Housing Comments, Termination, Housing Trauma, and a Birthday
September 2025 | Note from Jim
Happy nearly-fall, the best time of the year in Central Virginia, when leaves change, festivals abound, and my clients and I start to strategize for 2026. Questions? Ask me. 434-242-7140, or reply to this email.
This month: Market commentary, Contract termination review, housing trauma, a birthday, and an avoidable housing hiccup.
Market Commentary
There is no singular real estate market. There are infinite micro-markets.
A quick snaphot of resale homes in Charlottesville and Albemarle for July + August, sold properties*
* Sold, not “All Sold,” the latter includes properties sold off MLS, and input after closing.
Ran out of space, so here’s a quick market update blog post.
Charlottesville market takeaway: buyers have choices, and time — more than they have had in many years. A market where buyers can deliberate, choose to pass, and wait is a very different market.
From a client as we finalized termination of a contract:
We also want to take the opportunity to thank you again for your invaluable advice and expertise throughout this whole process. Of course this is a disappointing outcome for everybody involved, but we really value everything you did for us along the way. We feel you helped us come to a reasonable decision, even if it wasn’t the conclusion any of us hoped for.
This means so much to me. Did I get paid? No, not at that time. Was the advice honest, sound, client-first, and most importantly, the right thing to do? Yes.
Did my client appreciate and trust me for guiding them to make the right decision for them at that point in the process and in their lives? 100%.
And it was worth it; when I stopped by as they were about 40% of the way through their moving-in, they were incredibly happy and satisfied.
If I had been focused solely on “getting the transaction done”:
My clients would have known.
They wouldn’t have trusted me.
My clients who sent them to me wouldn’t have done so in the first place.
Happy clients making good decisions makes for a good day.
Wake up!
Sellers wake up thinking, “Will we get a showing today? Do I need to clean? Is this the day we get an offer? Are people even looking at our house? Why did that one go under contract and ours didn’t? Did those buyers even look at our house? Where are we going to go?!”
Buyers wake up thinking, “I know the loan commitment date is this week; what am I supposed to do? Did I do the right thing asking for so much after the inspection? Did I not ask for enough? What’s the next deadline? Attorney, title company? Should I really get a survey? Am I doing the right thing?”
I know this. I feel this. If you’ve bought or sold a house in the past 40 years, you know this, and you probably feel this. If you’ve gone through this often deeply traumatic process in the past 10 years, you likely still feel the anxiety and stress, and hopefully happiness, satisfaction, and contentment.
One thing I’m working to do better and more efficiently is to help my clients know what is coming next. I have milestones I lay out for buyers (the hard part is the quiet period) and sellers, and I know what’s happening next.
It is going to be OK.
One thing I try to convey to my clients is for them to ask questions, share the anxieties that come with the process. It’s hard.
Meetings Matter + Timing
A client called and asked about timing. They might need/want to sell their townhome, and is there a “right time” to market and sell a townhouse?
My response, in part — this validates my going to the meeting at Nest this morning because we had this exact conversation about the resale townhome market and timing.
We have meetings — yes, in-person meetings — and I am better for them. One of the benefits of in-person is that you hear things, learn things, and have unexpected conversations about the market.
An Unnecessary Hiccup in 50% of Recent Transactions
About 50% of the transactions I’ve seen recently have had survey issues. I’ve written about this before (I’m sure more than once, but this is the most recent if you’re curious):
Buyers: Please get a survey. Especially if you’re buying in the City of Charlottesville, but really, anywhere that does not have a recent survey available.
Sellers: If you got a survey that revealed a defect, please address it. And if you’re putting up a fence or a shed, for goodness sake, get a survey first. Yes, before you do the work.
The picture below (save the applause for my artistry) shows an existing street/neighborhood in the City of Charlottesville. The green circle highlights the corner of the property. The tiny boxes are the houses. That’s the *boundary* of the property, leaving about 40-50 feet of the owner’s yard actually owned by the City.
That was supposed to be a cul-de-sac — see the big circle that your imagination tells you is a cul-de-sac -- but the City never actually did it, nor did they release the land.
A mistake?
I make a lot of mistakes. I once made a typo that led to upset clients (no contract issues), which could have been avoided. I will beat myself up for that mistake for a long time, and will be better for that vigilance.
Managing Real Estate Trauma
Buying and selling a home are both often traumatic. This is life we’re talking about and working with.
I was talking to a client about this recently, and I found myself conversationally referencing a few stories I’ve written. I’ll say here what I say at the end: Be nice. Life is hard for many.
A client told me this year that moving is the single-greatest trauma aside from death or divorce that you can inflict upon yourself and your family. He’s right. If I can help my clients through this trauma, that’s my privilege.
Move is, to many people (many of whom are my clients), a four-letter word, with similar negativity associated with other four-letter words, such as the ones that rhyme with truck and spit.
One of the roles I fill for many of my clients is to be the one who has done this before; whether that’s moving, moving with kid(s) and dog(s), moving twice to get that house, purging, prepping, working …and I set expectations bluntly up front.
Moving. Sucks.
But moving isn’t the end of the world, and yeah, it may be a painful few months, but after a year in the rearview mirror, the trauma of that move will hopefully have waned to the point of being a distant memory.
Good real estate agents need empathy, too. 🙂
A mantra I adopted years ago: “What are you going to do?” Answer: “Put your head down and push through; quitting isn’t an option.”
The above lesson was reinforced during my cadetship at VMI; sometimes, life’s going to be hard. That’s life. As I tell the girls I coach, “Life’s not fair; suck it up.”
There’s a saying on the internet (and in real life) – Be Nice To Everyone You Meet. They’re Fighting A Battle You Have Absolutely No Idea About.
I know that every client with whom I work, every person with whom I interact, is going through something that:
1) they’re likely not going to tell me
2) are trying to conceal
3) is affecting them and their decision-making either positively or negativelyLife, death, divorce, new kid, kid moving out, dog dying, new puppy, juggling single-parenthood … many, if not most of us, frequently face traumas that affect how we approach the home search/sale trauma.
Empathy matters.
As does compartmentalized, professional detachment; keeping the detached empathy in check is a skill not taught in any of the real estate book (deliberate singular) that I studied.
Be nice. Life is hard for many.
If you’ve made it this far and have questions about the market — can you buy, can you sell, should you, or just want to talk about the market — please ask. I’m always up for a conversation about real estate. 434-242-7140.
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What I’m Reading
Urbanism/mobility
Carré Mobility develops sharing in the housing industry with Invers — I would love to see a Charlottesville developer offer this.
Your Comeback Guide to all the Anti-Cycling Arguments You’ll Hear This Year
5 steps to making better cities
Any city can push itself to be better, but they usually go through this learning curve first.
America
Real estate
On Title Insurance - a great reddit thread
What I’m Listening to
In Data She Drops - this is quite good (I’ve been saying this for months — lower rates won’t open the housing market)
Criminal - This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS — this is a fun one about AI & scammers
I need some new podcast recommendations.