Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #01-02: Jim Vernier Mayor of Shiloh IL: How fast the market can change

Bryan Vogt: Welcome back to Ready Set Sold. I am Bryan Vogt, and I am joined here with the Mayor of Shiloh, Illinois, Mayor Jim Vernier. One of the things that I left you with last is we were talking about the steps and there’s 12 steps that go into getting a home sold. We’re on step number one. Just so you know, we may move around week to week, depending on what’s going on with the market, what the conditions are. If you want to naturally get the information up-front, you can go to readysetsold.org, not .com, but readysetsold.org, and you can pick up the book and so that way you can file away or in case we move from a step to another step.
Having said that, what I left with was the situation of the unknown, and this is something that sellers, I think on one level understand, but sometimes they don’t fully understand. The part of it is there is so many things that can have factors. There’s a line that I kind of like is, “If you want to get upset, watch the national news. If you want to get depressed, watch the local news.”
It just seems to be similar to that situation, and so not only can sales have an effect on the sale of a home nationally or internationally … goodness sakes, if North Korea or if we have an outbreak with Syria, or if we have any of these things happening, it can have an effect on just the perception and in real estate, and maybe any other business, perception is reality. What people perceive to be going on actually then becomes a reality.
The effect of that can have a negative effect on the sale of a home. I bring that up just because if you take it locally, if Detroit, Michigan is having problems and that’s national news, if unemployment national numbers go up, it doesn’t even sometimes matter what the local numbers are, the perception comes in and that has a value and that’s something that sellers don’t have any control over.
So, when it is time to move, that’s what we’re talking about in step one and we’re in a great time, the market is doing well, Shiloh/O’Fallon, the metro east, Glencorrib and Columbia, all these places are having some fantastic success. So, understanding your window is between two to three months, knowing where you’re at getting your house on the market.
With that said, an interesting story, and I’m so happy the mayor’s here, because he was the mayor of Shiloh at the time, of how that can have an effect. We were talking during the break, when Scott Air Force base, which if you live in this area whatsoever, within 100 miles, maybe even 200 miles of the area, you know about Scott Air Force base. When years ago that was talked about just potentially being on the list of being closed, what kind of effect did that have to you and the city?
Jim Vernier: Well it was a devastating effect, everyone’s concerned about that. Scott, the base realignment and closure commission was put forth in 2005 and it was a very good possibility that Scott was going to be on that list at the time. And of course you’re not going to get many people moving from other areas to our community knowing that possibly a large segment of homes are going to be on the market in a year or two, so it definitely affected the housing market.
We did everything we could to negate that fear. Our local congressional group also worked hard to keep Scott off the list, and ultimately we were successful in doing that, but it took a good 12 or 14 months, I want to say, of unknown, so it affected the housing market quite a bit. There was very little buying. If someone could sell their home, they were going to do it, because obviously you want to get what you can and get out. But we made it through that period and since then things have been good.
Of course we had that real bad period when the market dropped in 2007. Shiloh was building 240 homes in 2015 and we dropped to about 15 homes in 2010, so it was a tough time period as well. But we have recovered and sold about 50 homes this year in the community, new homes, not counting the existing. We are on the possibility of selling upwards of 100 homes next year with the large, new subdivision that’s coming in.
Bryan Vogt: That’s exciting, exciting. It’s funny you say that, because it kind of ties into what we were talking about. During that same time, we were in real estate, I was in real estate and this, and maybe because they were moving outside of Shiloh and leaving Shiloh, this is what happened to them. I don’t know. I think not, but maybe that was the case, but they were moving outside of Shiloh, moving to a different area, and again, they were trying to guess the market, they were trying to say, “Okay, look, it’s good. The market’s been good for years. Life is good. We’re going to really do better if we wait three or four months.”
Well, guess what? They waited those three to four months and as soon as they hit the market, bam. The news came out about Scott and as you said, on the real estate side, it was literally, and I do mean literally, like you took the faucet and you turned it off. The market that had been booming, had been growing, you talked about new construction, it was just everywhere and then all of a sudden it stopped. Because of that, they did eventually sell the home, but we talked about the true cost of selling. It took much, much longer.
So not only did they not make the money that they thought they were going to make, because the length of time they were on the market, but just because of the uncertainty that was raised, just by that simple situation. It wasn’t saying it was going to close. It’s just the possibility. Those are the things that people have to understand. That’s why putting your house on the market when the time is right. For example, this is a great time to be putting your house on the market. Take advantage of that.
You don’t know what may happen in the future and this situation, quite frankly, even to their own admission, they probably lost between 10 and $20,000 and a lot of frustration. That’s one of the things is when your house is on the market, the frustration level, the uncertainty, the concern, that’s the problems that people, when you have your house on the market for such a long time, create too, not only the financial thing, but many times people talk about just the burden, just the pressure is worse than even the money situation, and that’s bad enough. So those are things to keep in mind.
One of the things I wanted to really tie into also is that’s one of the reasons why I call the 12 Proven Steps to Getting Your Home Sold for Top Dollar and a Quick Sale. The quick sale, most sellers already want this, they want to have that quick sale, but if you’re on the market now, what I talked about, those costs, those $2,000-a-month costs, or where the market’s going, and you’ve been on the market for three to six months, or gosh, longer than that, hopefully you’re talking to your realtor or you’re realtor is talking to you, because Plan A ain’t working, you need to go to Plan B.
In the meantime, go get the book, readysetsold.org, not .com. Get the book. You read it, give it to your realtor. I don’t care. But you need to get moving, you need to get going and get on with your life. The next time that we’re going to be talking more with Mayor Jim Vernier of Shiloh, Illinois, we’re going to be talking about the progress that Shiloh has made. You’re going to be amazed by, if you haven’t seen Shiloh for a while, you’re going to be amazed by what you hear. This is Bryan Vogt. You’re listening to Ready, Set, Sold.