Southern Oregon Radio Show with Rogue Inspections

Full Transcript of Video Below

[00:00:00] Alice Lema: Well, good morning, Southern Oregon, and welcome to the real estate show. I'm Alice Lema. I'm your host today. I'm a broker at John L. Scott real estate here in beautiful Southern Oregon. And you know, we've got a great show for you today. Before we talk about that, I just want to acknowledge 1st of October here we are, the seasons are changing.

[00:00:25] We had a little bit of rain. The smoke has gone. Yay. Yay. But we still have a shortage of houses to sell, especially in the price range under 500,000. And we're also watching a lot of price changes. You know, some of that is seasonal and some of that is because of finally starting to get more listings.

[00:00:46] So I want you to stay tuned for the end of the show because we're going to do a market watch segment. And we're going to talk about not only the transition factors that we're monitoring very carefully, but also some of the huge equity gains that Americans have received during this last year, year and a half, you know, in some cases over 20% in some parts of the country. And we've seen that happen here. So we have a lot of profit taking. We have a lot of moving around. We're still getting a lot of relocators here in Southern Oregon that want to be here and enjoy our, our beautiful weather and our. Friendly, small town atmosphere.

[00:01:27] But we also have a lot of people moving out. You know, if you try to get, try to get a moving truck going from the west coast to the Midwest or the east coast, you know, they're charging folks twice as much as to bring a truck back. So all these trends are factoring into our Southern Oregon market. And we're going to talk about that in our segment four for our market watch. So stay tuned to that.

[00:01:51] Today we're happy to have an exciting guest. We have Mr. Travis Hand. He is the founder and the owner of Rogue Inspection Services. And he's going to be on the show today talking about how to get ready for the transition season, the fall, the winter. He's going to give us some tips on some things you can do to your home and your property to get ready.

[00:02:14] But do you know what else, he's also going to give us some tips on what not to do because of what not to do list is important as well. So we have a very interesting interview with Mr. Travis hand today. He's the founder and owner of Rogue Inspection Services. We're so excited to have him on. So stay tuned.

[00:02:32] We have a great show for you today. Want to thank our sponsors. We have John L. Scott here in Southern Oregon. We have the Rogue Valley Association of Realtors and we have Guy Giles Mutual of Omaha mortgage. So very lucky to have those sponsors. Thank you. Appreciate you so much. So do not touch that dial. We'll be right back.

[00:02:53] Well, welcome back to the real estate show folks. I'm Alice Lema here, your host for today. I'm a broker at John L. Scott here in Southern Oregon, and we're just absolutely delighted to talk to one of our favorite favorite home inspectors, Travis Hand of Rogue Inspections. Good morning. Good morning, Travis. How are you?

[00:03:11] Travis Hand: I'm doing good. How are you, Alice?

[00:03:13] Alice Lema: Good. Good. So why don't we just take a minute and just tell the listening audience a little bit about rogue inspections and kind of what you guys offer.

[00:03:22] Travis Hand: Yeah, so Travis with rogue inspection services, we're kind of a full service home inspection company here in Southern Oregon. We've expanded outside of that area. A little bit, but primarily focused here in Southern Oregon. That's where our main offices. We do everything from home inspections, pre-listing inspection, sewer line inspections, mold test. We recently got into radon, which was common in the Eugene area. But we do have some small requests in this area.

[00:03:48] So we just try to provide that full service, keep your transaction moving type of a deal for all of our real estate agents and customers.

[00:03:56] Alice Lema: Wow. So that really is kind of one-stop shopping. That's very unique. I think isn't it.

[00:04:01] Travis Hand: Yeah. Yeah. Basically all we, all we can't do at this point is a well flow testing and septic inspections. Have some great partners in that division to try to speed that process up as well.

[00:04:13] Alice Lema: Oh, that's great. Wow. That's fabulous. So when you said radon up in Eugene, does that mean that you have you have service provided up there?

[00:04:23] Travis Hand: Yes. We have an inspector that covers that area.

[00:04:25] Alice Lema: Wow. Well, what areas do you cover? That's a big area.

[00:04:30] Travis Hand: Yes, exactly. So right now we're at Eugene south down to Redding. And then we're from the coast over to Klamath falls or just outside of Klamath falls.

[00:04:41] Alice Lema: Oh, that's fantastic.

[00:04:43] Travis Hand: That's kind of our service area at this point.

[00:04:44] Alice Lema: Wow. Wow. How many inspectors do you have?

[00:04:48] Travis Hand: Seven currently.

[00:04:49] Alice Lema: That's great.

[00:04:50] Travis Hand: We're looking to bring on a couple more so.

[00:04:54] Alice Lema: Okay, so little employment blurb there, folks, but anyone wants to be an inspector for rogue inspection services. Call one of us. So well, let's go back to just basics. Because here we are the end of September, early October, the weather's changing and there's a lot of stuff that a lot of us should be doing with our homes and we kind of don't.

[00:05:17] So just going to curious, what do you recommend as a home inspector that people consider doing this time of year?

[00:05:23] Travis Hand: So just some general home maintenance would be great. Keeping vegetation trimmed back from your houses and preventing any of that moisture. Just taking a good look around the exterior of your home before we start to get into that wet cold season. Checking to make sure there isn't any joints that need to be resealed.

[00:05:39] Anything that can help prevent that deterioration of the outside of your house. Another good thing to do would be kind of check your windows. So make sure they're sealed properly make sureyou know, how many failed seals, maybe it's time to get some windows replaced, the R value just a little bit inside the house. Even the visibility as that temperature starts to fluctuate high from low in the morning to warmer in the afternoon, you will start to see that condensation buildup in your windows. So good thing to check there a good time to notice that. Definitely want to check your insulation.

[00:06:08] If you feel like you could do some installation improvements this time a year to kind of save on that heating and cooling expense, especially as we're starting to see the cost of natural gas rise. And maybe putting a little insulation in your attic even under your floor system. So definitely worth looking at there and a lot of areas this time of year do start doing, see an elevation in the water table to where we're starting to see more water in the crawl spaces.

[00:06:32] So definitely if that's not something you do on a regular basis, I would at least recommend popping your head down into your crawl space during late fall, winter months and make sure it's not full of water. Cause that can be a big issue.

[00:06:45] Alice Lema: So yeah, even just a little bit of water, you know, problematic. So the insulation that can be kind of tricky because don't, you need to actually go under the house to see.

[00:06:56] Travis Hand: You can typically tell from the attic hatch, if you don't have insulation, it's going to be pretty obvious. And, and if you really want a full evaluation, you would need to go under there because there may be some areas of the house that don't have it.

[00:07:08] And some that do. But that's something we can do. We can do specific kind of systemized inspections. Like if you want just your crawlspace inspected, we have a lower fee. And we just check that out for your attic, crawlspace, whatever. We try to help in those certain areas, even for homeowners and maintenance, just making sure that they can identify an issue before it causes larger issues.

[00:07:29] So that we can help out with that. A contractor can help out with that. Works best for your budget. And if who, you know, may be able to just kind of give you some pointers in that area.

[00:07:39] Yeah, boy. You know, I think that's a great idea to have instead of the whole inspection, just to maybe have somebody come and do the attic and the roof and the windows, and just kind of see, because not all of us know exactly what to look for. Although if your insulation is completely hanging on the ground, that's obvious, but. Yeah, but there's other things like sometimes there's minor rodent infestation and it's not super obvious. What would somebody look for?

[00:08:08] So this time of year, as the weather starts to get cold,all your rodents are going to look for a warm spots or places to insulate themselves, which is usually in the insulation of your attic or crawlspace. So one thing you really want to pay attention to is any access points where your air conditioner lines go into your house. Crawl space events, usually those will get popped out and those are really, really good entry places for rodents.

[00:08:33] So if you do see those open or even a size of a quarter, a dime, anything where you can get rodents into a, we want to make sure we get those sealed up this time of year, that will prevent large issues from happening down the road. Insulation getting torn up and seeing houses that have water lines chewed into.

[00:08:53] We definitely want to make sure we keep the rodents out of the house.

[00:08:57] Alice Lema: Yeah. So we know we have a certain number of vacant houses people that have already moved out, they haven't sold or they're in-between tenants. What's the, what's the danger of not winterizing those, what, what should people be looking for if they're not going to be living there?

[00:09:14] Travis Hand: So winterizing. It depends how long you're going to be vacant. I mean, if you're going to be gone all winter and that would definitely be worth shutting off your water, possibly turning off your gas, just to make sure that there isn't going to be any mishaps or at least make sure somebody's checking on your house.

[00:09:31] If you are going to be vacant if it's going to be for a short period of time, even just turning off your water is pretty simple. Usually there's a box right at the street where you can get that shut off and it's not going to hurt anything. Get the air out of your lines when you come back. So that's a pretty simple task there.

[00:09:47] Other than that, if it's short-term you not much, you need to worry about. But yeah, definitely make sure for your situation that you are taking care of your house and making sure at least somebody checking on it, if you're gone or if you're gone long-term that you are taking those proper steps to make sure nothing will happen while you're gone.

[00:10:06] Alice Lema: Yeah. I guess, you know, there's a certain number of folks that are still snowbirding. So if they're going to be gone for, let's say from November to April, that's a almost half a year.

[00:10:18] Travis Hand: Yep. So at that point I would contact even just contact your local utility company. Usually the city can come out and shut your water off for you.

[00:10:26] And you can also contact the Vista. They'll come out and shut your gas off. Really easy ways to do it if you're aware, you don't have to contact them. But even if you don't, they'll come out and they'll take care of it for you for a very low fee or even free. I'm not sure how they, how they do that. But

[00:10:45] there are people that will do that at a very low cost and it's worth it to save money from those damages that could happen.

[00:10:54] Alice Lema: So one of my pet peeves is gutters, because if they're not, if you don't take care of your gutters, you can cause so many problems down the road. Can you just talk a little bit about what happens to houses and foundations and stuff like that? If you don't take care of your gutter?

[00:11:11] Travis Hand: So, so gutters are the primary source of moving that water away from your foundation. So as that water comes off of your roof, It goes into your gutters and it moves it away from that foundation, which keeps it out of your crawlspace and prevents that soil from settling under neath and the underneath the foundation.

[00:11:28] So typically you've got two sorts of a consolidation of the soil. You've got the primary consolidation, which happens within the first three to five years where basically those air pockets move out of the soil and the, and then everything stops moving after that. Secondary consolidation would be like a constant source of moisture, which continues to compact that soil.

[00:11:49] And those can cause your foundation issue. So in order to prevent that secondary consolidation, we, we moved that water away from the foundation with the gutter system. And that's, that's going to prevent settling foundation issues, all of that stuff down the road. Another thing is with your gutters, getting plugged up with all of that debris. Tends to turn into a big fire risk in the spring and summertime.

[00:12:11] Cause that's usually where the embers are going to catch is in that gutter. And that's where that's going to ignite. So even if you do have foliage, having that gutter guard is going to be a huge benefit to you. If you don't want to clean your gutters that much and gutter guards are going to keep those clean and allow water to come into your gutter. Check your gutters to make sure they're not hanging off the house.

[00:12:30] Make sure they're tightly secured against that facia or rafter tail. And then just kind of take a look after a rainfall to make sure you don't have any points that are leaking. None of your seams are leaking. Downspouts flowing and you see water coming out. Just those small preventative things after the first couple of rains here this season will make a big a big difference moving forward and how the maintenance of your house goes.

[00:12:53] Alice Lema: Yeah, it's really interesting because sometimes we're showing houses and you can feel the floor is uneven. And sometimes that's just a floor, especially if it's an older house, but sometimes it's the foundation. If you go outside and look a lot of times, there's you can just see that's where the gutter has been broken. And it's so long it's rusty or deteriorated or something like that.

[00:13:17] Travis Hand: It's a new couple new cracks in the corner where the downspouts supposed to be draining water.

[00:13:21] Alice Lema: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:13:23] Travis Hand: So it does make a big difference.

[00:13:25] Alice Lema: Yeah, note to self, look around the outside and see if the gutters are okay. So there's a bunch of people that should not be on ladders, cleaning their gutters and those gutter guards. I forgot about those. Those are great.

[00:13:37] Travis Hand: Yeah. Yeah, they do a great job. And then there's lots of companies that do gutter cleaning as well. So again, there couple of hundred bucks to get your gutters cleaned. Is well worth saving, not fall off the ladder. Yeah. foundation repairs, a hospital visit.

[00:13:52] Alice Lema: Right, exactly.

[00:13:56] So okay. So the other thing I wanted to ask you about the outside was Moss because it's Southern Oregon a lot of us have Moss on some part of house. And so I've watched people try to hose it off, sweep it off. What are you supposed to do? What's the proper way.

[00:14:14] Travis Hand: Definitely don't just go up there and start hacking away at your moss. Want to make sure you have a professional, if you're not familiar with the process you can buy Moss killers at hardware stores. To first kill the Moss and then you can go up there with a hose and go downhill and just kind of watch. Don't use a power washer unless you know what you're doing.

[00:14:33] I wouldn't recommend sweeping it unless you know what you're doing. Just because you don't want to damage the granules trying to remove that Moss and then having to repay for a roof because you knocked off a lot of those granules is not worth it.

[00:14:46] Alice Lema: So the little things on top actually are important. Those little sandy pieces.

[00:14:52] Travis Hand: Exactly. We don't want to knock those off trying to get moss off the roof. So but even just doing that spray on a cooler day with no moisture spray, your roof down with a moss killer, you can even use like a bleach mixture and make sure that dies. And then eventually it will just fall off on its own or will not continue to grow. So a couple of ways to take care of that there.

[00:15:16] Alice Lema: Well, we've got to take a quick break for our sponsors. We're talking to Travis Hand of Rogue Inspection Services. We'll be right back. Don't touch that dial.

[00:15:27] Well, welcome back to the real estate show. I'm Alice Lema, your host here today. I'm with John L. Scott real estate here in Southern Oregon. And just a reminder, this broadcast will be repeated tomorrow at 6:00 PM. And you will get to hear Travis Hand who we're talking to today. He's the founder and owner of Rogue Inspection Services here locally. And during the break, we were just talking a little bit about what kind of houses he's getting to look out lately with the shortage of inventory on the market. So Travis, you've got your hands full with some of these older fixer-uppers don't yet.

[00:16:01] Travis Hand: Yeah, there's there's some entrance interesting stuff on the market and that is selling currently with the shortage of houses. And it's kind of been consistent throughout the summer where you're seeing a lot of houses that are really kind of run down. Where you're seeing almost full guts, full renovations that need to be done. And it is taking a kind of a toll on, on the inspectors a little bit. Cause they feel like they got to do every single thing they find. I mean we're spending four or five hours on some of these houses when our inspection usually takes about three hours.

[00:16:33] So we are seeing a lot more of that, but hopefully start to get a few more houses on the market here or decrease that inventory and get the morale in my guys back up. That's one thing we got to starting to notice is a we're picking up a lot more mold on some bad houses, tons of roofs that need to be replaced all the way through the sheathing, because they haven't been taken care of for so long.

[00:16:58] Alice Lema: So, oh my gosh. So the sheathing is the wood underneath all of the comp. Yeah. Wow. So that, that must be some pretty bad damage.

[00:17:07] Travis Hand: Yeah. I think things we did at least step through one roof this year with total deterioration. The inspector caught himself and everything, but Can be a little tricky at times, especially when you're up there walking the roofs and that roof is deteriorated can be dangerous.

[00:17:23] Alice Lema: Oh, that is so scary. So, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that's that's another good point. So I'm, I'm a big fan of people getting their homes inspected like every five or 10 years, even if they're not selling.

[00:17:38] Travis Hand: Definitely worth it. Just cause things can happen. I mean, something starts leaking in your crawlspace and you don't ever go in your crawl space, right?

[00:17:45] Just a small inspection and the plumber's fee compared to a large expense down the road, more damage happens and you have to replace a sub floor or anything like that. So it is worth it just to do that maintenance inspection. Even if you're handy yourself. Reach out to us. We have a checklist you can go through, you don't always have to ask to have us do the inspection. But we do try to help out the community in that sense where your home maintenance is important. It helps you keep your value of your home and what you've invested in up there, where it should be rather than deteriorating. So we, we're definitely wanting to help people make sure they take care of their assets.

[00:18:25] Alice Lema: Oh, that's nice. You actually post your checklist. That's great.

[00:18:29] Travis Hand: Yeah. Yep. So we've got one through looking at putting your house on the market. Maybe you want to just do like a maintenance checklist. We post a seasonal checklist every every quarter on our Facebook. If you want to follow that, just kind of some tips and points that you should look through and make sure you're taking care of.

[00:18:45] Alice Lema: So that's great. So seasonal. So this season, you mentioned gutters you said something about joints on the outside. What, what were you meaning by that?

[00:18:55] Travis Hand: Yeah. So corners of your houses where you're siding tends to meet, making sure those are sealed. A lot of times, that's one of the biggest things that we see in our inspections is just deteriorated sealants on the exterior with the intense sunlight, especially on the south and west side, you start to get that cracking and your in your sealants.

[00:19:13] So those are water entry points. Just making sure we keep the siding in good shape. Cause a lot of that MDF or engineered wood siding can start to swell and look bad after a while and then start to dry rot. So just to prevent a siding replacement down the road a little bit of caulking will go a long ways.

[00:19:34] Alice Lema: Cool. Very cool. Okay. So roof, gutter, siding, get the plants trimmed away. What else do you recommend this time of year?

[00:19:42] Travis Hand: Yeah, just make sure no rodent and entry points. Cause that can cause a big issue. We discussed that a little bit earlier. And then, yeah, just making sure if you've got a wood-burning fireplace just take a good look at that.

[00:19:56] Make sure if you haven't cleaned it in a while, you're getting somebody out there to clean your fireplace. I know the chimney sweeps last I checked are quite a ways out. So if that is something that you do, make sure you get on their schedule right away. Because it may be a month or two before they can get to you, but make sure all of your wood-burning fireplaces are ready to go.

[00:20:13] If you need to get a gas fireplace ready to go. I've met quite a few people who aren't sure how to work them, especially moving into a new home. So make sure you do know how to work your alternative heat sources just in case you need them at some point.

[00:20:28] Alice Lema: In case the electricity goes out, you mean?

[00:20:30] Travis Hand: Yep, exactly. And even if you do have a gas burning fireplace, make sure you know how to light it without the electronic igniter and stuff.

[00:20:39] So without the electronics you can, and some are a little, little tricky. So it just kinda depends on what system you have. Yeah, yeah. Check your owner's manual.

[00:20:53] Hopefully most of them are still there underneath, but make sure you know how to work that stuff. That's very good advice. I hadn't even thought of that. So what about the heating and cooling system heating and cooling systems typically? We say they get about 15 to 25 years of life, depending on, on how old they are or what brand they are, if you haven't serviced that in the last 10 years.

[00:21:18] Definitely I would recommend doing that at least every year. Before you get a change of seasons. So making sure air conditioners operating as efficiently as possible before summer comes, it's going to put less strain on that unit. And typically we'll hope it lasts longer. Same goes for your gas furnace getting this service too every year.

[00:21:36] You're just going to prevent that from working overtime and it's going to help that system go longer as well. One of the other big things you can do is change your air filters making sure they're not plugged, making sure you have good air flow through the system because as that system gets restricted, it does have to work harder to pull that air through.

[00:21:56] And then that will cause issues down the road and shorten the life span of that unit as well. So changing those air filters is a big thing.

[00:22:05] Alice Lema: I don't think people understand say that again. If you don't change your filters, it hurts the system.

[00:22:11] Travis Hand: It does. It hurts the systems. When you restrict that air flow through the system, then it's actually causing that system to work harder.

[00:22:18] So it's going to shorten the life span because it's not operating as efficiently as it should. We definitely want to make sure. Changes, there are filters, at least every season. Every three months I would change it if not sooner. So we just came off of a little bit of smoke here for the last couple months that tends to get those filters dirty really quickly.

[00:22:39] So if you haven't changed those filters, now that things have cleared up, I would go do that right now. Get that taken care of and get some fresh air coming through that system again.

[00:22:47] Alice Lema: That's great advice. Yeah. I remember just being shocked when I learned that it actually stresses the system out it's the filters are not just, you know, to keep you breathing clean, which is good too.

[00:22:59] So speaking of which duct work duct works sometimes has little particles and dust and stuff in it. So what, what do you suggest, like how do you even find out what you've got going on in your duct work?

[00:23:13] Travis Hand: So you can, there are a couple of different things you haven't cleaned it. If you bought a new house and it's probably time to clean it.

[00:23:19] Cause I'm guessing it hasn't been done for awhile. Duct works fairly inexpensive to get that cleaned out. So definitely worth it every couple of years. Cause you do have, especially if you have pets, your skin dander, all of that type of stuff, like dead skin cells, all of that rotates throughout your house, it does go through your duct work.

[00:23:36] So especially, if you have allergies, it's worth getting that cleaned out maybe three, 400 bucks to get it cleaned out each year. And then that helps keep stuff from moving throughout your house. And we can, there are several times where we find rodents chewing through the duct work, especially if it's down in the crawl space.

[00:23:52] So definitely worth getting that crawlspace checked out. That is one thing you want to do. Even open your vents, registers every so often to see, make sure you don't see any pieces of insulation, trying to come up through that when your air is moving. Oh, that's a good indication that something shoot through that through the insulation.

[00:24:10] And now there's rodent feces and urine stuff in your duct work. We want to get that taken care of so you're not breathing in those toxins.

[00:24:20] Alice Lema: So how what are the mechanics of the ductwork actually being cleaned? Like how do they do that?

[00:24:28] Travis Hand: So typically it's like a little they've got an air air hose that blows air. And then they've also got like a little whip that spins around with that air hose, and it just kind of knocks all the dust down. And then that air blows it out. Oh, if we seal it off at one point and then just clean it throughout the whole system, make sure you get all that dust out of there. Pretty cool.

[00:24:49] Alice Lema: Yeah. People ask me all the time. I thought, well, maybe a little vacuum. I don't know.

[00:24:54] Travis Hand: Typically it's an air system. They'll blow it out. And then they've got a little brush that kind of spins around with that air. And whips the sides of the duct work to, to push all of that dust down, knock it all out.

[00:25:07] Alice Lema: And the other thing is if you've done any remodeling, because you know, there's a construction dust, right.

[00:25:12] And even if you've cleaned your house, there might be dust still in in the system everywhere.

[00:25:22] Travis Hand: No matter how much you seal that off. Yeah. It's really weird, isn't it? Yeah, because the drywall dust is really fine. It can travel all over the place.

[00:25:33] So okay. So that's kind of a pretty long list, but I'm wondering if we fast forward to spring real quick? Like what, what's the list for spring? What should we calendar to do in the spring since we're going to get ready to put it on our calendar?

[00:25:48] Yeah. Yeah. Springtime, you can get into the warmer weather. You're gonna want to start opening your windows up.

[00:25:54] So maybe a good time to check all your screens. If you need like a screen replacement, there's a couple of stores I know the glass stores around town take care of that. Black it'll do screen replaced. So maybe a good time to get those repaired so you can open your windows. If you start to open and close your windows and you notice they're kind of off-centered those balances may be broken.

[00:26:13] Those are fairly inexpensive to repair as well. So you can fully open and close your window easily with just a small repair there. Making sure your sprinkler systems working, if that is something you have at your house making sure there's no leaks there. Be a good time again, just to maybe open up your crawl space, check underneath, make sure that looks good.

[00:26:32] Alice Lema: So do that a couple times a year.

[00:26:33] Travis Hand: I would recommend it. Two times a year is good. If you're not nervous about it. More is better just to kind of keep an eye on it, at least until, you know, through the seasons kind of what your areas like. You won't have to do it as much, but definitely worth knowing kind of what's going on under your house.

[00:26:50] Cause you do have all of your plumbing. You have your duct work in most cases. You've got insulation, you've got just the structure of the house. So there's a lot of important things down there. And we really want to make sure nothing major is going.

[00:27:02] Alice Lema: Yeah. So get ready for winter folks. Travis Hand Rogue Inspection Services. He's got a checklist on his website. If somebody wants to get ahold of you by phone, where do they call?

[00:27:13] Travis Hand: (541)507-7674. We've got a great office staff. They'll take care of you. Whatever you need, if you need additional resources or schedule an inspection we'll take good care of you.

[00:27:24] Alice Lema: And think about getting your house inspected. If you're going to sell next year, don't wait. Right. All right well, thank you, Travis. We just love having you on the show. Appreciate you so much. Travis Hand Rogue Inspection Services. We're gonna take a quick break. Get a word from our sponsors were brought to you by John L. Scott of Southern Oregon, Rogue Valley Association of Realtors and Guy Giles of Mutual of Omaha Mortgage. We'll be right back.

[00:27:52] Well, welcome back to the real estate show folks. I'm Alice Lemabroker here in Southern Oregon with John L. Scott real estate. I'm want to say thanks again to Travis Hand the founder and owner of Rogue Inspection Services. That was an absolutely great interview. Lots of fabulous tips for things to do, to get ready for the fall and winter.

[00:28:11] And then again, some things not to do so. You can get a repeat of this interview tomorrow. Radio station 880 am at six o'clock. And yeah. And we can also make sure you get hooked up with Travis if you want to get that list downloaded off his website. So in the meantime, we are off to talk about the market.

[00:28:33] So this is our market watch segment, and you know it's been another interesting week. We still have kind of low inventory even though more people are getting their homes on the market. And we're starting to experience the actual throes of the transition. So we have a lot more price reductions.

[00:28:51] We have more competition, but I'm telling you it's still, it's still a seller's market unless you're in the higher price points. Now the higher price point for us in Southern Oregon is 800 or a million up. That's considered our luxury market. And do you know, in Jackson county alone, we have 159 listings that are a million dollars or higher.

[00:29:13] So that price point is a bonafide buyer's market. And it's very interesting during a transition, you can watch leading indicators, which would be the more expensive properties as they start to. Kind of bellow and have more listings and have more inventory than that'll start moving down. Traditionally, that'll start moving down.

[00:29:36] So we'll just have to watch and see if it trickles down into lower price points. But right now, boy, if you're, if you're trying to buy something in the 200 to 500 range, you may still have an arm wrestling match on your hand. But we're definitely watching the luxury market because that is where all the good deals are right now.

[00:29:53] So if you're qualified to buy in that price point or the lower interest rates make it possible, you might want to look there because it's pretty, pretty good hunting right now. Now that we're transitioning into October and the season is changing, we're looking at some studies that are coming out. You know, it's been very interesting with the COVID shutdown and also here in Southern Oregon, we had the fires and all of that affected our housing market.

[00:30:19] So one of the studies that came out recently was talking about what the average United States home buyer looks like right now. And do you know, there's some interesting statistics I want to share with you. So one of the first things that caught my attention is that 50% of all average home buyers today encountered a loan denial.

[00:30:39] Isn't that shocking? 50%. Five zero. So the the agents here in Southern Oregon, that's not really what we experienced cause we get our people ready and pre-approved and all that before we take them out. But if you're looking at a national, then that is 50%, I guess there can be surprises, you know, you know, human nature things happen.

[00:30:59] So the other thing that was interesting as a national average, buyers wrote two offers to get one accepted. That's not our experience here in Southern Oregon, but on a national average, buyers wrote two offers to get one accepted. The other interesting statistics, 61% of the average home buyers out there right now, 61% already owned a home.

[00:31:21] They had a home in their life, in the past. So what that means is that most of these folks, little over half, are seasoned buyers are that least done at one other time. But that also means there's a big section out there. 39%, 40% that either didn't cause they're first time home buyers or they might be investors.

[00:31:42] So it's all how you slice the data. Right. But I think it's very interesting. So if you're selling keep in mind that on average, you may have a 60% chance, 61% chance of getting offers from buyers who've done this before, and that's just good to know.

[00:31:59] The other interesting statistic under 2000 square feet, three bedroom 2000 square feet. So I would expect that people buying right now might be buying slightly bigger homes, just because the interest rates were so low, you can afford more of a house, but nationally speaking, 2000 square feet or less is what what people are going for.

[00:32:24] The other fascinating study that came out, and this was from core logic, said that homeowners in the United States saw an equity increase on average nationally 29.3% since year over year, so this time last year. So they're saying that that is an equity gain collectively in the United States of 2.9 trillion dollars and an average of $51,000 per homeowner. That's it that's nationally. And you know, that is kind of our experience here in Southern Oregon. We have just buckets of profit since the shutdown.

[00:33:01] And we have still people moving here from all parts of the country, but we also have a lot of people moving out. They're taking their profit and they're, they're going somewhere else. Some of these are business owners. Some of these are job transfers. A lot of them are remote workers. This whole remote worker thing is starting to settle in.

[00:33:21] We're starting to see now that we have an ongoing impact of the remote worker, especially the tech workers. And one of the side effects is the demand for vacation homes. One of these other studies that came out recently was that the demand for vacation homes rose 6%. So that means that people are starting to use not only the low interest rates, but this whole idea of, we don't want to be in a shut down again.

[00:33:51] We don't want to be without our family, or maybe we're going to buy that vacation home in the place where we're going to retire. We'll do it in a two-step process. And then we can leap frog when we're ready and you know what else they're getting income, income from vacation rental, short-term rental, maybe long-term rental when they're not using it.

[00:34:10] So it's all very interesting side effects of the the ongoing shutdown and the, the COVID mandates. The other interesting study that came out homes are bigger. Now, even though I just said that the average us home buyer, you know, out there right now is looking at under 2000 square feet when we're showing people houses, they're always wanting another room. They're always wanting two other rooms .Or they're wanting outbuildings so that they can do their work from home, their office, their, their conference room, their zoom, their schooling. You know, we have a lot of folks that are doing either hybrid schooling at home, or they're doing 100% homeschooling now.

[00:34:58] So all of these side effects are affecting what people want to buy so that they can be prepared for whatever is coming in their future. Southern Oregon is still on a lot of lists because we have generally low crime. We have a mostly accommodating friendly atmosphere, you know, here we have high-speed internet.

[00:35:19] We have a great hospital, actually have two great hospitals and an international airport. So we still get a lot of people who want to move here. But the homes that they're trying to pick, and even the locals with the homes, the locals are trying to pick, are a little bit bigger by one or two rooms. So if you're getting ready to sell either this winter or into 2022, if there's a way to create these extra spaces, then please do so because you'll get more buyers and you might get more money.

[00:35:48] Because according to one of these other studies, we're looking at a permanently doubling of the remote workforce permanently doubling. So that's going to happen. A real big impact.

[00:36:02] So Alice Lema broker John L. Scott. Thank you so much for listening to the real estate show. There'll be another repeat of the show tomorrow on KCM X radio eight 80 am. And that'll be at six o'clock tomorrow, Sunday. We want to thank our sponsors. John L Scott, Southern Oregon, the Rogue Valley Association of Realtors and Guy Giles, Mutual of Omaha mortgage. We thank you very much. Appreciate your sponsorship. We'll be back again with another show next week. Make it a great Southern Oregon weekend. Alice Lema saying by now.