Just Horsin' Around - Thoughts on Central Texas Real Estate and More

Any time is festival time in Central Texas (we do love to party on the slightest excuse), but with the cooler weather in Autumn, you can hardly throw a rock without it landing in the middle of an event - there's something for everyone! Just a few of the events that are coming up are:

The Texas Book Festival, October 27-29, Austin, Texas. http://www.texasbookfestival.org/

Fredericksburg Food & Wine Fest (16th Annual), October 28, Fredericksburg, Texas: http://www.fbgfoodandwinefest.com/

Thunderpalooza, Thunderhill Raceway, Kyle, Texas, Nov. 3-4, benefiting breast cancer awareness and uninsured children: http://www.thunderpalooza.com/

Austin Celtic Festival, Austin, Texas, Nov. 4 and 5, now in its 10th year: http://www.austincelts.org/festival/

Wurstfest, Nov. 3-12, New Braunfels, Texas (yes, it does take that many days to enjoy all the sausage!): http://www.wurstfest.com/

Gathering of the Scottish Clans and Highland Games, Salado, Texas, Nov. 10/12: http://www.ctam-salado.org/

Chuys Christmas Parade to benefit Operation Blue (toys for needy children), Austin, Texas, Nov. 25: http://www.chuysparade.com/

Victorian Christmas Festival, Austin, Texas, Nov. 25-26: http://www.victorianchristmasfestival.com/

There's lots more, but this is just a taste of what you can do in the next few weeks in Central Texas. Come party with us, and maybe you'll want to stay!

Have you ever noticed how often people move away from one place, to another place entirely different from the place they moved from, and then proceed to try to make the new place over into an exact replica of the place they moved from? I'm not talking about relocations for jobs, where a choice of place to move to or from might not be possible. But, say, the classic example of this, which is people who move to "get away from the city" and move to the country, where they then proceed to complain about the fact that there are animals in the country (on the farm next door that was there for a hundred years, so it's not like they didn't have a chance to see that it was there before they moved), that there's dove hunting in dove season (we've GOT to get an ordinance passed to put a stop to this!), that all the lawns aren't immaculately mowed (but the fields sure do look good), that it gets dark at night (we need to have more streetlights!), that there are no sidewalks, and so forth and so on. All of this while commiting such faux pas as letting Fluffy run loose (that's why they moved to the country, after all) to pack up with other loose dogs and harrass the neighbor's cattle and run the weight off of them (but Fluffy would never do that!).

In various discussion lists that I frequent made up of people who live in the country, this phenomenon is frequently mentioned. The word "citiots" is bandied about in discussions of the various problems created by this attitude. My theory is that a lot of people don't do what we did when we moved to the country from the city - we did our due diligence before ever putting an offer in on our place. We not only checked out the schools (including a visit with the superintendent) but we looked into all the things we could find that would be different. We also went in with the assumption that we were moving into their territory - they being the people who had lived there for generations, who liked the way it was just fine. We figured that if there were any surprises, it would be up to us to adjust to those surprises rather than expecting the people who already lived there and liked things just fine to adjust to the way it was wherever we came from. A lot of people don't do this - it doesn't even occur to them that this is something that could be done. (The same applies, of course, to people who move from NYC to Texas or Texas to California or wherever, and then proceed to criticize and gripe about and, in some extreme cases, try to legislate change to make the new place just like the old, rather than enjoying the very delightful differences that each locale has to offer.)

What does this have to do with real estate? Well, I think that, just as we try to find the right house, and we encourage our clients to do due diligence in having the house inspected, we should encourage due diligence in this regard. This can be simple, or difficult - but we all have the tools at our disposal, the same ones we use in helping buyers find out what's most important; to them in a house. Those same tools, and others, can be used to help someone choosing what entirely new place to move to to find that place, so that they, and their future neighbors, will be happy.

One of the resources that I take advantage of is something done by an online friend on one of my horse lists after a discussion of just this topic. It can be found at: http://www.granitehillsdesign.com/rural/RuralHandout.pdf. In a relatively humorous way, it gives an idea of the challenges and adjustments that might be faced by someone moving from the city to the country. I'm also providing copies of this (the advantages of being the wife of a printer) to our small town City Council's office, where they receive inquiries from people considering moving here, to be provided with their relocation packet sent out to those people - our town is more rural than urban at the moment, though we're expected to add 5000 people in the next 5 years, and we only have 1200 now. I'm doing what I can to help the process be as painless as possible for all concerned, and this is part of that attempt. I see it as my responsibility both as part of the community and as a real estate professional.

We're all here professionals in some area or other of real estate. But what else do we do? What do we do in the rest of our lives that we bring to our professional lives that gives us an edge in certain areas of real estate, that helps us understand our clients better, that helps us figure out our niche, that gives us a period of refreshment to keep real estate from driving us nuts sometimes? In other words, who are we?

I'll go first. In the incarnation immediately preceding becoming a real estate agent, I was a personal chef. In fact, I'm STILL a personal chef; I kept my first clients and cook for them one day every other week. It's a change of pace, it requires me to focus on something else, it's something I really really enjoy doing (cooking). And, because of that career as a personal chef, I've cooked in enough different kitchens that the first thing I do when previewing a home is analyze the kitchen layout and equipment and the workflow patterns it creates. That gives me an edge in helping a client choose a home - if two are equal, sometimes how easy (or difficult!) the kitchen layout will make cooking every day can make the decision easier. From the Seller's side, if a kitchen is fantastic, I know just how to emphasize that to make it appeal to the foodie crowd.

I'm also "The Agent With Horse Sense". I own (and used to breed) Morgan Horses. I'm absolutely passionate about them. When things are blackest, I can go out and hug a horse and take a deep, long sniff of that horse perfume, and know that as long as that scent is in the world, things'll be okay. I've searched for, and bought, my own horse property here in Central Texas when I was not an agent. That experience taught me a lot - including how many agents have no idea what a suitable horse property needs. Living on our little ranch for ten years, once found, has taught me a lot of things that it would have been very handy to know to check for (I won't buy black gumbo clay next time, for example - great for growing things, not so great for keeping horses, not mud puppies). From things like that to where to find out what's going on in your area once you live there (usually the feed store - you can find out ANYTHING at the feed store!), these are things I can share, from my "other life", that can be helpful to my clients. These things can also come in handy to a Seller who wants to market his property to the horsie set - I can make suggestions for things to fix, things to emphasize, what a horse lover is looking for. (Hint: The barn is more important than the house.)

There's lots more, but this is getting long and I'm more interested in hearing about the rest of you. So, who are YOU and what flavor does that bring to your real estate business?

-Lord Byron

Ten years ago we moved from about 5 minutes away from downtown Austin (albeit next to the Barton Creek greenbelt) to a farm out in the country north of Georgetown. One of the first things we noticed, it being August, was the night sky. In Austin, we saw one, maybe two or three, stars when looking up from our deck. Out here, the sky was full of them - we could even see the Milky Way streaming across the sky every uncloudy night. And, in August, the Perseid meteor shower was one of the first gifts our new home gave us. It's one of the joys of country life, the night sky.

Since that time, in only that brief period of time, as more people move into the area, one at a time, I've noticed a gradual degradation in the night sky. Why do people who are afraid of the dark move to the country? It puzzles me.

This is not unique to our area. In fact, light pollution is a well-known problem. With some solutions that don't require sitting in the dark in a cave huddled around a fire, as it happens.

There's lots of interesting information on this problem, about misconceptions people have about the relationship between lighting around their homes and businesses and security, about ways to light your home without causing light pollution, light trespass (think of your neighbor's security light shining into your bedroom window all night, or being blinded by your neighbor's lighting every time you go out your door at night), educational resources, and everything else to do with the problem, to be found at http://www.darksky.org/. More information can be found by simply googling "light pollution" - you'll find government links, links to Astronomy magazine articles on the problem, regional groups that deal with light pollution - over a million hits in all.

As real estate agents, like other kinds of pollution, this is something that can be of concern to our clients, and educating ourselves and our clients about it is something we can do to help our communities. Let's leave some of that beauty for our children, shall we?