What is How to Get Home?

Tales of finding and forming homes worth living in. howtogethome.substack.com

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How to Get Home

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by Wes Willison

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Tales of finding and forming homes worth living in. <a href="https://howtogethome.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">howtogethome.substack.com</a>

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8/9/2022

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Recent Episodes

April 12, 2024

Where you're planted

Desire paths<a target="_blank" href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/05/desire-paths-the-illicit-trails-that-defy-the-urban-planners">https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/05/desire-paths-the-illicit-trails-that-defy-the-urban-planners</a>Substack: <a target="_blank" href="https://howtogethome.substack.com/">https://howtogethome.substack.com/</a> This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://howtogethome.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">howtogethome.substack.com</a>

March 21, 2024

Hiring a housing Gandalf

Y’all keep asking me about the recent real estate lawsuit, so I figured I’d just write up my reflections and share them here. If you haven’t been following the news, here are a few good places to start:* The facts: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/realestate/national-association-realtors-commission-settlement.html">Powerful Realtor Group Agrees to Slash Commissions to Settle Lawsuits</a>* A helpful interpretation of the facts: Vox: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vox.com/money/24106230/nar-realtors-settlement-real-estate-house-prices">Could a major lawsuit against realtors mean lower home prices?</a>Why does this lawsuit matter? Will it really affect home prices? How will it change the process of looking for and purchasing a home? Let’s dig in!Seller assist, anyone?Until now, it’s generally been the case that sellers would pay commissions: a percentage of the home purchase price to be split between both sides of the transaction — a portion going to the seller agent and a portion going to the buyer agent. That will no longer be the case. From now on, buyers will be responsible for paying their agents in the transaction, and also for negotiating with those agents how much to pay them. That’s the first basic fact from which everything else will grow. Let’s look at two scenarios:Imagine a buyer has hired a real estate agent to guide them through the purchase process, and they negotiate to pay their agent a 2.5% commission upon closing.* Scenario one: the buyer agrees to buy a home for $300,000 and pay their realtor the 2.5% ($7,500) commission in cash. The seller therefore receives $300,000 for their home from which they then pay their seller agent whatever they’d negotiated.* Scenario two: the buyer agrees to buy that same home for $300,000 but can’t afford to pay 2.5% of the purchase price (still $7,500) to their realtor in cash. They’re trying to protect their savings and are holding onto their extra cash for the sake of handling moving costs, repair expenses, or whatever else they want. Instead, they write an Agreement of Sale for a $307,500 purchase price with a seller’s assist of 2.5% ($7,500) to be paid to the buyer agent as the buyer agency commission. The buyer is basically asking to add on the compensation for their agent into their home loan so they can pay it off in chunks, just like they’re paying for their actual house. Therefore, seller receives $307,500 from the lender, pays the buyer agent $7,500, and walks off with their $300,000 to do with it whatever they need to, including paying their own seller agent.In scenario one, the home price is $300,000. In scenario two, the home price is $307,500 with a $7,500 seller assist. The home price of the second scenario may look like $307,500, but ultimately they’re essentially the same thing: when looking at the net amount the seller walks away from the transaction with, it’ll be the same whether the buyer chooses to lump their buyer agent’s payment into their mortgage loan or not.Scenario two is essentially how American real estate is organized currently, and scenario one is likely to become more common moving forward.What’s the upshot of this lawsuit then? Why did they go to all this trouble of litigating something so simple?Buyer at first sightThe problem with scenario two is that there’s pretty much no connection between how much value the buyer agent has brought to the transaction with how much they’re being compensated. That gap is what this lawsuit is changing.For example, if you and I were to meet for the first time at an open house and you asked me to write up an offer to buy that house, I would receive the exact same commission as if I had spent months looking at dozens of houses for you before finally finding the perfect fit and then writing up that same offer. And in both scenarios, it’s not even the buyer who pays the commission — it’s the seller. As a buyer, you really wouldn’t care about that gap between how much I as an agent have worked with how much I’m getting paid, as you’re not the one who’s paying that commission — it’s the seller!<a target="_blank" href="https://casetext.com/case/moehrl-v-the-natl-assn-of-realtors">The original lawsuit that started this whole thing</a> was based on exactly this problem: Christopher Moerhl, a home seller in Minnesota, didn’t want to pay the buyer’s agent at all, and couldn’t find a broker who would let him list his home with no buyer agency compensation. He ended up giving in and paying the full 5 or 6%, with half going to each side of the transaction as per usual, but was still miffed about the injustice of what felt like collusion and price-fixing between brokerages, as well as a misalignment between what value buyer agents bring to the table and what sellers agree to pay them. So in 2019, he sued, and here we are. The courts have since agreed that this system of deciding compensation for buyer agents isn’t just and needs to change.So to revisit that open house purchase example: let’s jump forward in time a few months and imagine the seller is not paying the buyer agency commission anymore. If you were to walk up to me at an open house and ask me to write up an offer to buy that house, I certainly could demand that you should pay me 2.5% of the purchase price of the home for that labor of me representing you in the transaction. You would also be perfectly justified in responding “GTFO” and offering a lesser sum for the amount of work that I’ve actually done to help you purchase that home. That negotiation process between me (the agent) and you (the buyer) is exactly what this lawsuit and settlement is trying to produce.So let’s take that example one step further: let’s say that during the process of drawing up the offer for this home at which I had just hosted an open house, as we’re looking at comps around the neighborhood of similar homes that sold recently, we notice that they all include the buyer agency compensation as part of the purchase price. In other words, they all paid both the buyer and seller agents’ commissions. When we decide what a fair market value is for the house, we might deduct the average of those buyer-side commissions (2.75%, say) from the purchase price we otherwise arrived at and submit the offer at that lower price.Can we really say purchase prices have gone down in this situation? Kinda, but not really! The seller is walking away with a comparable or even identical net amount as if they’d had to pay the buyer agent as well as their own seller agent, right? Therefore the difference is ultimately on the buyer agency side: rather than a buyer agent swooping in and snagging a full 2.5-3% commission on a buy side transaction for which they did the bare minimum of work, they’ve likely negotiated with the buyer what their labor is worth in this scenario and taken a lower amount of compensation. Make no mistake, it’s still plenty of work to represent a buyer through a transaction like this even at this “late” stage of the process, but it’s a lot less than also having done the labor of helping them sift through potential properties and deciding to purchase this one. That portion of the process was already completed by the time the buyer walked into the open house, so accordingly the agent could (probably rightfully) be paid less.Ideally, the buyer is the one who’s saved some money here. Rather than paying for their agent to walk them through the whole home search process, they’ve jumped straight to the end of it — submitting an offer on a home — and hired someone to guide them from that point on. If you are a buyer looking to save some money on the home purchase process, then this is probably good advice for you! Use the internet, do your search on your own, and don’t pay someone else to help you through that process! Just go to open houses and pay a lower fee to a buyer agent as a result!Do you want a housing Gandalf or a DMV clerk?Herein lies the rub, for buyers at least. Some folks want to browse the internet on their own, at their own pace, and only use an agent for the final stage of submitting an offer and making it across the settlement finish line. You can negotiate with agents to get exactly this level of buyer representation!But other folks will want more of what I am trying to offer as an agent, by which I mean: buying a home is a transformative decision, one that affects your whole life in almost every facet, and demands careful attention. Having a guide through that process can be invaluable: someone who can help you navigate not just the technical or external factors, but also the personal and emotional elements as well. A home purchase is a platform-level decision on which all other parts of your life are constructed, and thus it is worth it to hire someone who can share their wisdom in helping you make the right decision, not just the easiest or cheapest one. In my experience, a good realtor is like your own personal “housing Gandalf:” a wizard who guides you through a complex process. By contrast, in the eyes of many, a realtor seems to be no different than the person at the DMV who helps you renew your driver’s license: a necessary interlocutor in a complex transaction you wish was far more transparent and simple.Because the world of real estate is complex. And unfortunately even the proliferation of information available on the internet and sites like Zillow hasn’t made it any less complex. And the process of finding the right house to fit your life is difficult. And beyond understanding the house half of the transaction, understanding yourself is hard enough that plenty of us hire therapists for help (and the rest of us probably should). But ultimately, if you feel differently and want to pay for the DMV-clerk level of real estate assistance, now you can! And frankly, if that’s the kind of offer you make to me when you try to hire me to be your realtor, I’ll probably say no! Because the work I’m looking to do is far more similar to the guide-wizard-Gandalf model. From the first moment you start considering beginning the process to the final day when you’ve moved in and unpacked your boxes in your new home, I want to help guide you through that transformative process. I’m trying to continue to write here and post on social media as expressions of my vision of what a better real estate process can look like. Working with me is simultaneously a choice to participate in the best expression of that process that I’ve yet discovered, as well as a commitment to join me in figuring out what we can do better. The changes that are currently hitting the real estate industry are proof that the whole process — for everyone in this country — is evolving, not just my own. And in the end, the goal of this work remains the same: helping people find homes that are worthy of the lives they want to lead. All that’s changing right now is how we pay the guides who help us navigate that process. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://howtogethome.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">howtogethome.substack.com</a>

October 12, 2023

The City Surprises

For those who grew up in the suburbs, moving into the city is a major cultural shift. For many, the appeal of the city lies in the wide menu of options available to you to choose from: dinner at the trendy new food truck, brunch at the cute cafe, climbing at the local rock climbing gym, etc. There’s nothing wrong, per se, with taking advantage of that menu of options and enjoying the city! However, I’ve noticed a common problem that arises from ex-suburbanites moving into an urban environment.Cities are dense, sprawling tangles of activity. Suburbs, on the other hand, are organized around high-speed roads and highways, strip malls, subdivisions, and cul-de-sacs. While suburbs certainly have more neighbors at closer proximity than fully rural areas, the neighborhoods of suburbs are dramatically more controlled and hierarchical than the lattices of city networks. Think of it this way: suburbs tightly plan and control the points of connection between neighborhood nodes (think wide roads with few large intersections) while cities promote a much larger number of connections between the nodes (more intersections of all scales, more street corners with more stores, a wider variety of street and alley sizes). “Higher density” is often how cities are described, but it’s not just more people: it’s more opportunities for interaction. In cities, it’s more likely that occupants bump into each other. And where there are more encounters, there’s more surprise.Surprise is fundamental to urban life. The more unique actors that are present in your environment, the more the unexpected will interrupt your routine. For many ex-suburbanites, their habits retain the same dynamics as their former system of living: car centered, highly routinized, closed to the random surprising encounters inherent to cities. While many folks learn the ways of the city, many others don’t. This cultural shift is what some people are thinking of when they use the term “gentrification:” a “suburbanization” of habits, not just a rise in rents.I know the whole “urban vs rural” debate often swirls around how much green space you want/need, but I’d propose Surprise as a more significant conversation to have! Are you open to and energized by the surprise of city life? Do you enjoy opening yourself to the shifting tides of your street?Like I said earlier, many people are attracted to the menu of options of the city. But the problem arises when those new urbanites treat the city as if it’s a suburb: only participating in that which you choose, rather than openly engaging the city’s breadth. Life in a city isn’t like ordering from a menu: sometimes, you don’t choose what you engage with. Sometimes, the city presses itself upon you, and you must respond. For better and for worse, the city interrupts. The city surprises.Sometimes those surprises are pleasant, like meeting your neighbors’ dogs as they walk by. Or giving the local corner store’s $6 hoagie a shot for lunch, and finding it blows the trendy fancy millennial hoagie out of the water. Or finding the perfect end table for your living room sitting on the curb waiting for trash pickup. Or for your pickup!Sometimes those surprises are unpleasant. Domestic disputes spilling into the street, cop activity, late night fireworks.Either way, it’s a misunderstanding to assume life in the city will be as orderly as life in the suburbs. The suburbs sit back and wait for you to choose. The city comes at you; the city surprises.This raises a few questions: what kind of surprise can you open yourself to? What kinds of surprise do you need to temper and reduce? Which surprises vivify and enrich you? How frequently do you just wait on the city, letting yourself experience whatever it has in store? Where in your life — and I mean physically, geographically — are you routinely surprised? Why do you think that is? Do you enjoy experiencing that rupture in your expectations?For me, it’s when I walk my dogs to the local park. How often do you visit your local park? I’ve got 2 dogs (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/momozukofomo/">@momozukofomo on Instagram</a>) so I’m there pretty much every day. I’ve met friends and future clients there, but also had some ugly and frustrating encounters here as well. Sometimes people are unexpectedly understanding and joyful, sometimes they’re surprisingly prejudiced and angry. I mean hey, it’s Philly. Sifting through those unexpected and surprising encounters is part of what makes city life as vibrant and meaningful as it is. For some, it’s more exhausting than it is enriching. If that’s you, no shame! Now you know! As you look for a home, make sure to take that into account. If you (like me) are excited to wade through the surprising collisions of the lattice network of city life, then meet me at the park and let’s talk.Open and experimentalIn his book Building and Dwelling, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/people/richard-sennett">Richard Sennett</a> describes the experimental strategies he encountered while working at MIT:In a general way, researchers work within a well-worn orbit when performing an experiment to prove or disprove a hypothesis; the original proposition governs procedures and observations; the denouement of the experiment lies in judging whether the hypothesis is correct or incorrect. In another way of experimenting, researchers will take seriously unforeseen turns of data, which may cause them to jump tracks and think "outside the box." They will ponder contradictions and ambiguities, stewing in these difficulties for a while rather than immediately trying to solve them or sweep them aside. The first kind of experiment is closed in the sense it answers a fixed question: yes or no. Researchers in the second kind of experiment work more openly in that they ask questions which can't be answered in that way. (p. 4)I love this distinction between "open" versus "closed" experimentation. Another way of articulating Sennett's point: open experimentation is adaptive and listens to confusing or surprising data; closed experimentation hews to the hypothesis and strains for useful data. When faced with something unexpected, “open” says “this is interesting, let’s keep going and see where it goes!” “Closed” responds “this wasn’t what I was looking for, let’s try again!” Open is improv comedy, Closed is sketch comedy. Both have their value, of course! But in the context of city life, an "open" posture towards the surprises of the city can be enriching and healthy. Maintaining too “closed” an attitude to the city will quickly become overwhelming. Rather than forcing the chaotic urban lattice networks into orderly suburban boundaries, living in the city means learning to adapt to the shifting tides and surprises. If order is what you require for your home, then the city is unlikely to satisfy you. Moreover, your neighbors will almost certainly quickly grow sick of your attempts to wrestle the city to your predictable script. When you move to the city, you enter its mix and must learn to adapt to it.Surprise and the divineUltimately, no matter how much you may seek it out or avoid it, surprise arrives on its own timing. Surprise is always out of our control. There’s a degree to which, via practices like mindfulness meditation and paying attention, even the most familiar can appear strange or new to our sense. But in a different sense, surprise has more to do with revelation than attention. When we experience surprise, we are encountering the otherness of the world (and some would say the divine!) at the level of our expectations and understanding. Surprise, whether you like it or not, is always an indicator of the frontier of your understanding. Of course not all surprises are created equal, and often surprises are painful and unfortunate, but the experience of being surprised always demands to be taken seriously. Personally, it’s been my relationship with surprise that’s been characteristic of my relationship to faith and belief and God over the last few years. If you read theology, then <a target="_blank" href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-epistle-to-the-romans-9780195002942?cc=us&lang=en&">Karl Barth</a> has been helpful for me. Similarly, life in the city has become for me something of a spiritual discipline. Encountering the unpredictable and surprising is, in its way, a reflection of not just myself but of the larger energy and power of the world — or even God. Learning to attend to and listen to not just the phenomena that provoke surprise but to the feeling of surprise itself has been meaningful for me.Can the divine be predictable? Do you encounter God or a higher power in surprise? When your container of belief of how the world works or is organized gets cracked open, how do you respond? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://howtogethome.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">howtogethome.substack.com</a>

9 total episodes available

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What is How to Get Home?: Tales of finding and forming homes worth living in. <a href="https://howtogethome.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">howtogethome.substack.com</a>
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates weekly.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 6 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
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