| Home Contact Us Blog | |
|
The Crossland Team
Sylvia Crossland, Broker Steve Crossland, MPM (512) 301-5811 |
-
Featured Listings
My Interview on Keye42 News last night
June 27, 2008
I received a call from a KEYE42 News reporter yesterday wanting to interview me about the impact on gas prices on suburban areas further away from Austin. I said “ok”. The link to the piece they showed is below.
The interesting thing to me about these interviews is how the final piece generally conveys the message intended (by me) but still misses the mark somewhat. The “$50K cheaper 30 miles out” came from an example I gave the reporter comparing the commute for a state worker who lives 8 miles from downtown in South Austin, in a 2,000 sqft home that costs $200,000 versus that same downtown worker who bought a 2,000 sqft home 20 miles further out in Hutto for $150K ($50K cheaper, 30 miles farther).
The Hutto home owner will save about $300/mo. on their loan payment by saving $50K on the purchase price of the home. But that owner will commute 40 miles round trip further each day (28 miles from Hutto to Austin vs. 8 miles from South Austin).
At 20 mpg and $4/gal, that home owner gives back $175/mo. of their lower house payment to fuel costs. The $4/day toll eat up another $85/mo. That drops the total savings of the cheaper, further home to about $60/mo before factoring in the extra wear and tear on the vehicle, added depreciation from higher miles, the value/cost of the additional hour each day commuting, etc.
Read more
Location now has more weight in home selection
June 19, 2008
I have my first anecdotal evidence that gas prices will hurt values in far flung areas and help real estate values in closer areas of Austin. I just helped someone relocate from Wimberley to Austin. The reason for the move? Gas prices have made the commute costs unacceptable. For this individual, the tipping point was reached and the decision was easy.
Wimberley is about 40 miles SW of Austin and is a beautiful, serene place to live. My client had lived there for 7 years, on the Blanco River, in a beautiful setting, but decided to move back into Austin because of gas prices. “I’ll save $350 a month on gas” is what I was told. The tipping point.
Another example; last weekend, I drove my 12 year old daughter out to Elgin to be a “mother’s helper” for the day, keeping her 4 year old cousin occupied and entertained while his parents could actually get a few things done and have grown up conversations. I chatted with my sister in law for a while before I left. I asked “so, do you guys still enjoy being out here in Elgin”?
Read more
Gas Price Pain - Media Hype and Consumer Illusion?
June 1, 2008
I just bought a new 2008 Chevy Silverado Crew Cab and have been taking some heat for it from friends and on this blog where I wrote about the purchase experience, how I got a great deal, and the experience of interfacing with dealerships.
The main themes: “How shortsighted”, “wouldn’t a smaller vehicle have worked?”, “You’ll regret it”, “gas prices will eat you alive”, etc. Even one “I thought you were smarter than that”.
Does anyone do the math on these sort of judgments? I did. Here is what I came up with.
Assumption: $3 per gallon was higher than we liked a year ago, but it didn’t generate the hysteria and behavior modification and purchase modification that $4/gal. seems to be creating, so I base my comparisons on $3/gal vs. $4/gal.
Case Study 1 - my driving habits
I drive about 1300 miles a month in the truck. It gets 15 mpg so far (same as the old one - 2001 Silverado).
That’s 86 gallons of gas per month that I purchase. At $4 vs. $3 per gallon, I’m paying an additional $86/mo. over last year to drive my truck. Nobody thought less of me a year ago. Now suddenly I’m a fool, according to some, for not taking measures to eliminate an additional $43/mo. cost of living.
Read more
Responding to Unsolicited Offers to Buy Your Home
April 27, 2008
I received a call recently from an Austin homeowner looking for a place to rent. After further questioning I learned of her situation. The neighbors have offered to buy her home, and she is willing to consider selling it. The neighbors have outgrown their smaller home and would love to move up to her larger home while remaining on the same street. The homeowner is now exploring rental options in case she were to sell.
“Have they indicated a price they’re willing to pay?”, I asked? No.
“Have they provided a pre-approval letter indicating their financial ability to buy?”, I asked. No.
“Well”, I said, “you’re out looking for a place to rent but you haven’t first established that your prospective buyers are legitimately interested. How do you know you’re not wasting your time? Do you really want to spend time looking for a home to rent before knowing that your neighbors aren’t just daydreaming about your house, and that they might turn out to be flakes?”
“No”, she said. “I guess not. What should I do?”
When you, as a home owner, are approached about selling your home, and your home is not on the market for sale, there are a couple of up front requirements you should request before you spend even 3 seconds thinking about it. Assuming you are open to the possibility of selling and you wouldn’t simply say “no thanks” immediately, you would tell the prospective buyer the following:
Read more
Are Older Homes Really Built Better?
December 20, 2007
I really miss the old house we use to live in on Newning Street in Travis Heights, and the neighborhood. We lived there from 1991 to 1996, when S. Congress was still gritty and not yet “cool”. We certainly didn’t call it “SoCo”. It was still plain old South Austin and Travis Heights.
The home was built in the late 1800’s. We had no dishwasher, no disposal, no A/C, a dirt driveway, single pane windows, bad plumbing and wiring, and no Cable TV. BUT, it was a true vintage home with wood floors, high ceilings, great archetecture, great trees, great location and certain indescribable charms and nuances about it. Our youngest daughter was born at home there in the corner bedroom in 1996. After the second child, it got a bit rougher with no A/C, so we migrated further South to the Cherry Creek neighborhood, where we bought a more modern 1976 home with central A/C (and aluminum wiring).
We’ve subsequently lived in homes built in 1998, 1969, 2003 and now have now moved into another home we just completed this year.
While I miss the old Travis Heights charm and ambience, as a couple in our mid 40’s with school aged kids, Travis Heights and old houses just don’t fit into this phase of our lives, though we hold very fond memories of pushing the kid buggy through Stacy Park and swimming in the pool there. Would we trade in our modern brand new home for an old clunker in Travis Heights? Probably not while we still have kids at home. The old house had a lot of problems, and now that were are spoiled by living in an energy efficient home where everything functions properly, it’s going to be hard to ever go back to Old Time living again.
One of our inspectors, Bob Petersen, wrote an overview of the differences of older homes versus modern homes built today, which I share below.
By Bob Petersen
How many times have you heard ‘they don’t build ‘em like they used to’? Why do people say this? Is it true? Absolutely NOT!Besides a FEW things that were better with older homes (no ‘finger jointed’ studs or trim, better quality wood, no hollow doors or ‘pressboard’, better doorknobs and no computer controlled appliances), modern homes are much better in many ways. Here’s a partial list:
Roofing/Insulation: Before 1982 lasted maybe 15 years. Now roofs last a minimum of 20 and some are hail resistant. Older homes had little or no insulation; newer homes have lots of it & much better attic ventilation.
Moving Tips: How to get a better price on existing services
December 11, 2007
We’re in the process of moving. I called Time Warner to move my internet service to my new address, but when they answered, I told them I want to cancel the internet service instead. I don’t want to cancel (though I truley was considering it), so why did I do this? To get connected to the customer “retention” department.
Why the retention department? Because they are the ones who are authorized to negotiate a better deal that the one I currently receive. If I simply move the service, they will keep charging me the same rate. But by telling them I need to cancel and that I’m thinking about switching to AT&T DSL, that results in my being transferred to the “retention” department, though they don’t say that.
Once the retention person has me on the line, it’s their job to talk me out of switching to DSL. It’s my job to play hard to get. End result, they talked me into staying and dropped my monthly bill from $44.95 to $34.95 for the next 12 months, at which time it will go back up. But I’ll take the $120, and I enjoyed dealing with the better trained, more knowledgeable customer service rep (they don’t put newbies in the retention department).
This works the same way with your cell phone provider. If you’ve completed your 1 or 2 year term and have no intention of switching providers any time soon, call in and tell them you need to cancel. You’ll be sent over to a retention specialist whose job it is to talk you out of canceling. In doing so, if you hold out long enough during the conversation, they will eventually offer you a pretty sweet deal, with a better plan and a free new phone. Several years ago, I had the monthly fee for my Pitney Bowes postal machine cut by more than 50% by making one of these calls.
These businesses know that it is far cheaper to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. Wireless companies spend more than $600 per new customer acquired. If they can spend less than that to keep you, it makes good business sense.
Austin Toll Roads - Cheap suburb living more expensive than you think
November 7, 2007
The Austin Statesman website has an Austin Toll Road Calculator that’s interesting. You can click on your entry and exit points on the map to find out the cost of a certain trip. (you may have to log in or register at Statesman.com to be able to use it - sorry)
Every since I paid $2 to drive a couple of miles on Toll Road 130 coming from Hutto shortly after it opened, it occurred to me that the cheap homes in Hutto are not so cheap if you’re a commuter.
For example, using the interactive toll calculator, there are a lot of $3 one-way trips you can create around Austin (I even mapped a $4.50 one-way trip), but let’s just say you live in Hutto and come in on 130 to the Hwy 290 exit and on into downtown. That’s a $2 trip each way.
Let’s say you have 200 work days a year. That’s 200 x $4 = $800 per year in toll fees, which is $67 per month. Since you’re also driving 27 miles each way, I’m going to call that an additional 17 miles each way compared to what you’d drive from South Austin, so that’s an additional 6,800 miles per year. At 15 miles to the gallon at $3 per gallon, that’s an additional $1360 per year in gas, or $113 per month.
So, the cheap home in the Austin outskirts is now $180 ($67+$113) per month in additional commuting costs. I haven’t even added in higher water bills, higher property taxes, etc. (compared to Austin) nor have we factored in higher operating costs and depreciation for your vehicle (more frequent oil changes, tires, loss of value due to high miles, etc.) or the additional time away from your family while commuting.
The point is, the cheap housing that draws many buyers to the outskirt areas of Austin can in fact be an illusion once you factor in all of the total costs of living further out. That $180 per month would be better spent building equity in your closer in home that keeps you off of toll roads. Just something to think about before you get all starry-eyed over that big 2800 sqft house in Hutto that only costs $200K, but leaves you with a 30 mile toll road commute each way. Yes, it’s bigger, and newer than the old homes you find closer in for the same price. But are you really, truly calculating the “price” correctly? You have to factor in total cost of ownership, of which commuting costs are a big part.
Austin Auto Accident with Illegal Immigrant
September 1, 2007
Sylvia was broadsided yesterday in her new (3 months old) honda odyssey by an Illegal Immigrant driver on Manchaca Rd. He had no insurance, no driver’s license, no proof of identification and didn’t speak English. The police came and wrote him three tickets. I’m surprised he wasn’t arrested, since he had no proof of ID. Luckily, the damage is cosmetic and the van is still drivable, but it was unnerving for Sylvia as she was 1 hour late to meet her buyers and was distressed that her nice new van is now damaged.
The funny thing is, the first thing I thought as I looked at the damaged side of the van was “I wonder if that’s going to cost more to fix than what we’re saving on the cost of building our new home?” Then I wondered why I thought about it like that.
The thing is, we all want the best value we can get when buying or building a home. As I make daily visits the jobsite of the home I’m building, most of the people working there do not speak English. I have no idea if they are illegal or not, and I don’t ask. My home is coming along well, the quality of the work is very good and I like the price I’m paying.
If a builder were to say “I can build your home with only English speaking workers and guaranty that only documented workers will set foot on your property, but it will cost $10 or $20 per square foot more”, I’d say “no thanks”. Knowing that, do I have a right to feel angry that an illegal immigrant just ran into my wife?
Read more
Stevie Ray Vaughan died 17 years ago today
August 27, 2007
Stevie Ray Vaughan died 17 years ago today. I miss seeing him play in Austin back in the 1980’s. Austin properly honored him and his music with a prominent statue on the shore of Lake Ladybird (formerly Town Lake) on the hike and bike trail downtown.
If you ever saw him play live, especially in a smaller venue, you know that it was something special, and hard to describe. Eric Clapton put it aptly in an interview. He said that Stevie (I’m paraphrasing) “seemed to go into another zone, into a different deminsion, and that the music seemed to be channeling through him from another place, beyond his consciousness”.
That says it pretty well.
YouTube has a lot of old videos of Stevie’s music, plus a loyal following of fans. This one is Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble - Live at the El Mocambo in 1983.
Deciding against tankless water heaters for our new home
August 27, 2007
Sylvia and I are in the process of building a new custom home in SW Austin. This will be our second custom (and new) home. All other homes we’ve owned have been resales. On the first one we built in 2003, we went $50K+ over budget by adding too many upgrades and making too many additions to the home, including an expanded second story. It was our first time building a home and we somewhat lost control over ourselves.
This time we’ve sworn to be more disciplined and to stay within budget, or to go over ONLY on things that are important to us or that add value to the home. We actually have a pre-established “over budget” amount that we’ve put into place mentally.
One of the items that remained undecided up until now, was whether to have tankless water heaters in the home instead of the traditional water heaters. After a lot of research, we decided against the tankless water heaters.
Read more