Why Only ‘Pottery Barn’ Homes Are Selling Now

The Sell for 1 Percent team unpacks a Columbus market with a split personality, where the average days on market has climbed to 81 while the median holds steady at 49. This widening gap is driven by picky buyers who are only interested in fully updated, move-in ready “Pottery Barn” style houses, leaving less-than-perfect homes to sit. For Franklin County sellers, this underscores that pricing and presentation are critical to sell quickly, while buyers now have the leverage to negotiate for seller-paid closing costs and rate buydowns.

#SellFor1Percent #ColumbusRealEstate #ColumbusOhio #OhioRealEstate #ColumbusOH #FranklinCounty #RealEstate #RealEstateAgent #HomeSellingTips #HomeBuyingTips #RealEstateMarket #HousingMarket #HomeOwner #DaysOnMarket

Full Transcript

Hey there, everyone. Jaime with Self for 1 Percent Realtors here back. Who are you? Jaime.

I am Jaime. I am. Jaime Barlow with Self for 1 Percent Realtors.

I am Jaime. Okay. It’s Friday.

Hey, everybody. Jaime Barlow here with the gang as usual. Joined by Head Broker Dave Barlow, my better looking brother, Jaysen Barlow.

Lender, Rich Cercone with Highlands Mortgage. Is that a clone that’s talking now? I thought it was doing a pretty good job there. What’s the date, Jay? November 13th.

Friday the 13th. It is supposed to be the day that we do our giveaway because that’s the entire landing page is built around being lucky on Friday the 13th. Now we got to rebuild it all.

You have nothing else better to do, so. I built backgrounds with dollar bills. This is, yeah, your unlucky day.

All the bets you’ve lost, they’re all pinned up there. In your dreams. All right, Rich.

Well, you were… That’s a 20, isn’t it? I don’t bet 20s. You were predicting the AI wreckage, I think, Rich, here for a little while.

Unfortunately, I think you got your wish this week. Yeah, my favorite conspiracy theory is that OpenAI took down Microsoft yesterday. Yeah, it’s quite possible.

Who knows? It’s Friday the 13th. Anything could be going on. And who took down Henson Wong with Nvidia? Was that AI as well? That was the Chinese, obviously.

We need to cue the graphic up of all these people that have their Chinese girlfriends, like the Oracle guy and Mark Zuckerberg. And I mean, it’s like you get on every tech company. It’s got to be the easiest honeypot of all time, right out of the Epstein playbook.

Right, Jaime? Oh, boy. I just feel bad for these CEOs getting taken advantage of by beautiful women. These billionaires.

I don’t even read the news, and I can see it. I’m like in the Matrix, where it’s like, after a while, you don’t even see the code. You just see all the spy ops.

You’re part of the code. What’s that movie where the guy would put the glasses on, and he would see what the real world was? Yeah, with the dead people walking around? Yeah. Oh, boy.

All right, Rich, tell us about the tech wreck. Interest rates are coming down. That’s a good thing.

I saw four weeks in a row now, we’ve had interest rates falling. So that’s a good sign. We have seen a little bit of a relief in mortgage interest rates.

However, maybe a trip down rock history, the band The Who had a famous album called Quadrophenia. Dave may remember this album. That was back in the psychedelic days.

Quadrophenia. One of the headline songs out of that, Quadrophenia, was 515. I think the chorus of that was out of my brain on the 515.

That is currently where the 10-year treasury bond is sitting again, 515 this morning. So we were at 535 or 540 at one point a few weeks ago. We went all the way down to the low 480s, and now we’re back up to 515.

So that does affect mortgage rates, but we have seen better rates. I was quoting a first-time home buyer yesterday, 7.125. So better rates are out there.

But again, if you’re not a first-time home buyer, if you don’t have the perfect credit, if you’ve got the wrong size loan, you could be still in the mid-sevens or so. But that’s kind of where interest rates are right now. Figure you’re going to have a seven handle in front of it somewhere.

No sixes? Not that I’ve said. This economy? Possibly. Possibly, we’ll see.

The consumer price index number was high. It was higher than expected a few days ago. So they’re still worried about inflation.

The employment number last week was strong. So there’s really no impetus for the Fed to lower rates. And so the market being forward-looking is not seeing any rate lowering on the horizon.

In fact, there’s still a probability we’ll see a rate increase in the next few meetings. So we’ve just got the weather to storm. Now, I did see, and you guys probably know this, that I think it’s the median home sales or something.

It was very low. The home sales are definitely not a strong number right now. Am I right about that? What’s going on with the home sales? Well, as we’ve been talking about the last several weeks, this goofy election, it beat a lot of things up.

And so just like with anything else, all that information is from a month ago. And so we’ll see as we move along. My information is in real time, sir.

What do you got over there, Jay? His phone’s ringing like crazy. Just try and stay ahead of everybody. That’s always been our game plan here at the offices of Sell for 1 Percent.

Where you walk in and it looks like a dive bar full of Dave’s dollars. You’d think that he would learn. You’d think that he would learn to quit coming in to the wood chipper.

The numbers in real time. And also, I think that the other thing, and we talk about this sometimes, usually offline on a video, is we’re doing such a volume of business that we can typically see trends before other people see them. We are boots on the ground.

We are not in the theory business. We’re actually doing a business and this is what’s happening. And you say by the time the numbers come out, they’re a month and a half old and that’s old news.

So in real time, the median days on market remains unchanged since the end of September. We are still at 49 days. The average days on market continues to creep up.

So at the end of September, we were at 73 days. That moved up to 75, then to 76 in mid-October. We were 78 end of October.

And right now, November, we are at 81 average days. So if the average days is increasing and that middle number 49 stays the same, that means you have more homes that are selling quickly that are balancing out the ones that are taking on average longer. And that’s what I’m seeing on my stuff as I put new listings on.

I have quite a few that are selling in the first two days, three days. And then you have a bunch that start popping at day 30, day 40, some that pop at day 50, day 60, and this median comes from that. So I think for sellers, there’s a balancing act of you don’t want to be priced too high, but you also don’t want to just give it away.

I put a handful of listings on this week, and two of them are going to be sold before the weekend here. And I’ve got a couple other ones that are, again, rounding the corner, getting close to that 49 days. And all of a sudden, offers come floating through.

So the market is slow, but I feel it being stronger right now than it was two weeks ago, three weeks ago, before the election. And so it’s kind of what we expected. After the election, the market will kind of slowly gain some traction.

End of November should be pretty strong, I would think. And then December should be strong as well. We’ll see if the trends hold true.

We had 787 new listings in the last week. We’ve had 463 go into contingent contract. Another 230 go pending.

So we’re right around 700 into contract in the last week. And then for the active listing count today, Friday the 13th, 6,658. So we are starting to see new listings slow.

And in contracts, matching how many listings came on. So we should stay pretty balanced. I would just like to point one thing out real quick.

It only took me about 15 seconds to say what Jaysen just took 10 minutes to. Well, as everyone knows, Father, you are always right. And you have the best ideas.

And we follow you to the ends of the earth. And we love you. Dave, give us a 15-second rundown on gas prices, if you would.

I am so impressed that in just over a week, gas has dropped $1 a gallon from the election. So you tell me what’s going on. Just like you said.

Isn’t that kind of weird? The refineries fix some of their issues. Oh, yeah, there you go. Those darn refineries.

Magic. So are you suggesting a conspiracy? No, never. I don’t have my tinfoil hat on.

That has to be the biggest change in dad the last five to 10 years is used to be, you know, you’re crazy. And none of this stuff is happening to now you lead the conspiracies. I’m just simply pointing out that the day or two before the election, gas in my area was $4.49.

And now gas yesterday, I saw, I think I sent you guys a photo a couple days ago was $3.59. So in seven days, nothing’s changed. As far as I know, the Strait of Hormuz is not open.

As far as I know, you know, all this craziness that’s going on. Nothing’s changed except there was an election. And then all of a sudden gas is down a dollar.

So that’s I just I’m here to give the facts, just like you, Jay. I thought that’s what Sheriff Brown and these jabronis were running on. I see their billboards.

Well, they apparently have already accomplished their goal. It’s amazing. I mean, they’re not even in office.

They’re not even in office and they’ve already lowered gas prices. Yeah, great. I think that dad has long COVID and it’s affecting his brain.

Amy has acted on her since you’ve been you’ve been on this conspiracy bandwagon. And listen, I got all kinds. I don’t buy any of this.

I think that I believe and trust there in one being. Proxy here’s here’s Jaysen. Jaysen doesn’t believe any of these these conspiracy theories, even though he’s on 4chan every night and watching Alex Jones podcast.

I will say Jones or 4chan. Don’t be putting that out. I did not do that.

I will say I’m on I’m on Buckeye Planet and I’m fully in the lunatic fringe right now. And all my attention focuses on this. This is all our state coaching staff.

This is all Arthur Smith’s fault. The world’s upside down. The Browns are doing good.

The Buckeyes are doing bad. It is kind of crazy. Dad’s into conspiracies.

I mean, gas prices are dumping. I have to pinch myself because they’re on when this stuff happens. I think maybe I died in that car accident.

And this is all a dream or I’m in a coma in the hospital. This is all everything. And Jackson starts, you know, throwing my sarcasm back in my face.

And I’m like, oh, no, this is real life. I will say I do like your haircut. Yeah, it’s tight.

Yeah, the dapper boys. Yeah, the dappers did me good again. Did you and Jack go get a haircut? I like cutting it because I can see all my greys when it’s short.

You need stripes. The ladies like that salt and pepper look. I’m going to be I got to drop some of these LBs I put on since that car accident.

And then I’ll become a silver fox like my dad. Yeah, boy. All right, James, give us your story.

What’s going on with your buyers? Everybody doesn’t care what the price is. Don’t care what the house looks like. I just have to buy.

It’s COVID, too. Well, I mean, week after week, I get on here and kind of say the same spiel. And I’m trying to get a new listener tuning in for the first time.

The buyers are taking their time. They can be picky. They can afford to be picky.

They can afford to get a good deal, I would say. Most buyers are looking for a, quote unquote, pottery barn house, a house that has your marble or quartz countertops and updated bathroom, updated kitchen, everything to the tens. We want everything new, updated.

We don’t want a list of things we have to do once we move into the house. Those houses, I think, are still going relatively well. But that’s what buyers are, I think, keying on and looking for.

And you’re paying a 7% interest rate on all-time high prices. Not quite all-time high anymore, but relatively. A buyer is going to want everything done.

They don’t want to have to put any money into it. They want the house to be in great shape that they’re buying. And if it isn’t, they aren’t buying.

They aren’t putting an offer in. And it can be small things. It can be kitchen cabinets we don’t like.

I see that sometimes. It can be there’s a little mildew in the master shower. We aren’t interested.

You know, little small things like that really affect buyers’ psyche when they’re walking through 5, 10 houses. And they’re comparing everything to the last one. And I say right now, buyers, the negotiating for closing costs has become in vogue.

People can ask sellers to cover some closing costs. There’s 2-1 buy-downs where sellers have to cover some closing costs. And those are options that buyers are taking advantage of.

I won’t do it. Pottery barn-style homes priced right will sell fast. Less than 15 seconds.

You are dad GPT. Why am I paying Anthropic all this money monthly to think for me when I have you? I’ve told you, I’m the original SI. SI? You’re calling it AI? It’s super intelligence, buddy.

You are the original super intelligence. SI, SI. I call it chatbots.

I don’t think it’s very intelligent at all, to be honest. It’s SI dad. That’s all you need to know.

Just give me a call. Yellow, how can I help you? Well, it certainly can’t predict human behavior. Like a CEO getting ousted for questionable actions.

Well, who could have ever predicted that? Yeah, well, he thinks super intelligence. You just wonder who he pissed off. They busted him as opposed to every other guy.

Yeah, the interesting thing is, is that that report came out like four or five months ago of this situation. It’s taken this long to kind of boil over. Yeah, who did he tick off? I agree with what you’re saying, Jaime, about the market overall.

Every week, my real-time numbers that come out, they track, they call it the seller or the market index. And once it gets below a 35 on their index score, that’s when it shifts to the beginning of a buyer market. And every single week, the score drops and drops and drops.

It was 47, then it was 42. Right now, most of the counties are sitting at 37. And as I go neighborhood by neighborhood, a lot of these have dropped into buyer market range, where there is more than three months supply.

And when it’s taking 81 days on average to sell one, I mean, you’re right up against that three-month period. The market’s moving in real time. I know for dad, it’s not his first rodeo.

He is the super intelligent broker and has seen this movie. Rich has seen this before. I’ve seen it before.

Jaime, you’re seeing it now. And you’re into it. I can’t say it because we’ll have to edit the video.

You are deep in the waters, both feet in and just going in head first. The market is always ebbing and flowing. The one thing that you said earlier, Jaime, was prices are at all-time highs.

They did go up quite dramatically during COVID because of supply and demand and what was happening. But they’re always at all-time highs, except for a very small period of time. 2012, they weren’t.

They were a very small period of time. And they only went down a couple percentage points. It wasn’t like they fell off the cliff.

Prices typically in America go up. And that’s why, as a buyer, it makes sense to buy now and then refinance later. Not to sound like the sales guy, but all you guys mention that all the time on these videos.

Buy now. You can refi when rates come down. Why would you sit on the sideline when waiting six months costs you $50,000 in purchase price and on and on, all the different examples? Just as any buyer agent watching or any buyer that’s watching, keep that in mind.

If someone objects over something like cabinets, you can buy new cabinets. What you can’t buy is or you cannot change is the location. That’s what you’re getting married to is the location of that house.

Location, location, location. Sometimes it has all three. Sometimes location sucks.

That, I think, is what to refocus people on. And you’re betting on Columbus, Ohio. You’re betting on America.

And there’s no conspiracies. That’s all hogwash. Things are OK.

Buy your house. Buy a little bit of Bitcoin. Buy a little bit of gold.

Diversify. But real estate should be a big part of your portfolio. Well, normally, it’s for most people, it is the biggest part of their portfolio.

And I agree with you that waiting and, you know, we’ve had clients two, three, four years ago. I’ll just wait. I’ll just wait.

I’ll just wait. And while they’re waiting, they did get the double whammy here. You know, back in February, we or I shouldn’t say we rich was quoting things in the last high fives.

And then now low sevens is a good rate. But as you just said, house prices are still going up. So there hasn’t been, you know, back in 2012 at the bottom of the foreclosure crisis, there was 18,000 houses on the market.

You just said we have 6,600. And so, you know, you have a third of the homes and the population of Columbus since 2012, 14 years ago, has grown by another 200,000 people. And so those people have to live somewhere.

And that’s why you’re seeing all these apartment complexes go up everywhere. It’s amazing to me. I was driving through downtown 315 yesterday.

And it’s just like every corner, they’re putting up these four and five story apartment complexes. It’s everywhere, man. It’s wild.

Yeah. I was thinking to myself, golly gee whiz, I was down on Goodell and there at Michigan. Sorry, I had to say that word.

But that whole area right there at Goodell in Michigan, there used to be old beat up warehouses. And they’ve sold all those warehouses. One of them was, I’ll shoot, the distributor for Coors and Miller Light and stuff was back there.

They sold that thing for tens of millions of dollars because developers wanted that land. And so Superior Distributing, now they’re up here in Powell with a giant warehouse. And so they’re putting them everywhere.

People are moving in. Housing, I think in Columbus is going to continue to go up in value unless we get back to 10, 12, 15,000 houses, I don’t see prices coming down. They’ve leveled a little bit, but I don’t see them coming down for a while.

Yeah. And they may level for a little bit longer because you got to balance back out with what was going on with the COVID times. But I agree.

And also, I mean, no one knows the future. We don’t have the crystal ball. But if they were to come down like they did during 08, 09, 10, again, they didn’t drop $100,000 overnight.

That’s not what was happening. And I don’t think you’ll ever get to that again where you can… And maybe I’ll eat these words one day in the future, but I have a hard time thinking you’re going to be able to go buy a children’s hospital and buy a house for 5,000 bucks.

I don’t think those times are coming back. Well, don’t ask the people from Cleveland that or Youngstown. You know, things happen.

I mean, weird things happen. So, and not saying that they’re going to, just you don’t know for sure. But yeah, I think the likelihood that you’re going to see home prices over the next few years plummet so you get a really good buy, I don’t see that happening.

So, and I agree with you. I think location, absolute number one thing. You know, whether it’s schools or you have backup to a park or, you know, a golf course or open land or whatever it may be.

Or your grandma’s down the street, whatever. Yeah. You know, weird.

Yep. Location is always number one. So, when that house comes on, I think you buy it, you get the best rates you can from And then if interest rates over, like they have over the past, you know, a couple of months, we’ve gone from the high sevens to the low sevens, refinance.

You know, what’s it take, Rich, for you to start saving money interest rate wise? So, if someone had gotten a 775 from you three months ago is now seven and a quarter enough to refinance and save money? It really depends on the loan amount. Now, if you’ve got a $100,000 mortgage, the savings is not going to be that much. And the closing costs relatively don’t change on a refi.

So, but if you have a five or $600,000 mortgage and you’ve got a half a point drop, then yeah, you can save some decent money. You know, you can, I don’t have the number in front of me right now, but you know, let’s say you’re saving $200 a month and we can make the closing costs $1,500 or even $2,000. And you’re breaking even in less than a year.

That’s a great deal. Because remember, if you’re saving $200 on your mortgage, that is after tax money, guaranteed savings for the next 30 or whatever amount of years you have your mortgage for. It’s going to happen no matter if an atomic bomb goes off in Seattle or anything that happens in the economy.

What are you talking about? You are still- How would you put that into the universe? You are still going to save your $200 a month. In fact, if you need to finance your bunker, talk to Rich. That’s true.

We have special bunker deals right now. Listen, if you save $200 a month, that is 33 Big Macs a month. 33 is a conspiracy number.

Don’t buy real estate in Seattle. That’s interesting how you know the price of a Big Mac because I have no idea. How many pizza pies is that? People call me fast food intelligence, FFI.

It was much easier math when the chickens were $1, but that world ain’t coming back. When you can buy a chicken for $1, you can buy a house for $100 again. Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, remember the dollar bill. Yeah, now that they’re $2.69. McDonald’s is like real estate.

The prices don’t come down, boys. I think the best reflection of that is the McRib is $7. Oh, boy.

Is it really? No way, but man, I need a McRib. It’s the season. I couldn’t believe it.

I saw it and I said to myself, who’s paying $7 for a McRib? Is it 3D printed? I’ll take two. I think it’s a restructured pork, Rich. Oh, okay.

Yeah, it’s not really. Well, it might be from the rib, but we’re not quite sure what animal. It’s from a Mick.

Jack was in the car and I said, look, the McRib, and he went to that and he’s like, who would eat that, dad? Like, dude, take one bite. Yeah, take one bite. I love Jack.

He’s very observant. We’ll all be eating bugs soon anyway, don’t worry. There you go.

Yeah, you’ll be begging for your restructured ribs and- The McCricket. Chocolate McCricket. Jaime, end the madness now, please.

I appreciate all the info, fellas, and I hope our viewers did too. I think there’s a wealth of knowledge sitting here giving us- SI. There you go.

Yeah, if you need to figure out where to go get gas, call Dave. You’re looking for a deal on a McDouble, give me a call. If you need to buy or sell a house, I call Jaime.

He’s the most serious one of all of us. And if you need to refi and save 100 bucks on your bunker for World War III, call Rich. Refi Rich.

We’re all here to help and to serve. Please comment, like, share, subscribe. Ring that bell.

We’ll be back next week with a new update when the next CEO falls to a spy endeavor. Yeah. Gonna be somebody at Microsoft.

Yeah, there you go. Thanks.