Describing Charlottesville & Crozet to a Friend – Part 2
A friend shared with me his description of the Charlottesville area that he'd sent to a friend. This is part two; part one is here, and it's quite useful and good. Reading this has been interesting for me; I look at Charlottesville through the lens of a…
“Nothing But Building Equity”
Remember the real estate crash? I do. Short-term thinking is a large part of how we got to the last housing-based recession. Welp. With clients over the weekend, we went into a new construction model home. When the salesperson said this, I was taken aback.…
So Much Content – Podcasts, Notes, Words
I walked in a new-to-me park last week in the City of Charlottesville. Can you guess which one? Producing content is hard. So is practicing real estate. Blog posts have been in short supply of late, as client representation takes precedence. With that said,…
Charlottesville Real Estate Radio – May 2018 | Market, Density, Mortgage Rates, Time in Homes
I truly enjoy when Matt Hodges and I do an hour on Rick's Sunday Wake-up show. An hour talking about real estate? Yes please! Take some time and listen, if you're inclined. We talked about an awful lot, including: Mortgage rates - affordability, Stuck in…
May Monthly Note | Trust, Lockboxes, Ignorance, Gaps
I've been writing this note for a few years now. It's impossible to value the ROI for the time spent writing this, but one thing I know is that the people who choose to read - usually at least 60% of subscribers every month -…
Buying a House that’s “Good Enough”
There comes a time in every home search process (and often the home selling process) where one says "this is good enough." Arriving at the point of whatever you want to call it - concession, compromise, acquiescence, acceptance, or, to use a positively-connoted descriptor -…
April 2018 Note | Kindness Matters
Archives of my subscription-only monthly notes. The blog is more searchable. Interested in not waiting a few months to read it? Learn more here. For these posts, I don’t do much formatting/changing as I’m more concerned about simply having the content here forever (because I own the blog,…
RealPodVA – Charlottesville Real Estate Podcasts
13 years ago, I experimented with podcasts. Time to revisit the concept. Here's the new podcast. With some awesome friends, we're launching the start of what we aim to be twice-monthly podcasts, talking about the Charlottesville real estate market, community, and a lot more. Listen to the…
Charlottesville Land Use – A Brief History
Jim's preface: Affordable housing in Charlottesville + Albemarle (and America) is at, or nearing, crisis stage. I love this post because I learned a lot from it. I hope you do, too. The housing crisis isn’t just about affordability—it’s about economic mobility, too Community land trusts take…
Big AirBnB Changes Coming to Albemarle County?
Alison Wrabel at the DP reports: After three work sessions, the Planning Commission on Tuesday recommended to allow whole-house rental, where no owner is present, only in the rural area and for no more than seven days in a month and no more than 45…