When Trees Meet Houses

Is that a rafter I see before me? I know that rafters are in these days, but this is ridiculous!

I'm working on coordinating a house rebuild. It's a home that was vacant after a foreclosure, and it's managed by a faraway company. While vacant, a tree fell on it, and now we have to put about a third of the real value of the house into it in order to make it salable again, or at least an insurance company will. As you can see, rafters are peeking though the ceiling. I was impressed. It reminded me of that scene in The Lord of the Rings (the book; not the movie) where the Ents destroyed the tower with their root arms.

Trees are very powerful things when they're growing and when they're dying.

The addition might have been a solid investment to the little house. It looks like, at one time, someone really cared about this place. It has a decent deck out back, there are big windows in the addition, and a high open ceiling in the living room. It's a shame what's happened here.
Plus, it's in an "up-and-coming" neighborhood. Right near Montgomery Hill Park, it's a great spot for raising kids and doing other "young family" type things.

It's got a nice kitchen. I'm not sure where all the appliances went. It's got a good floor, it's got a nice working area, and it's got a two-basin sink. It's OK. I can see how it would become the center of the house because it's nicely situated in the house right between the living room and the addition, which would probably double as a dining area. The kitchen's big enough for a small kitchen table, though.

If you can ignore the nasty roof, it's a nice little joint. A cute walkway up to the door, off-street parking, a little landscaping, some "curb appeal." It's by far one of the nicer houses on the block. Most the houses in this neighborhood are very similar, and someone obviously invested some TLC here.

Here's where the addition meets the rest of the house inside. The tree had different ideas.

Poor roof, but I think if I had a little dough, I'd snap this house up "as-is" and get a contractor to do it myself. A great opportunity sitting there, methinks. But I like to think of the potential of spaces. YMMV.

It looks worse than it is. And it could be worse. Pretty lucky that just the addition got smashed. I'll get a general contractor to get in here and fix up the addition, and then get him to paint the rest of the interior, and this thing will look "good as new."

I hope that this might be my first listing as a real estate agent. That would be nice.

Bird-Dogging

This is just another quick post.

Bird-dogging is an interesting part of this business. You get to know all about how this real estate industry works if you're paying attention and you have the right mentor. Part of what I do is bird-dogging, and I like that part of this gig.

Here's a quick article about it. I don't know where they're getting their numbers, but the job description regarding this component is pretty accurate, I think.

People learn this biz in many ways, and I hope that I'm doing it right. There's a lot in the details, and I'm usually a quick study. It seems like every answer brings new questions. It keeps it exciting.

Quick Holiday Post: Roost Helps Real Estate Agents Customize Their Facebook Page

This seems cool. What do you think?
Roost Helps Real Estate Agents Customize Their Facebook Page

Rock and Roll Holidays in Staunton

This year's theme for the Holiday Season in Staunton is "Rock and Roll," which I think is pretty awesome since I'm in a rock and roll band. Storefronts downtown are decorating in the theme, so the whole town has guitars and records in every window. It's sweet.

Mostly, people have been thinking 1950's rock and roll, and I think that's funny because every time someone mentions the fifties, I think of Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran and maybe Buddy Holly. Everyone else thinks of Elvis, I guess. Elvis is everywhere. And I love Elvis. But Elvis is not the only thing going, people. Neither is the fifties. Elvis had his biggest commercial successes in the sixties, BTW.

Marden Press installed a John and Yoko with a little Christmas lyric by the duo. Everyone loves John Lennon. Shanti Yoga put a giant picture of Kurt Cobain in the their window; nice! But my favorite is David Bowie in the Baja Bean's back office window. I don't even know if this was part of the holiday decorations or just there because someone likes David Bowie in a suit.

I love this about Staunton. We have an organization called SDDA that helps businesses downtown market their services and work cooperatively with one another and the city and its departments. Business development is an extremely important component of our community. This rock and roll holiday theme is one of those times when everyone has fun, and I hope people come to Staunton to enjoy our huge parade and the windows (most are more elaborate than the ones I've pictured here). . . and rock and roll.

One of My Favorite Spots in Staunton

About 25% of "the Warehouse" has a wrecked looking ceiling, but that makes me like it a little bit more.

There's a place in Staunton called the Warehouse. Madison Monroe owns it, and it's been rented from time to time. I find it an exceedingly cool place that has vast amounts of potential.

• It's right downtown.
• It's 800 square feet.
• It has a lot of parking.
• It is bright even on overcast days like the one pictured here.
• It's cheap (about $400 with utilities).
• It's old.
• It's clean.
• It's in Staunton.

Look at how awesome this skylight is.

I seriously wish I had the capital to open a business here. I absolutely adore this space.

Does this not remind you of some kick ass loft you saw a movie star living in in a movie or something? It's like that apartment Mr. Ripley had in Venice. Shabby Chic.

Maybe a gallery or a private drinking club. Maybe a little destination retail spot. Man! I get excited about this space every time I think about it. Email me at jmorgan@madison-monroe.com or comment here if you want to know more about it. I'd love to show it to you and hear your ideas about using one of the last small and cool spots downtown. It's a well-kept secret.

One More Reason to Move to Staunton

Population by
Gender:

	1990 Census	2000 Census	Spring 2010	Estimate 2015	Projection 1990-2000	2010-2015
Male	11,533 47.1%	11,237 47.1%	11,159 45.6%	12,002 46.0%	-2.6%	7.6%
Female	12,933 52.9%	12,616 52.9%	13,293 54.4%	14,064 54.0%	-2.5%	5.8%

Staunton: Still more women than men in 2015!

The Palmer House

A couple mornings ago, the city of Staunton was decorating Downtown with wreaths for the coming holidays. Cranes and man-lifts have always symbolized progress to me, so I find myself taking pictures of them often. When I lived in Berlin, there were cranes everywhere. It is as if that city is under constant construction. Now, there have been several cranes in Staunton, lately. Some involve putting copper tops on the historic houses and churches so that they will gleam in the Virginia sun, some are to insert chimney liners into the tops of buildings like the new Darjeeling Cafe did recently. There are often large machines lining the streets. The city has just redone Chruchville Ave, turning it into a beautiful brick walkway and street, lined with quaint lights and subterranean power lines. It's really quite pretty on Churchville these days; I run down the street every morning on my way to Gypsy Hill Park, another awesome place in Staunton.

Next door to the Darjeeling Cafe is the Palmer House, the space pictured above that looks like two buildings and actually is one. The first floor of the Palmer House is the famous Staunton Grocery, where you can eat locally sourced gourmet food and sample wonderful wines, cocktails, and tea. Next to the Staunton Grocery is a giant retail space that's currently vacant, but won't be for too much longer, methinks.

What's really interesting is what's going on above the ground floor. Madison Monroe Properties is doing preliminary work on creating luxury apartments in the Palmer House that are sure to be hot commodities. I seriously want to live in one. Right now, if you want a modern apartment, you pretty much have to go outside of the "urban core" to get it. There, you will find traditional, big apartment blocks with thin walls, balconies, and central air and heat. If you moved to Staunton, though, why would you want to live out there by the Wal-Mart? When there's an option to live in our thriving downtown, people won't want to live out there. The quality of life is leaps and bounds better down town than it out by the Wal-mart, and for a hundred dollars more a month, you can move there soon and still have all the benefits of living out there in new (fast & flimsy) construction land.

I hope you can tell by this post that I'm excited to be a part of the Palmer House upgrade. I've been working on it for a week now, and I'm crazy about the idea. I want to reserve one of the apartments for Mary (my wife) and me right now.

"Stay tuned" for more. Surely, I'll be writing about this one a lot here.

Recovery

Here's an article about the areas who will recover the fastest. NoVa (Northern Virginia) is on the list, which makes me happy because, though we're not in NoVa, our economy is closely tied with its.

If NoVa has a fast recovery, and the real estate market looks up there, the same will happen in central VA and all of the places Madison Monroe has property. It looks like I might have gotten into this real estate gig just in time! Fortune favors the bold.

The Masonic

The building with the tower is the Masonic building in Staunton. It is one of the tallest, most unfortunate spaces in town. I love this building. I worked on the fourth floor for around two years, and really like the structure. It's got a great deal of history. There's a door marked "Dungeon" leading to the cellar, and there's an ancient picture framed with marble. The fifth floor has a banquet hall and ritual room, the latter of which has three huge walls of stained glass. It's a really cool place to explore.

The problem with history is that it's so old. The problem with old buildings, they start being more expensive to maintain and operate than any investor will ever get out of them. It's hard to see in this picture, but there's a tree growing out of the fifth floor, you can just barely see it because it's turned yellow for autumn. Do you know what trees do the faces of buildings over time? Nothing good. There's a beautiful apartment on the very top floor... just one. The fourth floor houses the offices of the America Shakespeare Center, and then there isn't much else. It's a big, mostly vacant building. None of the windows really work, the air and heat are faulty, and I don't now how they're ever going to get tenants in the place.

What do you do with a rusty hood ornament that no one has the money to clean up?

Creative Real Estate and Reading Donald Trump

One of the things I love about real estate so far is that it excites the creative parts of my brain. I've been involved in the arts for most of my life, and that's where I've worked and wallowed for most of my time between heaven and earth.

I'm reading some Trump books. Donald Trump likes to say that what he does is an art form. It's hard to believe at prima facie, but I'm coming around to the idea very quickly. I never know if I like Donald J. Trump, but I'm starting to do that, too, methinks.

I'd like to make enough money to live comfortably and help make the world a better place while remaining an artist. I don't think it's childish to want to stay artistically stimulated, even in my profession. Although it might seem like a stretch from time to time while I'm digging in the GIS for data on rental properties and visiting the tax assessor for info on sales histories and going rates, haven't I always started the artistic process with research and info/inspo mining? Don't I trawl books filled with artists who have come before to see what they've accomplished before setting out to try my own? The days of the gold rush are over, and we must follow in the footsteps of others, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to be creative in our chosen fields.

Anyway, I found this short article that I liked about creative real estate. It's not the best-written thing I've seen online, but I like the sentiment.

Also, Donald Trump is selling his home in Palos Verdes; the wine room sells it for me. Holy crap I'd love to fill a wine room like that!!!

Some Jargon

Half of learning a new business is learning that business's argot. If you have a great memory, it's a piece of cake to remember it all, but sometimes, if you're like me, a cheat-sheet comes in handy.

Luckily, About.com has an awesome little article on some of the calculations that realty people have to know to get by. Some of them are totally new to me, but I'm glad that this is here so that I can look it up any time someone throws a term at me I'm not completely sure about.

The photo above was swiped from a real estate site. I hate images like that, leaving nothing at all to the imagination and treating the customer like they're stupid. Derping around on the internet, looking at real estate sites, you'll find countless images like this one. It's probably big business making such drivel. I don't want to ever do something like that in this business. I want to treat the people I work with like humans who deserve all the respect and benefits ascribed to that species.

Proverbial Hello World Post

This is what I look like when I'm squinting at the brightness of my future.

This is my first post of my real estate blog. I've lived in many places around the world, but I'm starting my real estate career in central Virginia. So far it has been an interesting adventure full of surprises and opportunities for education. I'm interested in real estate because it plays a major part in most people's lives, and I see it as a means to tangibly better our communities. It also seems to be a profession that can put to use the many talents I've acquired over the years through my varied adventures and experiences. I hope to chronicle my adventures in this field with this blog, sharing my thoughts and maybe inspiring readers.

This is Queen City Marketplace in Staunton, VA.

Queen City Marketplace is one of my first orders of business. We're seeing it as kind of a downtown bazaar, a place to open your own business on a scalable level. Artists and craftspeople and others can get a spot or a booth or wall space to sell their work. A shopkeeper experienced in retail sales will man the fort while artists do what they do best and antique dealers acquire more pieces and retailers can dream up the next big trend. I think it's a great use for this huge downtown location. It would bring more foot traffic downtown, and I think it would become a destination for shoppers year round.

This is Downtown Staunton, looking East from the Queen City Marketplace.

Staunton is a pretty awesome place to live. It isn't your typical main street little town. A lot of young people and artists live here, and there are always more coming. It makes sense. Many of my friends telecommute or sell their art online. Others work in cities like Harrisonburg or Charlottesville and live here because its standard of living is better. We have great restaurants and movie theaters, night life, cafes, and cool places to live that don't bankrupt you. The art and music scenes are the envy of many nearby towns. Staunton really earns its name "Queen City."

Staunton is not the only place we service, but I live here and I'm concentrating on it for now because there's plenty to keep my busy already. If you don't live in Staunton, you might want to consider it. You'd probably like it very much.

Thanks for reading. I hope you like my adventures in central Virginia.