Southern Oregon Real Estate Show - Commercial Property Manager

Full Video Transcript Below

[00:00:00] Alice Lema: Well, good morning, Southern Oregon, and welcome to the real estate show. Our one and only weekly housing radio show brought to you by John L. Scott of Southern Oregon, Mutual of Omaha mortgage Guy Giles, and our local Rogue Valley Association of Realtors. I'm Alice Lema, I'm a broker here in John L. Scott. I'll be your host today. And we have such an interesting time as we're coming through the middle of October. We still have a lot of absorption to do from our fire victims. We still have people living in hotels and in RV parks. And yet we also have a lot of progress in our fire area.

[00:00:47] The market is still hard. It's hard to be a buyer. But it's definitely getting better. I don't know if you notice there's a lot more properties coming on the market this week. Again, we keep talking about this time is being transitional. We're definitely feeling that we're starting to see some lower appraisals, sometimes big differences, sometimes little differences. But again, all more indicators that we're stabilizing. We're coming out of the highs from the run-up from the COVID. The run-up from the fires and trying again to stabilize.

[00:01:20] Our world events do make a lot of us nervous. We have a, a pretty big population here in Southern Oregon of senior citizens, active, retired people. And they do worry a lot about if they should be buying or selling right now. But it's been a very interesting month and we have more happening coming in the winter months.

[00:01:41] It looks like we're going to have a lot of listings coming online, which is not our normal, not our normal vibe for the winter. But I think there's so much pent up seller, sellers people wanting to put their houses on the market. They've waited. They waited through all of the COVID. They waited through the fire and now it just seems like everybody's rushing to put their house on the market. So if you're buying, it'll be nice to have some more choices. If you're selling, listen up, the appraisals are starting to come in low. You're going to have more competition, but it's going to be fine. We're going to make it. We always do. We're Southern Oregonians, right?

[00:02:14] Today I'm so happy to have as my guest, Mr. David Wright, the president owner of commercial property management, Inc. Also known as CPM, the biggest property management company in the Southern Oregon area. And he's going to talk about what it was like for them during the shutdown and the fires. And what they look forward to in 2022, also some interesting rental updates from the laws from our state of Oregon legislator last spring.

[00:02:41] We're also going to be welcoming Chris Barnett of Realty Executives in Grants Pass. He's going to be doing the market watch with me. So stay tuned for that. He's going to be talking about the Josephine county market as well as just Southern Oregon in general. So do not touch that dial. We'll be right back with a great show.

[00:03:00] Well, welcome back to the real estate show folks. Alice Lema here your host for today. I'm a broker at John L. Scott here in Southern Oregon, and I am so excited to welcome very, very special guests. Mr. David Wright. Good morning, David.

[00:03:13] David Wright: Good morning, thanks for having me.

[00:03:15] Alice Lema: And David is the owner president of a CPM also known as commercial property management, Inc. I think the biggest property management company in Southern Oregon. Is that right?

[00:03:28] David Wright: Yeah. Yeah. We we're a third-party management company and we've been in business nearly well, 47 years now.

[00:03:35] Alice Lema: Wow. Is that right? 47 years.

[00:03:37] David Wright: I've been an owner in it for 20 years.

[00:03:39] Alice Lema: So that's fabulous. So you're also the owner, president Remax platinum here in Medford. So you just live, breathe, drink, eat real estate.

[00:03:50] David Wright: Yeah, whether I like it or not.

[00:03:53] Alice Lema: Right. Yeah. Some days, some days it's fun, some days, not so much, but you're, it's so exciting to have you on because you have such a breadth of knowledge and experience, and there's been so many weird changes and adjustments just in the tenant landlord law.

[00:04:10] And you know, when we were talking on the phone just wanted you to come on the show and address some of that for our listeners.

[00:04:17] David Wright: Yeah, it's been a wild ride the last two years, if you're a landlord and a tenant. So what we what we have experienced since March, 2020, when the. Governor announced the eviction moratorium here in Oregon, it's just been kind of a wild ride. We, you know, when that happened, I thought, oh boy 20 or 30% of the tenants probably aren't going to pay because they don't have to. But we, you know, pleasantly surprised on that. We saw most people doing their best to pay it. Wasn't a waiver of rent. It was just a you know, forbarence if you will.

[00:04:49] So we saw in our portfolio about two or 3% of the, the tenants weren't paying.

[00:04:55] Alice Lema: That's not very much.

[00:04:56] David Wright: No, not as much as I thought. I mean, it added up over time because that went on for so long. But you know, it was better than I expected. And so what happened since we've kind of gone since March 2020, the state legislature's met and a number of times with special sessions and regular session this year. And made some adjustments to landlord tenant law right now.

[00:05:20] And so if you have past due rent from a tenant since April, 2020 through June 30th, 2021, you can't do anything about that past due rent. The tenant is obligated to pay that back and they have until February 28th, 2022, to do that. But you can't give them a non-payment of notice of rent notice for that time period.

[00:05:46] Now starting July 1st, 2021. If they haven't paid a current month's rent, then you can do, they changed. It used to be a 72 hour notice. Now it's a 10 day notice for nonpayment of rent. One of the things that the legislature did pass this year, though, is if a tenant applies for assistance after July 1st, 2021, let's say they didn't pay their rent in August.

[00:06:09] And you give them a 10 day notice if they apply for assistance, that gives them a 60 day reprieve. Because basically the state has received federal money to help tenants and landlords directly. So, so there is assistance out there.

[00:06:27] I would, if you're a tenant and you didn't know that there's still assistance available, I would reach out to access locally or the state. There's a program called the Oregon rental emergency assistance program. That will help with some past due rent, as well as a current and a couple of months into the future. So make sure you're checking into that.

[00:06:49] Alice Lema: So from 2020 into 2021, a lot of landlords do not have their buildings paid off. How are people with mortgages? Because the assistance for the landlords didn't really kick in with any, any hurry whatsoever.

[00:07:07] David Wright: Yeah, you can talk to your bank there. Oregon did pass some mortgage forbearance program or allowance. So you can talk to your bank. I I've heard different stories on that, whether that, you know, the bank if you're doing that and you try and refi a different property or do something with a different property, it might affect you.

[00:07:26] So I would definitely check into that with your banker. It has been hard. I think that the landlords have had to kind of shoulder a lot of this burden. That at least the first year of this and even now we're still kind of waiting for payments from the landlord compensation fund. We started to receive some payments on that.

[00:07:44] And then I, I'm starting to see some payments on this Oregon emergency rental assistance program from access in the state. So that it's starting, but it's, it's taken a while. And, and I, I feel for the landlords that are smaller and maybe don't have the resources to weather this.

[00:08:03] Alice Lema: What are your landlords telling you during this, this whole thing. What has their reaction been?

[00:08:09] David Wright: Well, they've been frustrated but also you we've just tried to educate them on what's happening and some of their options. And then some of them quite frankly, have been selling because the market has been hot and there's people out there looking for the smaller multifamily properties. But you know, we're also applying for them on the landlord compensation fund. And then we're telling them that if they do have a tenant that's behind, we're giving the tenant all the resources that they are available to them so that they can get assistance too. So hopefully they can weather this and we can get back to somewhat more normal.

[00:08:46] Alice Lema: Now do you think, what do you think 2020 is going to be like for the landlords and the tenants?

[00:08:52] David Wright: Yeah, that's a good question. I think it feels like we're back to a little bit more normal, but not quite there yet. Certainly the fires of September 8th, 2020, didn't help our situation. You know, that took 2,500 units out of our inventory in our area. And really, you know, a tragic loss for a lot of people, obviously landlords and people who own their own homes.

[00:09:15] And so the market is tight on the rental side. You know, there's not much available. So I know there's there's some money coming from the state down to our area to, to build some affordable housing, but that's gonna take some time. I know that there's other projects on the . But I, you know, I just hope that people can hang on until we have more inventory out there.

[00:09:37] Alice Lema: So during the fires did you have any of your properties affected.

[00:09:43] David Wright: Yeah, we had four mobile home parks that burned and then a 30 unit apartment building, some nine plexes.

[00:09:49] Alice Lema: Oh my gosh. That's a huge impact.

[00:09:51] David Wright: Yeah, it was about 350 units total. So I'll be honest, this last year has been one of the most challenging I've ever felt in this business.

[00:10:01] Alice Lema: Oh my goodness.

[00:10:03] David Wright: For us, for our tenants, for our landlords, it's just been it's been really challenging. But you know, we're a, we're a resilient group in this area. And I've seen a lot of in the community step up and help out and that's been good to see. We just, we just need to keep persevering.

[00:10:18] Alice Lema: We do our Southern Oregonians are amazing. We really are. You can't keep us down.

[00:10:28] David Wright: We don't really have a choice, I don't think.

[00:10:29] Alice Lema: Well, you know, I used to think that a desperation can breed greatness if you let it.

[00:10:35] David Wright: So people are getting creative out of all this, which is great to see. So, yeah.

[00:10:40] Alice Lema: Did you have any commercial? Did you have any commercial businesses? Do you guys manage commercial?

[00:10:45] David Wright: We do. We had a couple in Phoenix that burned, but not too many. Most of the, most of our units that were affected were residential.

[00:10:52] Alice Lema: Huh. Wow. How horrible.

[00:10:58] David Wright: No, the good news on all of that, I guess good news is the federal government did come step in and it has paid for the cleanup portion still has been really challenging because it's a slow process on the rebuild.

[00:11:12] So and you know, and, and my concern in some of the manufactured home parks is that was a lot of well, you know, quite frankly, affordable housing, if you will. And it's going to be hard to, to replace that the way it was. And so there aren't a lot of manufactured homes out there that are being built or, you know, the supply. So it's hard to get them. So it's becoming a little bit of a slower process for rebuilding those parks. But I know the state and even the federal, government's trying to do what they can to help in those regards. We've got some FEMA trailers in, in some of the parks. And one of them that we managed there are 70 FEMA, mobile manufactured home units.

[00:11:57] You know, and people it's been a big help for those residents that had their homes burned. So. It's helping, but it's a slow process that's for sure.

[00:12:06] Alice Lema: So how does that work if somebody's home burned in one of the parks that you managed and FEMA comes in, are you putting the same person in the same space or how, how are you distributing those?

[00:12:18] David Wright: Well, that's actually up to FEMA. They have an individual assistance program manager that does that. So but yes, I believe it's the people that had their homes burn. And I, I'm not exactly sure of the qualifications there, but they're handling that. And then what their goal, they still had people living in hotels.

[00:12:38] So I think their goal is to get all those yeah, yeah. Get those people into homes.

[00:12:44] Alice Lema: So, yeah. Yeah. It's a complicated scenario for sure. And then, you know, so many of our more vulnerable residents in Southern Oregon, were living there. Youknow, our elderly some of our, our folks that were just getting started in life and they were under insured.

[00:13:00] David Wright: So it's, it's been a sad story. My, my fear is those people leave the area and, and a lot of it could be workforce housing that was provided. And so we, we just need to do everything we can to keep people here .We do.

[00:13:15] Alice Lema: And don't you think some of that's happened already to kind of exasperate the labor problem?

[00:13:20] David Wright: Yeah, I do actually. I mean, you see it, you see it nationwide, but we really haven't here ,you know, a staffing issue.

[00:13:27] Alice Lema: Yeah. And, and so how's CPM doing with labor and all that?

[00:13:32] David Wright: We're hanging in there, but you know we have a maintenance company that helps do some of the maintenance on our properties and it's been challenging to find people. We just, it really is. It's just they're just, they're not out there.

[00:13:44] Alice Lema: So is that in-house, do you guys have your own maintenance crew or are you, do you hire that out?

[00:13:49] David Wright: We hired out and then we also have our own, we have we have some maintenance for those properties that you know, our property owners want us to use it.

[00:13:58] Alice Lema: That's awesome. Well, and how many and in property management what we call it doors, but if you're not in the biz, then how many properties do you guys manage? Cause it must be a huge number. Yeah.

[00:14:09] David Wright: We manage residential, commercial, homeowners associations and manufactured home parks. And, you know, it's, it's up over, it's probably close to 4,000.

[00:14:20] Alice Lema: Wow. Really?

[00:14:22] David Wright: With the, you know, with all of that included. Yes.

[00:14:25] Alice Lema: Two counties or three?

[00:14:27] David Wright: Mainly Jackson and Josephine. We have an office up in Grants Pass, and then we have an office in Ashland. We do some some management on the coast, but that's mainly homeowner's association.

[00:14:37] Alice Lema: Wow. Wow. Sorry, we've got a break coming up. So we're gonna ask everybody to stay tuned. We're talking to David Wright, the owner and president of commercial property management CPM, also Remax Platinum. So much to get caught up on. We're going to be right back after a quick word from our sponsors. Do not go.

[00:14:58] Well, welcome back folks to the real estate show. I'm Alice Lema, I'm your host today. I'm a broker at John L. Scott and Southern Oregon. And we're brought to you by the Rogue Valley Association of Realtors, John L Scott, Southern Oregon and Guy Giles of Mutual of Omaha mortgage.

[00:15:12] And today we are right in the middle of this amazing conversation with Mr. David Wright, the president and owner of CPM, commercial property management and Remax Platinum, and just talking about everything that's been happening in their world, all real estate people and 4,000 a year, managing 4,000 sites, doors inyour property management business. It's really quite incredible.

[00:15:40] David Wright: Yeah, thank you. It's you know, it's a good business a necessary business. But it's been challenging as we talked about the last year and a half to two years with COVID and some of the things we've been dealing with. I thought I'd mentioned a couple of things you know, just about on the property management side, landlord tenant side.

[00:16:00] Residential, we talked a little bit about non-payment of rent and dealing with that starting in July first of 2021. You can do again a no cause notice for a tenant that's in the first year of a tenancy. During the emergency period 2020, and into, through June of 2021, you couldn't do a no cause notice. But if a tenant is in a month, a month, on a month, a month, and in the first year of their tenants starting in July, you can go back to that.

[00:16:29] Otherwise if you're if you're in a lease or a, tenant's been there over a year, you need to be careful how you handle those types of situations in a violation of a rental agreement. If you're selling a property that has a rental or that has a tenant in it, let's say a single family dwelling with a tenant in it, you can't just give that tenant notice unless they've been there under a year. You have to wait until you have an accepted offer on that home before you can give a notice if the, if the buyer is going to be occupying the property. And then it's a 90 day notice. And so I know some people out there get tripped up on that a little bit.

[00:17:07] Alice Lema: So one of the things I noticed, and I'm curious about your experience is when these properties go on the market up for sale and they have tenants in them, are you, how many investors are buying these versus regular people? Because it used to be that you could sell it to another investor. No problem. But you know what what's going on in your world with with.

[00:17:27] David Wright: With the, with the single family dwellings that have been put on the market this last year and especially after the fires, I've seen a lot of owner-occupants buying them, not so many landlords. Yeah. I mean, it's a combination. But a lot of owner occupants, just because everybody that maybe the people that lost their homes are looking and buying in that price range. Or, you know, just people moving to the area. So it seems like it's been more owner occupants, but I have seen a big uptake also in the demand for like duplexes fourplexes. Isn't that crazy?

[00:18:03] Alice Lema: It is crazy. They've doubled in price.

[00:18:07] David Wright: And there's cash buyers running around out there looking for those. I've represented a couple of clients that had a loan on it. And they just didn't get to the table because there's cash offers for a fourplex.

[00:18:22] Alice Lema: And then, so you do have investors buying those or families.

[00:18:26] David Wright: A lot of times investors on the multiplex, the smaller Plex stuff. Yeah.

[00:18:32] Alice Lema: So are they local, are they coming from out of the area, I'm just curious.

[00:18:35] David Wright: A lot of local people on the smaller stuff. Yeah. We're seeing some, I'm seeing some Portland people coming down looking to build larger multifamily, kind of exploring that as well. As you know we're looking at it, seeing people that are looking to acquire larger multifamily. We even have some self storage that we manage that, you know, we've got some outside investors that are buying that.

[00:19:02] Yeah our area kind of, I don't know it was a weird thing, like the fires almost kind of put us on the map in a weird way to in certain, in certain sectors.

[00:19:11] Alice Lema: Well, and I think the COVID did too. We all thought when, well I did, when this happened, the shutdown that I was gonna have to get another job for awhile. And all of a sudden my phone started ringing. I don't know if this happened to you, but Pete Belcastro and I, when he was hosting a show, it's like, we were talking about we are busier than ever. People are sneaking over the border. They're not supposed to be leaving the state they live in and they're quietly buying up all these properties.

[00:19:35] Like, did that happen to you guys?

[00:19:37] David Wright: Yeah. Yeah, like you said, I mean the first few months of March and April last year, it was like, oh, what's going to happen ever. I mean, we were all shut down, but after that, it's just been kinda crazy. And you know, on the sales side, just it hasn't stopped. It seems like.

[00:19:53] And then on the rental side it was crazy just dealing with all the changes in the landlord tenant laws. And then the fires and then the, so the lack of inventory there and the people that are all looking for rentals and.

[00:20:07] Alice Lema: It's like a punching bag, huh? Like a real estate punching bag here.

[00:20:11] David Wright: I don't know what day or year it is anymore.

[00:20:13] Alice Lema: Yeah. Yeah. But, but we are getting through it. So one of the side effects of the Covid was the prices going up and the cash buyers people don't realize, they don't get appraisals. And so, you know, it just goes up and up and up. And then our local, our local folks really struggle. How are your local real estate clients on the buyer's side, dealing with the price change.

[00:20:35] David Wright: It's hard for those smaller multifamily properties. My clients that are selling it's good, but those that are trying to buy it's, it's challenging. You really have to put an attractive offer in there. Be willing to go above list in some cases. And yeah as I said, if you're a cash buyer and you've got kind of an advantage, like you said, so but I've seen an escalation in prices.

[00:20:56] Like I haven't seen and that smaller multifamily side of things, but but even rental prices have escalated in the last couple of years. The rental prices, rental prices rents I should mention is there is rent control in our state now. And if you didn't know and so it, it adjusts every year. The cap on that what a landlord can charge in a 12 month period, and it's 9.9% for this next year in 2022.

[00:21:28] Alice Lema: Which is still a lot.

[00:21:30] David Wright: I mean when rent control was passed a couple years ago, my only concern my concern was that it doesn't, it's not too tight of a number that landlords can't, you know, you know, can keep up with inflation and what not. But it's a 7% base plus CPI, which was 2.9% for this next year.

[00:21:49] So it's 9.9 total I mean. And it doesn't apply to properties that are built in the last 15 years.

[00:21:56] Alice Lema: Oh, okay. So, but you know it seemed like part of the rent increases were because landlords woke up and said, oh my gosh, I have to raise my rent now. Cause I, I won't get another chance. And those that had great tenants used to just kind of leave them be.

[00:22:14] David Wright: Yeah. You know, it's interesting for the 20 years that I've been doing this plus now it was pretty static that rents were pretty static. Now we had, of course the great recession in 2008, nine. And then we built out back out of that. And then you know, now COVID, but rents were pretty static and I think you're right.

[00:22:31] We saw that our market was behind. Because a lot of owners just, you know didn't, didn't keep up, but that's kind of changed now.

[00:22:39] Alice Lema: Do you think the tenant population is going to keep up with the higher rent prices?

[00:22:44] David Wright: Boy we need, you know, we need more middle wage jobs that can keep them, help them keep up.

[00:22:50] Alice Lema: Define middle wage. What numbers are we talking about?

[00:22:53] David Wright: Well, I'm thinking, you know, I think the average median income boy, I probably shouldn't quote it cause I don't know off the top of my head, but anything from, you know, 40,000 a year up to 60 to 70, I would say.

[00:23:07] And I've, I've seen things where, you know, with two bedroom rents anymore, where they're averaging maybe in the 12 to 1300, a month range and higher, in some cases. You know, it's hard for people to keep up unless they're making that amount. So, yeah.

[00:23:23] Alice Lema: Yeah. And do you have landlords renting rooms, like they'll have a property and they're individually renting the room.

[00:23:29] David Wright: We don't do that in our portfolio do that, but I do know that there's, there are options out there. And then in Ashland we have we have one property, that's a couple hundred units, it's quad style. So you have rooms four rooms with a kind of a shared space. And it's, it's really a great for students, but it's also great in this kind of environment now. Kind of keeps the cost down.

[00:23:53] Alice Lema: So one of the questions I wanted to loop back around was the legislator legislation that we just had. And we were talking on the phone about the guest overnight guests policy. Can, can you kind of tell the folks what the guests policy changes were?

[00:24:10] David Wright: Yeah, that was interesting when that came through this year. So what the, what the legislature has done is that guest Which is not on the agreement can stay in a, and in one of your rentals up to 15 days.

[00:24:25] And then after that you, you can ask them to apply to be on a temporary occupancy agreement through February of 2028 or 2022, sorry, February 28th, 2022. So. And I, I don't believe you can screen on credit and income, which is interesting. I don't know why they threw that in there, but I think they're trying to keep people housed during this crisis.

[00:24:49] Alice Lema: But so is it a temporary guest? But this is a state of Oregon legislating on top of whatever written contract you have with your tenant. I didn't even think that that was legal.

[00:25:00] David Wright: Well, I don't know. There's a few things I wonder about the last couple of years that way, but we won't go into that. But yeah cause like our normal agreements say seven days, if you are, or even less, if you have somebody staying there, you have.

[00:25:13] Let us know, get them on, you know, they have to apply to become part of the rental agreement. But now the state has legislated that to be a minimum of 15 days. And then, like I said, you can't, you, you can get them into a temporary occupancy agreement through February of next year, but it can't be sooner than February. So you have to allow them to stay.

[00:25:33] Alice Lema: What happens in February?

[00:25:35] David Wright: I don't know. That's a good question. I got to find that one out. I'll I'll update you when I find out, I, I don't know that they know.

[00:25:44] Alice Lema: Oh, Lordy. So I just want to make sure everybody understands this. If you're a landlord, whether you have a written guest understanding or not with your tenants. You just got legislated by the state of Oregon. And you now can't do anything until day 15, correct?

[00:26:04] David Wright: Yeah. I mean, in my, the way I interpret the law and I'm not an attorney, so I would recommend if they have questions, if a property owner has questions about talk to an attorney. But yes, I mean, that's kind of the nature of our business the last year and a half is the legislature and the state telling us what to do.

[00:26:22] Alice Lema: Yeah, well, they're trying to help. I don't want to sound like I'm bashing anybody. I'm friends with some of those people.

[00:26:29] David Wright: And I know people have been hurting the last year and a half, so I'm in the same boat. I'm not bashing it. I'm just kinda saying it's.

[00:26:39] Alice Lema: Right. It's like, what, what are you guys doing? Okay. So we're going to have to take another break here pretty quick. But before we go, the guest policy, some of the landlords are saying, they're not going to allow guests at all. What do you think about that? And the 10 seconds we have left with you.

[00:26:52] David Wright: Yeah. I'd say, be careful check with your attorney if you're going to do that because of what the state legislature passed this year about the guest policy.

[00:26:59] Alice Lema: All right. Check, check, and double check. David Wright, commercial property management owner, president Remax, platinum owner, and president. Thank you so much. We'd love to have you back. Word from our sponsors folks. We have Market Watch coming up next.

[00:27:13] Well, welcome back to the real estate show folks. I'm your host today. Alice Lema broker at John L. Scott. Welcome to our market watch segment. And today we're so excited to welcome Chris Barnett of Realty executives in Grants Pass. Hi, Chris, how are you? Great, thank you so much for being on the show today. So. Josephine county is an amazing place. And you do an amazing business there as the owner of a Realty executives. And I just wanted to kind of check in with you and have you weigh in on what's going on in your market? What's it been like in the shutdown? How were you guys affected by the fires? Let's let's talk about it all.

[00:27:49] Chris Barnett: Okay, Alice. Well, you know, Jackson county, your county is just just one county over and we kind of share the counties, of course, but I know in Josephine county, the fire season was always big every year.

[00:28:02] We kind of hope that that smoke doesn't come to the valley and it did. And what we found out that people tended to stay home. People were only going out when they absolutely needed to. And if we did we just went to a few houses. So it wasn't like this big old tour that we're used to seeing it on a nice sunny day.

[00:28:21] People had respiratory problems. I mean, you can throw COVID into it, but the masks did a lot good for the fire. It's really the particulates and the smoke and the Ash that it created. So we found out that some people have really had to move here. They still carried on with their mission to find it all.

[00:28:39] And we did it. We were busy this year. Even last year under COVID we thought, hey with the shutdowns, are we really going to be stranded in our homes? And as realtors we are always mobile. And we were actually out in about we had to do the COVID-19 protocol and safety measures and stuff like that as we do, but we found out that people wanted to go find homes.

[00:29:00] Alice Lema: And were you shocked?

[00:29:02] Chris Barnett: I was shocked and, and knowing that about people putting their homes on the market, moving too, so that was another thing. And, and we didn't find a lot of people were moving out ofthe area and moving to other states. So those people that were moving away of course, got replaced by the people moving in.

[00:29:20] So we're growing still. So people think, hey everybody's moving out. And it's not the case that we've been doing real estate for how long, you know, and people come and go. All the time.

[00:29:31] Alice Lema: Yeah. It was more like a recycling, like a resident recycling.

[00:29:35] Chris Barnett: Yeah. I always told people, I always tell people life happens and you know, I mean, you got the beginning stages and you got your later years and there's things that happen in between and then it never stopped.

[00:29:47] Alice Lema: Yeah. So how's the market now, here we are kind of mid-October, we're sort of used to the COVID. It's not great, but we kind of figured it out. What's going on up there.

[00:29:56] Chris Barnett: Well, we're finding out that people are really just wanting out of their houses. And what I mean by that is they're kind of they're not they're not scared, which means the COVID has not stopped the people that really want to or sell their home. We're not finding in Josephine county now. I know other counties are more strict, but Josephine county has been very lenient. Very nice to let people just be free and, and express themselves the way they want to.

[00:30:23] Alice Lema: It's why people move there.

[00:30:25] Chris Barnett: Well, and that's true and it's a more chill lifestyle. Yeah. And nobody's doing this, nobody's doing that. I go that's because the government here is a little bit different than some of the governments around the other parts of the state. So Josephine county is a wanted place when it comes to real estate, because like you said the government is a little bit looser with some of the regulations.

[00:30:44] Alice Lema: Yeah. Yeah. And the lifestyle is amazing and it used to be the Jasmine county was more affordable. What do you think about all those price Run-ups?

[00:30:51] Chris Barnett: Well, I've been here, I graduated from hidden valley. I've been here 35, almost 40 years. I'm not going to date myself or nothing, but I can tell you that it's grown and grown and grown. When I moved here, it was 12,000 people. Now we're up to 40,000 people. I mean, It's just keeps growing and growing and I'm like, wow, we got stuff here that we never had before. And I think it's a real growing in a good way, not a bad way.

[00:31:15] We needed to, we needed to move forward. Just like Medford has grown. Grant's Pass has grown alongside Medford with it.

[00:31:23] Alice Lema: So one of the things that changed in the last few years was the the zoning, you know, and I know it hasn't been really adopted yet down here, but this idea that you might have in town, more houses on one lot than just the one. Do you have any investors or builders that are thinking about doing anything like that?

[00:31:43] Chris Barnett: You're talking about the ADU.

[00:31:45] Alice Lema: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's going on in your area about that?

[00:31:49] Chris Barnett: Well, I'm seeing people put things on their properties and then some of them are doing that and go through the permit process with the city or county, because we are in a housing shortage, there's only so much land you can build on. We are not a wide area. So they're allowing permits to convert your garage into living quarters.

[00:32:09] Alice Lema: Sodo you have a lot of people going that way.

[00:32:11] Chris Barnett: Not, not so much right now, but I know that if it keeps trending the way with the prices are and stuff like that, I see people kind of coming together and going, Hey, let's put our money together. And let's build that ADU in the backyard. And I'm thinking that's going to start coming if they cannot find a house. They're going to go ahead and do the application and build an ADU. And the only problem with that is our builders. We don't have enough to keep up with demands right now of projects. I mean, trying to get somebody to build a brand new house for you right now.

[00:32:47] Alice Lema: Try to get somebody to fix your heater.

[00:32:50] Chris Barnett: Trust me, we're in the business and we use vendors all the time and I can't even get those vendors to help me with my own stuff. So, cause I got thembusy on other projects. And I think that the shortage is definitely one of those things where it's going to take time and you don't see a rush of people building stuff cause they can't.

[00:33:10] Alice Lema: It's also really expensive. Yes so for 2022, do you have any predictions? Do you have any forecasts?

[00:33:20] Chris Barnett: Well, my forecast was at the beginning of the year with, with the new presidential turn that we had in January, I predicted this time the market was going to start slowing down.

[00:33:31] And I I'm already seeing it. It's cool. And all and people are adjusting their prices. We're not seeing the multiple offers quite as much anymore now. And we're seeing people, the buyers actually offer any little less. And they're getting away with it and the sellers are going to have to start bending.

[00:33:49] And I said, Hey, look, I go, you know, somebody that your first offers are sometimes your best offers. I mean, do you really want to wait for that next buyer? Or the market could change really fast tomorrow? And I think that we're in that right now. We're in that growing state. We, we hit our peak. I don't see us going back.

[00:34:09] Not, not right now. We're going to have to cool off a little bit until we play catch up. And if people want to move here they're going to pay a price, but I think that they're going to get a little bit of a deal on negotiations a little bit more. That's what I think.

[00:34:23] Alice Lema: Yeah. It's going to be interesting. I know down in this part of the valley, we have a lot of listings in the queue. Like it's going to be a busy, busy winter. What what's the listing inventory look like for the next few months for you?

[00:34:36] Chris Barnett: Well, I, I always tell everybody, my, my, our peak season really is January through April. So right now we're in the cooling period, the end of the year.

[00:34:45] And now Thanksgiving, Christmas is our big void spot where everybody gets some time off or he doesn't want to buy a house forin the holidays or moveduring the holidays. But right after January is where we see the biggest activity in life, it's a new year. We're going to move or we're going to buy a house or we're going to have a career change.

[00:35:01] Alice Lema: Wow. Wow. Well, you know what? We'll have to have you back and get an update on that. That could be a very interesting, interesting time, see what 2022 is shaping up at. Well, Chris Barnett, I'm the owner of executive Realty in Grants Pass, how do people get ahold of you if they want to talk?.

[00:35:18] Chris Barnett: (541) 660-5195 or GrantsPassRealEstate.US

[00:35:25] Alice Lema: And you have some braggy rights. You were just on military make-over.

[00:35:32] Chris Barnett: I'm in Phoenix, Arizona right now. So I've at militarymakeover.TV show. And cause I'm a military veteran still serving in the air force and they have the whole franchise come in and do a segment on the show.

[00:35:47] Well, and thank you so much for your service. We'll look for that airing in December. Thank you folks. We're out of time, Chris Barnett, come back, have a beautiful Southern Oregon weekend.Bye folks.