would be the most popular sector if you would a quality house is the most popular sector? As in, when I hear the thing about some houses are getting multiple offers and some houses are sitting on the market, I do believe, of course, there are exceptions, but I do believe it, it has a lot to do not only location and pricing, of course, but conditional the house. Others are sick of being abused. That's all. So give them a nice house with a fair price and you might get multiple offers and sell for way more. I mean, it's just smart strategy. One of the areas of abuse, I think that, that at least based on from the reports from the real estate commission that are coming out as it relates to those making complaints against real estate brokers has to do with material fact. Are you seeing any consistent issues in the marketplace, right? That be house goes under contract is a typical scenario, again, completely hypothetical house goes under contract. You see that it comes back on the market now. You wonder why the assumption likely being a went under contract, it had inspection. It fell apart because of what was found as far as the property goes. Are you seeing that in the marketplace a lot? No, not a lot. Oh, not a lot. And I wish there was a change and I'll go back to the commission thing and not be on MLS, which I never saw as a big problem. The opposite, I think it should be public knowledge if that's the problem, show it to the public, make it one of the public information about the house, one of the fields for the public and not remove it from MLS. But the material fact, inspection, the back on the market, that's the thing that I think should because every single house that you see back on the market, it's never the seller's fault. It's always the buyer change his or her mind, the buyer, whatever the buyer financial fell through. I know it's not true. I've seen houses that my buyers walked away with go back to the market without ever mentioning material fact without just saying, you know, buyer changed his mind. And I knew it was not true. So I do think that there should be a change in the material fact area instead of the commission or anything else. I think this is a major problem. And you wonder how can it be documented the right way because the inspection report itself, not even the buyer has to release the inspection report to a seller when making the request. But they could. Okay, they could. I mean, I know it's hard to, but a house, let's say, and I know many people wouldn't be happy with it, but let's say every house that goes back on the market and yes, it is a risk you take has to have an inspection done by the seller and posted on MLS. So so full disclosure of a disclosure. So then, you know, okay, so the buyer change something happened. It was not the seller's market, but make it full disclosure. This is the inspection and you make your own decision. Too much transparency. My gosh. Calm down. Why don't you? If you're talking about our market and everything that people think agents do or don't do. So make it transparent. Let's let's show it. And this is something. One of the deals I am, I mean, not all the deals. When I say the right agent matters, I have a few deals. Some agents I'm dealing with are, okay, like they, they're not bad. They're not good. Like barely doing whatever, it's fine, but some are great. And I wish people understood the difference it makes when you have two great agents working together because we are working together to make our clients both reach the best possible goal without, you know, being fair, working hard and again, the right agent matters. By the way, I think it's so cute, the past few days, I have clients, previous clients, current clients that tell me something or think of something or do something in their house or realize and they text me the right agent matters, it's so cute because they, you know, they understand. I love it. I love it. Cause. Did I, do we have time? Did I show you this? What do you got? Okay, this is something I have on my computer screen to remind me why I have my Instagram account. Oh. It's to educate, to inspire and to help. Oh. So this is, and to be funny every now and then, but these are my three main things and I put it in front of my computer screen. So I remember that like when I post, yeah, sometimes I post something funny or whatever, but I am there to educate, inspire and help. Well, then you got to share with us and well, let's do it on the other side of the brain. What are some of your favorite posts that you've done that do each of those and how have you done that? Because as a broker in the marketplace, right? That's a unique perspective to have of, okay, beyond just the individual representation of the clients, you see it as, hey, we need to understand what's going on in the marketplace as a whole. And that is a unique approach. And you do care about seeing the market as a whole continue to rise up and that's a good thing. Also, let's talk a little bit about investing. I think that that's an interesting subject in this market right now, in particular. And is it still possible? Can you still invest in real estate even today and Claudia says she's got the answer on that clearly? Also going to have maintenance Monday coming up, stick around. Today's real talk, the show focused on North Carolina real estate, Justin, because that is Claudia O'Greezick of Compass Real Estate. All right. So you've got a big content for your Instagram, you said that you've got three main things that you pretty much want every single piece of content that you're putting out to reflect. And is that an accurate statement? Maybe one more of being silly, we'll say. Yes. I wouldn't say 100%, but 90% of what I want to do here is to either educate, inspire, or help. Educate, inspire, or help. Okay. So how do you think your role is as a broker in the marketplace, as a realtor in the marketplace? Overall, even if it's not your client, how are you trying to achieve? Do you want to achieve that with your social media? So I'm going to start with inspire. What I mean inspire is I want, I mean, there are so many, but I want to create in people the pride of homeownership. I think this is a big accomplishment. And if I'm talking to homeowners, my clients or not, I want them, I want to inspire them to take care of their house. That's why I always talk about maintenance. I want to inspire them to, I did the other day, pay a little more of your principal towards principal and save tons of money and possibly invest. I want to inspire them to talk to friends about how good it is to buy a house because you save money. You are creating something for your kids or your dogs or whatever. So this is one of the reasons why I want to help by teaching, even though I'm not a GC, even though I'm not a financial advisor, but teach them a little about the good things about owning a house, right? How to a little, manage your money, how to create a legacy for the people you love. Teaching maintenance, again, teaching tools to save money, like people that get a loan that's less than 20% down, you have to pay PMI. So I help them by making them aware that you can't drop the PMI after a while depending on certain things, things that a regular person doesn't know. And even if a buyer or a seller, it doesn't matter, hurt that at closing or they will forget because it's not part of the everyday life. So of course they forget. So I'm on my Instagram talking about different things every day. So people learn, get better and get inspired to either buy, invest, take care of stuff, think of their kids. I think one thing that I think is pretty genius is instead of what is the name 509? What is the 509 thing, to send kids to college 529, buy a house, buy a small house, start paying it off, get rent, not financial advice, not financial advice. It's just, you know, maybe think about it. Think about it. There are options that exist when it kind of relates to investing the styles of, I actually know somebody, and there was an account, I was following on Twitter for a long time, a guy who was only in the space of buying rentals at college, at colleges. That was his sole focus was going for a student housing if he was his big thing. And he really was excited the day where he had a unit that he owned that was at the college where his kid would go. And then that way, that was a way because of the cost alone of lodging that it almost made up the difference for the cost of the college. And so that was an amazing concept right there. Exactly. And I think this is, again, I'm not a financial advisor, but I think it's a great option that people many times don't realize so I think because I do it and because I have clients doing it, I do have clients that are buying near college campuses around here. I think it's pretty smart. It's getting expensive even for the colleges for rent and things like that, but that being a form of investment. So let's take it back a couple of years to where the wholesale buyer was just dominating a lot of the marketplace right here because you had a lot of sellers, people who didn't even really consider selling, but they were being marketed to to sell extremely hard. I mean, multiple, multiple, multiple times a week receiving letters from these people and offers on a single piece of paper and a letter in the mail and sellers signing it, right? And that's really happening. Are we seeing a lot of the wholesale buyers and wholesale deals still? I think yes, too much for my taste. Wait for investors, people that have cash, but it breaks my heart to know that sellers are not aware of the potential of selling on the market with an agent making way more money. So they get the letter, they think it's awesome. They don't realize they have options and that they could potentially make way more money on the open market. But yeah, I see it happening. I get the letters, I'm sure you get the letters, everybody. And I think it's important going back to talk to an agent. I always say talk to an agent, check who, and even it's not just a agent. Talk to an agent, ask for numbers, ask for production, make sure you're talking to an actual high producing agent, not someone that sells one house every two years. This is, I saw the other day on Instagram, someone saying, "Oh, I'm a top producer." Because I was a top producer at Compass in July, and I think I'm going to be in August, I'm pretty sure. But anyway, and I saw in my toxic trade, I played on MLS to see, and it was a small firm, very small. So the person actually had sold 300,000, but because the firm was so small, the person was a top producing agent, not really, it's just because the firm was super small. And actually, this is why I don't know if we ever had the conversation on why I moved to Compass. Did I? Never? I feel like we discuss it, why you liked Compass as far as the firm principles and the concept of, yeah, no, maybe you did, maybe you didn't. Yeah. Do you want me to share? Sure. I would love to hear. So last year, when I was still with my previous firm, every firm has the end of the year, celebration to give prizes to the top producer. And I had been a top producer in my firm for, I think, the past three or four years. And then one day when I arrived, these two, three girls agents came screaming at me as if I was a famous person, and they're like, "Oh my God, I can't believe that we're meeting you in person now." And I said, "I think you're talking to the wrong," but it's not, whoever you're, it's not me. They're like, "Yeah, are you Claudia?" I'm like, "Yes? Yeah, it's you." And taking selfies, and I'm like, "What is going on?" I thought it was a prank or something like, "Kevin said to you about something." Kevin, yes. It's the way. And I found out that no, they were excited. And it kind of like, this is, it can't, like I know I sell a lot, but for me to have that kind of reaction or get the reaction. So I started looking at numbers and checking, and then I'm like, "Okay, yes, I am a top producer in my firm, but where am I in bigger firms?" So I started researching the highest producing firms in our area by agent, because of course there are offices with like 18,000 agents. So if you look at the numbers, you think, "Great, but per person," right? So I started doing the calculation, how much this firm is selling, divided by the number of agents, and who has the highest average and the highest number of agents, top producing agents. And then I got to two or three, compost was one of them. And then I interviewed the three, and then I was impressed by the whole technology and the private exclusive, which is mind-blowing, and that's why I chose compost. Wow. Yeah. And it's been a journey, and I'm super happy. It's been an involvement of your journey and career in real estate, and that continues to shift like the market will continue to shift. What are some of those things and those principles that you wanted to be for compost? And especially, I would say firm exclusive. That's a big one. Yes. And by the way, just it's pretty cool, because yes, I didn't want to be a top producing agent and a small firm. So now, when I have, I've been to, and I think I'm going to be, again, one of the top producers in a high producing firm with mega agents to be, it's a different now, I almost feel like calling them, I say, "Hey, now I'm ready for the set, because now I deserve it." I'm actually, like, now I'm really a top producing agent, which is very nice. I work very hard, very, very hard, so it is pretty good. And yes, the private exclusive thing, as you know, it might be the future. And because we have so many great agents, we have many private exclusives, meaning only compass clients get to see some of the houses that are for sale. Future of the market is just one of the many things we do here. The other thing we need to do is make sure the future of the house itself, the physical house itself is maintained. So in the future, when you go to sell it, it can actually keep going up and price like the market is. Now, it doesn't always go up in price. The market doesn't always go up in price. You can't say that. But over time, right? Over time. If you're looking at real estate, you need to have that asset taken care of as well, and that's maintenance Monday. We're going to look at that coming up next. Today's real talk, show focused on North Carolina real estate, Jessica Zepa's Claudio agrees a compass real estate rocket enrolling through the day. That might be what was happening during the summertime while kids are at home sitting around doing absolutely nothing with their lives. And now they're back in school, everyone's back. And so you've got to maybe have an empty house that you're looking at a little bit more during the week. And you're saying, wow, we need to maintain this thing a little bit. We need to figure out what happened this summer when everyone was running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. And what do we do, Claudia? What do we need to take care of? What maintenance Monday do we need to take care of this week? So inspired by a few stories I posted last week, I'm going to talk about exterior. If people follow me, they probably saw, I don't know if it was like Tuesday or Wednesday, I posted an outlet cover that I had exterior outlet, outlet cover that I had in my house that had been there since I got the house. And I finally decided to remove it because it was a fake exterior outlet thing. No outlet, no court, nothing. It was just an empty outlet thingy with like 28 oxidized screws. So I removed them, I posted that. And then actually I spent the rest of the week doing little things to show the exterior. So inspired, but what I've been doing the past the holiday, the Labor Day, let's talk about exterior. Take care. And I know I talk about it every now and then, but make sure you seal any holes, you eliminate any wood rot in the structure, decks, again, not only because of me, but I sold a house not long ago, all the spindles were rotten and the steps were rotten in the deck. And it was not an easy transaction to because, you know, it was there. It was not good, carpenter bees destroying the fascia. So take care of your house, go around, take a look, and if you don't want to do it, hire a handyman, do it before it gets to a point that you are going to spend thousands of dollars instead of a few hours and a few bucks. That's all. Exterior is one of those where you're not looking at it regularly. You're not out there running your hand along the wall and checking the perimeter. And some people do. But for the most part, especially for, you know, new home buyers or people who are just busy seasons of their life and you've also got the, you know, this pesky stuff called like shrubs and trees and bushes that start rubbing up on houses and everything like that, right? Like that get a little close, a little freaky and you got to chop them up and I've talked about it. But again, everything, like don't let the bushes covering your house. I had clients that were having so many issues and they were talking to me on them. And like, you know, let me come to the house and see it. And they had overgrown bushes. So the sun couldn't dry the house. So they had a super wet crawl space and I said, guys, probably all you need to do is stream the bushes and take it, take them from the house a little. And you're probably, and the problem was pretty much solved by doing something as simple as trimming the bushes and letting some sunlight kind of dry the house. The other thing you got to be careful of carpenter bees. Yes. You got to be careful of the hornets. You got to care. You know, all of those critters, the rodents, all of the animals that also come with really trying to, because just the natural way of animals and nature is they want to find a home and they've got things built into that they're doing. We have these carpenter bees in the backyard, literally actively, when you say carpenter bees, they are drilling the holes. I know. And they can. It's amazing. They make actual. And a perfect hole. It's like a perfect circle to the way they do it. And this is again my Instagram. That's why I post every now and then and I am repetitive, but every now and then take a walk around the house and look at it. It doesn't have to take hours and hours, but every now and then go around. They do make perfect holes or the branches, the bushes, if you're touching, if they're touching the house, like the roof, squirrels can come and you do not want to have squirrels in your attic. It costs tons of money to have them removed. They will probably pee on your insulation, so you might have to replace the whole insulation. Don't take small steps like trimming trees, not letting the trees on top of your roof. Things that cost nothing that can become a very expensive and painful, because if they pee on the insulation and it goes through the drywall, you have to redo the insulation. You have to redo the drywall because it can cross your ceilings. So something simple, trim the branches of a tree, become thousands of dollars in a headache. Maintenance. Maintenance. And it does not have to be hard, but yes, you need to go around and take a look at your house every now and then. That's one of the many things of owning a house. Utilities is also a factor. And by the way, can I just say, if you're my client, this is now where I draw the line. So here, no. If you are my follower, please feel free to send me messages, ask questions. I will always be open to answering anything, but only for my clients. If you want me to come to your house to yell at you and see with the I'm not an inspector, I'm not a GC, but I can recognize some things and maybe say, hey, it's time for you to just text me and I'll come make me some coffee and cake and I'll stop by and now I'll kind of at least tell you, look, I see some things get a, get a contractor. Cost and everything have gone up astronomically, right? We've talked about that with housing every single week. We know that when we go to the grocery store, when we go to buy products, it's also happening. Utilities. I am curious to hear your thoughts. Has there been any discussion from clients as far as cost of utilities and then the transferring of utilities? Because sometimes I remember some of the closings where it would be like, well, is it, you know, Duke Energy or is it somebody else or who's servicing the unit and all that? And there were sometimes where a broker didn't even know what what the utility companies were. Do you run into that? Kind of talk about utilities overall and some of the things maybe you're seeing or hearing or anything these days. I'm not saying you wouldn't know what it is. That's the first off. Let me say I am not implying that you would not know me at all. So what you look it up, even if you're the buy side, what are you looking at up before you're talking to the seller? Of course. Why am I not surprised? I love it when the listing agent provides the information. But do I look for the information? Do I send it? Trust, but they're fine. You get, of course, of course. Actually, after I'm leaving here today, I'm sending and I find out what are the utility. I ask the listing agent, but many times I get no response. And I search for it. So I deliver to my clients to make their lives easier. So this is pretty easy. If you know the, it's not complicated at all. I think the hardest one, and it's not crazy, it's Piedmont gas that is a little slower than the rest, but it's not bad at all. Nothing is bad. It's pretty. Okay. To transfer to start a new, it's not bad at all. And cost, I don't think, I don't see anyone complaining. Sometimes they ask me, but to see or to know or to tell you that people have been asking about them? No. The insurance is something that kind of got much higher than usual. So sometimes my clients do ask me, you know, when they are getting ready to close and getting a quote, they ask me, you know, they call me, hey, I got 1500. What do you think? So I'm kind of learning that people are a little concerned about the amounts of homeowners insurance. The premiums is definitely a conversation. We're seeing that across the rest of the nation. We know Florida has had a really high rises, double digit percentage rises. It seems like some reports out of California, all state, particularly just released a report in recent days. I want to say upwards of some cases, 30%, some they were disclosing are going to have a 600% premium increase. So being aware of that in the other marketplaces, a lot of that coming down to policy, insurance is very, very regulated. But at the same time, when there are catastrophic incidents and these insurance companies have to cover the cost, well, this is the way then they're going to see premium increases and that certainly affect your natural disasters included. But other things like maintenance and taking care of and having good bones of a house, let's switch over new construction, Queen. What's going on there? Anything, anything on the rise in new construction that's got you excited or is it, is it still the when it pops up or you get notice about it, build or when you release in the lots, there's a laundry list of people waiting, what's kind of the sentiment across the board? That's pretty much based off school, so the schools where everybody wants to go, we still have lotteries, we still have weight lines, we still have highest and best. So if you want one of the known as the grade schools, get ready to bid, go crazy or pray if it's a lottery and then not so sought after school districts, then it's okay, you can get deals, you can get closing costs, you can get low interest rates, it's pretty cool. But you have to be open not to be at the famous schools that people want to be in, which is kind of natural, I think. One of the big conversations, I think over the past 10 years of new construction, energy efficiencies and a lot of incentives or a lot of people wanting that kind of stuff, most of that having to do two with some federal policies and some rebates and some tax incentives right for builders that were willing to do it, are you seeing a lot on energy efficiencies in all these days? Not as much as I would like, I love the idea of a highly efficient greenhouse, I don't see it happening as much at all as much as I would like. There is one builder that does that, it's pretty cool what they do, their house is a sprayed foam, completely straight foam, so, and I check with my clients, I'm like, is it true and they're like, yeah, you mean the insulation or the full house, everything is sprayed foam, all the walls, the attic, you can actually open the attic and leave it open in the winter, in the summer, and it doesn't affect the temperature, pretty cool, but it's one builder that does it. Can I say the name? Maritage homes. Maritage homes, they do a pretty cool, yes, and I do check on my clients, I'm like, is it true? They're like, yeah, we pay nothing for power, it's pretty amazing. Very efficient as far as a spray foam goes, from an energy efficiency perspective, but very specific and when you have to do it, if you don't do it in the beginning, my gosh, good luck doing it later. No, and you can't, because I thought about putting spray foam in my attic, and because I have a gas furnace, I'm not allowed, I didn't know that, did you? No, I did not know that, well, what else we're not allowed to do, continue on, because the hour's over. Thanks for listening to another week of today's Real Talk, Justin Kazepis, Claudia O'Greezik of Compass Real Estate, bringing us inside expertise in the market, buying, selling, whatever it is you're doing. Happy Labor Day. Happy Labor Day. Always, we'll see you next week. [MUSIC] (upbeat music)
