Perrysburg Blog

I was not blogging, just absent.

In Colorado.

With #1 son.  Who was determined to try on the U. S. Air Force Academey for size. 

And there is no water there.

There is water in Perrysburg however.

There is not, to my knowledge, a single dry hole in Wood County.

We have deep wells, shallow wells, ponds that serve as wells, water tanks that are water sources, water systems – both private and public, and even something called a “point well” which is where you take a metal rod and jam it in the ground with your own strength and water gushes up from the ground with it.

All in all – we have no shortage of water here.  Out west?  They are often operating under severe water rationing or water restrictions.  Here we actually have too much fresh, pure water.

Which is a blessing.

So – what are the real estate concerns about water?

1. If you have a basement, and most homes do – you ought to have a sump pump.   It is now part of the building code to have one.  But some rare older homes do not.  

2. If you have a crawl space you ought to have it properly vented, drained, and have water from the foundation run away from it.

3. In my experience over 90% of the basement problems that I see are the result of the downspouts not being long enough or not being attached.  That leads to . . . water getting into the foundation.  And with a typical Winter/Spring freeze-thaw cycle on a cloudy/sunny day of hundreds of freezes and thaws, you can imagine the hydrostatic pressures that the water is creating on your poor walls.

4. If you have a basement and you are going to or have added carpeting and trim and “stuff” to it, then you need 2 sump pumps and 2 electric circuits and something more than a 1 hour battery backup.   The Great Ice Storm of c. 2000 shut the power off for 6 hours in many homes.  The 12v car batteries gave up the ghost long before the power was restored.   The Great Blizzard of 1978?  Don’t ask. 

At the very least a water powered back up, if you have city of Perrysburg water (which will last as long as the city has water in the water towers) is advised.   If you have a $35,000 basement?  You ought to be looking into a backup generator.  

In my opinion, relying on your insurance company to “claim up” after your water mess is foolish.   They will clean up.  And they may raise your rates.  They may cut your coverage.  And they will tag your home with a CLUE report – that many smart buyers are accessing and then using to pass on houses that have had water damage in the past.

Sure.  They have mountains in Colorado.

But we have water.

Underneath every single house and farm and lot.

Seeping out.

Soaking out.

Heading to the ditches and then the Maumee and then Lake Erie.

It’s not your house.

And it’s not your fault.

As of today – only 40% of the members of the Toledo Board of Realtors have sold a single home year to date in 2008.

And if you do the math, you will make more money at just about any other job vs. selling 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 houses a year in Toledo, at least after you pay your expenses and your taxes.

Realtors that have not changed with the market are now finding that the market has moved on without them.

Many fine and talented agents have simply lost the ability to market and prospect and close in the current real estate market.  

And that is sad.  Sad for them and sad for me.   Many are leaving town.  Moving to other jobs.  Some are even losing their houses.  

If you are a buyer you need an agent who knows how to work for you in this market. 

If you are a seller – well, you might be hiring and agent that has not sold a house in 6 months, and therefore the prognosis for selling yours is now poor.

40% with one sale or more. 

Sad.

Homes for Sale

• Listed Homes Active:  3
• Vacant Listings: 0
• Average Asking Price: $278,145
• Offering Bonus Commission:  0
• Offering Reduced Selling Agent Commission: 3
• Price Reductions: 2
• Short Sale: 0
• Months Supply: 7 (MLS Area 53 MSI

Pending Sales

• Listings Pending Closing:  0

Sold Past 6 Months

• Closed Sales:  7
• Average Sales Price: $257,303
• Lowest Sales Price: $148,600 (Plat 1)
• Highest Sales Price: $317,525

The Drudge Report headline is that in Japan there will be millions of robots doing jobs that humans used to do.

Will that happen in Perrysburg?   Can we replace people with robots?

I wonder.

If we can automate highly repetitive processes – then the answer is yes.

If you think that judgment and empathy and intuition and insight and the ability to predict complex human behavior can be undertaken by machines and programmed into “artificial intelligence” then I have my doubts.

In fact, the professional real estate agents job is pretty safe.  I had to price a house in Perrysburg today.  Judgment and empathy and intuition and even the ability to predict human behavior (“buyers seem to pay more for East streets over West streets . . .”).  

The numbers can lie.

The statistics can be massaged.

But a trusted sales professional can use a huge human database to guide a client to the best decision.