No Control in Real Estate
When I was growing up, a common phrase you’d hear in business is “location, location, location.” This applied to retail storefronts and to in short means that a good location is more important than good product, but good product cannot fix a bad location.
The same is true in real estate. But what’s crazy is how little you have control over.
You don’t control your neighbors and what they do with their houses. You don’t control what the city and politicians do with policy, enforcement. You don’t control what happens with the schools, who the administrator is, who they hire to teach, what doctrines they push. You don’t control the economy and what businesses are going to be thriving.
Buying a house is a 20+ year bet. What you’re betting on is that people in the future are going to want to live in that specific neighborhood. If you bet right your house appreciates in value. If you bet wrong, your house decreases and you likely get stuck in something very difficult to sell.
The easiest way to improve your chances is by looking hard at the schools (elementary through high school). Are the schools in good condition? Are people invested in them and their success? Are new families moving into the neighborhood to get their kids enrolled there? Is there affinity that will keep people invested for the next generation?
This is what I didn’t fully appreciate when I bought the Cedar St house. I stretched to get into that house. We thought it was in the best location. But what we didn’t know or appreciate was how bad the schools really were. There was no push for young families to move into the neighborhood that went to the elementary school. This limited demand and turn over of the houses. This lowered investment and involvement in the school.
We bought the house December 31st, 2015. C was born the next year. When he was in preschool “3s” and we started thinking about kindergarten (two years away) is when we realized our option was the crappy school down the street, or the expense, and commute to a private school far away. For me this was the final straw that prompted our move to Dallas.
Greenbrier has a different issues with the geographic constraint of the city (no place to expand) and the rapidly rising property values. There’s a good possibility that by the time you’re out of High School the city will be priced out of young families being able to afford to buy a house here and raising children the way we did. I hope that’s not the case because Park Cities is such an amazing place for kids to grow up.
The craziest thing to think is knowing all of this I would have killed myself to purchase a house in the Palisades instead of Santa Monica - which would have kept us in LA vs moving to Dallas, and also losing the house in the fire. Who knows where we would have ended up then.
Love you both, Dad