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Austin Solomon | The Solomon Group – Coldwell Banker Action – (715) 212-4693
Hey everyone! It’s Austin Solomon, The Solomon Group at Coldwell Banker. Welcome to this week’s episode of The Real! Little bit of a different episode today!
Today we’re talking about Austin’s observations of the Wausau real estate market. We are going to go rapid-fire here!
Observation #1 – Out of town buyers. We’ve seen a lot more calls from buyers out of the area looking to relocate, a lot of them are from major cities too like Chicago. I’ve helped a lot of people from Chicago, Madison, a couple from California, Arizona, so a lot of people are relocating to the Wausau area from these big cities, which is encouraging and pretty sweet for our area.
Observation #2 – Waterfront properties have been going gangbusters this year! In some regards, there have been very few homes on say Lake Wausau, it’s October now and there’s only been a handful of homes that have gone on the market on Lake Wausau this year in general and a lot of them have been doing very well. The same thing with Lake Dubay. There has been a lot of demand for waterfront properties so those have really been this hot. The Northwoods market has been hot. I have heard from Realtors up there, again I don’t really do a ton of business in the Northwoods, but I’ve heard it’s been the hottest they’ve ever seen.
Observation #3 – Pools are up! I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that for the first time in a long time buyer’s have actually added pools to their wish list. Again, with everything going on and people spending less time out and about, and more time internally around the home, pools are actually a more of a positive thing. Whereas mostly in Wisconsin, they’ve been seen as more of a liability than a selling point. I’m going to step out on a limb and say that pools can certainly help sell a property right now!
Observation #4 – Another observation is, the more unique the home, the more important it is, the more important it is to move it in a timely manner. I’ve sold a number of unique properties and the observations I’ve seen is when a home is on the market for awhile, over time… well I often see if either moves quickly for a great price or it sits on the market for 2, 3, 4, 5 months and the buyers say, “This is a great property, why hasn’t anyone else bought it?” And they are looking at it with a different lens. More so with unique property than a normal property.
Observation #5 – A lot of times say “location, location, location” which I totally agree with. However, in Central Wisconsin, this is not California or New York where a couple of blocks can make a million dollar difference. A lot of times this gets tossed around where, for example, a property in Kronenwetter has a very similar sale price as a property in Weston and a comparable home on the East side of Wausau to a comparable home price to a place on the West side. A lot of times, home sellers and buyers, will toss out “location, location, location” which is great, but statistically there are neighborhoods that have very similar sale prices as other neighborhoods even if they are 4 / 5 miles away. You don’t always have to look so close in the Wausau area. For example, you don’t have to look at the property that sold next door, or two doors down, you can broaden that area a bit because in our area, yes location is important but people don’t shop by blocks or streets, they tend to shop by broader areas.
Observation #6 – Open houses! With everything going on, less sellers have been open to them. I have been doing them and been doing a few. This year there has been much less of an attendance as usual, which makes sense. I’ve seen in the recent weeks, there have been some successful open houses but there just hasn’t been as many people coming as usual.
Observation #7 – Another observation is that clean furnaces & clean water heaters sell. This sounds… well again I’m going all over the place here… haha! I’ve shown probably between 3000 – 4000 homes in my real estate career and I have a fairly good sense of how old a water heater and how old a furnace is by looking at it, and I also observe what a buyer says after looking at a furnace that is clean. By clean, I mean the outside of it looks shiny, or the outside of a water heater looks clean, like no rush and appears to look shiny. Then the buyer may say, “Oh, those look pretty new.” Which may not be correct. But it’s a good observation as a seller, if a buyer thinks that the shiny furnace & water heater is new & well-maintained, then maybe it’s not a bad idea to wipe down the mechanicals before a showing.
Observation #8 – Another observation is as we approach winter, another thing I see is bare roofs in the winter. Meaning if you were to drive down the street, a lot of the roofs have lots of snow on them and other times you can see all the shingles. And if you can see all the shingles, it’s one thing if they shoveled the roof off but it’s another thing if the property has large heat loss in the attic and that’s why there’s no snow on the roof because all the heat is escaping and the snow is melting. So if you’re visiting a home and you see that, that might just be a quick observation like, “ooo, what would cost to heat that place.”
Alright! Those are some quick observations in the market! Little bit of rapid-fire, impromptu! Hope you guys take a little value out of that and thank you for tuning into this week’s episode of The Real!
Subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast or Google Play. Search: “The Real Wausau Real Estate Show”.
Have a question or idea you’d like to learn more about? Email our team at austin@coldwellaction.com!
Austin Solomon | The Solomon Group – Coldwell Banker Action – (715) 212-4693
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