Mountain Man and City Girl

Real estate markets are quite localized.  While one area of a state may have a stagnant market, 50 miles away the market can be going along just fine.  The reasons are varied.  Vacation home markets, suburbs of cities where jobs are plentiful, or desired features like mountains, lakes, a river, or the ocean tend to make an area more immune to extended downside markets.

Here at the southern New Jersey shore, “vacation homes” and “the ocean” have fueled a real estate market rebound.  While some areas of the country are three full years into tough times and still struggling, our Cape May County region had 24 months of sluggish sales and now it appears to be headed back up.

Another distinction that the real estate market here has that other markets may not is that Open Houses don’t work.  Nope!  They’re a waste of time.

Statistics show that two-thirds of potential buyers do their research for a home on the internet.  With 121 million Americans having internet access, I suspect that number from my experience is more like 80% to 90% here in the Wildwoods.

People don’t come to the shore to search for a second home unless they are armed with MLS sheets detailing the properties that have caught their interest.  Their day is planned out - first a two hour drive to get here, then two properties to see, then lunch, then four more homes or condos to tour, then back on the road home.  They had appointments to view all six units.

Meanwhile, a realtor is sitting somewhere in an open house.  There’s little or no legitimate traffic through the home.  The only visitors you get are nosy neighbors, folks who already own a vacation home here but are looking for ideas to improve that place, builders checking out the floor plan and extras to incorporate in their next project, or bored non-buyers walking to or from the beach.

At our real estate agency, we have discouraged our sellers from requesting open houses.  We try to explain to sellers that our time is better spent on Saturdays and Sundays in the office, where we attract more potential buyers.  We work the phones, show properties, and have a much better shot promoting that property.

The only open houses that work here are those in large tracts of new construction.  Locally, K. Hovnanian, Ryan Homes, Beazer Homes, amongst others, have projects with 15 to 200 units.  They staff an on-site office with their own sales people, and are generally open seven days a week.

Realtors, of course, can’t justify spending that much time in one condo or townhome.  So, obviously, being at an open house 11am-3pm on a Saturday or Sunday is hit or miss.  No, it’s miss!

- Mountain Man

To learn more about the real estate market in the Wildwoods, visit our website at http://www.JewellRealEstateAgency.com

                Gated Oceanfront Community

Seapointe Village is situated on 17 oceanfront acres and has the unique distinction of having a private beach along with 4 separate pool areas, 2 tennis courts, exercise room, sauna, steam room, hot tubs, BBQ grills, game room, playground for the kids, and 24 hour security all year for your peace of mind.  There is also underground parking for your vehicle.

Once you enter this paradise, you won’t want to leave. There’s something for everyone!  The oceanfront pool also has a small kiddie area for the little ones, a Jacuzzi with a waterfall, and hot tubs.  The beachfront is directly in front of the pool.  Spend some time basking in the sun on the beach, quench your thirst and hunger at the convenient concession on the beach, then cool off in the large pool.  Lifeguards are always present for your safety at the pools and on the beach.

The Centre Court multi-level pool is a family favorite.  Kids and parents alike love the water slide and Jacuzzi.  And, if you get hungry, the BBQ grill is right there available for your use. 

New in 2007, The Ibis Building opened along with an indoor/outdoor pool.  Rain or shine, the pool is open and ready for you to enjoy.

The Garden Building is aptly named for all the flowers and waterfalls surrounding it.  It’s located in the heart of the Village and also has a pool, hot tub and BBQ grill.  Each building in Seapointe has its own special flavor.  There are now 6 separate condominium buildings, many townhouses and even single family homes. 

Whether you’re looking for a vacation destination for you and your family or an investment, or both, this is one place you won’t want to miss.  Many units have a tremendous repeat clientel.  A typical 2 bedroom oceanview unit rents for more than $2800 per week. 

 We have a number of units for sale in several locations.  Please visit our website at http://www.JewellRealEstateAgency.com and see for yourself.  Oh, and don’t forget your sunglasses. 

- City Girl 

Back in the early 1990s, I was traveling back to the East Coast after living in Missoula, Montana for a while.  As I headed through the rolling plains of eastern Montana in my truck, I enjoyed splendid views of pronghorn antelope and mule deer grazing in the fields.  There were also prairie dogs and a wide variety of songbirds, hawks, and ground birds.

I travel using US routes and state highways, as opposed to interstates, when possible.  It’s more scenic, it’s a two lane road instead of four so it’s easy to pull off to the side of the road, and passing through small towns gives a Rockwellian picture of Americana.

After traveling all day, I was in Wyoming on a very desolate highway.  The only people I saw were the occasional rancher in a pickup truck.  At dusk, I was in awe of the herds of pronghorn getting their last feeding before dark.  The magnificant sunset cast purple hues and long shadows on the mountains to the west.

I was so overwhelmed by the mystical beauty of this area that I decided to just pull off the road to sleep under the stars.  I found a rancher’s access road to a field, backed in off the highway, and sat watching the day’s last light. 

The pronghorn were still grazing.  They travel like a gazelle rather than a deer.  They spring along, sort of a “boing, boing, boing” hop.  It seems so effortless, yet each spring covers 15 or 20 feet.

At dark, I pulled out my sleeping bag and laid it beside my truck and climbed in.  After a half hour or so watching the stars, I fell fast asleep.

I woke up at first light, opening my eyes but not moving.  A feeling struck me, maybe you’ve had the same feeling before.  Someone was watching me!

I laid still, not moving a muscle.  Was some macho cowboy about to do me harm?  Was it the highway patrol or some sheriff?

But then I swore I heard breathing.  Heavy breathing.  What the heck was it?  Enough was enough.  I quickly sat upright to face my intruder.

It was a pronghorn antelope sniffing at the foot of my sleeping bag.  Our eyes locked, our faces just five feet apart.  My sense of relief and admiration played second fiddle to the pronghorn’s reaction.  He took off like a shot.  Boing, boing, boing.  Gracefully but with a sense of urgency he put a lot of distance between us.

His image stayed with me all day.  It still does.  I’ll always remember my close encounter with the ballerina of the high plains.

- Mountain Man

I was hitchhiking in northern Georgia back in 1976 with my then wife, Mel, and dog, Osha.  Heading north, we got picked up by a 30-something Southern business man, named Drew, in a two-door Ford Galaxie.

A half hour into the ride, after he’d felt us out and decided we were decent folk, Drew offered to take us as far as Kingsport, Tennessee, in the northeast corner of the state.  Further, he proposed that we’d paint two interior rooms in his health spa in exchange for two nights in a motel, free food the whole time, $50, and a ride back to the interstate when we were through.  We liked him, so we agreed.

About 30 miles before Kingsport, he mentioned that he wanted to jump off the interstate to stop and see a friend.  We were fine with that, especially because we were on no particular time schedule.  When hitchhiking, you often gotta go with the flow.

Getting off the highway, he pulled into an Arby’s.  He fed us and himself, plus he bought two big roast beef sandwiches for Osha.  She was in doggie heaven.

We travelled up a bunch of back country roads before coming to an old-style saloon bar.  He said he’d be inside for 10 or 15 minutes and be right back.  So we sat and passed the time, with Mel riding shotgun in the front passenger seat and Osha and me in the back seat.

Out in front of the saloon were a bunch of good old boys, in their 30s and 40’s, looking like they were rode hard and put away wet.  I joked that they were probably all named Bubba and Junior.

As we conversed, Mel had her head turned toward us in the back seat.  Over her shoulder, I noticed one of the Bubba’s heading toward the car.  I saw that he was sporting a holster and gun, as if he was part of Jesse James’ gang.  He walked between our car and the car next to us.

Suddenly he pulled the passenger door open, drew his gun, and put it to Mel’s head.  She turned her head to see who had opened her door, unaware that it was a gun that was pressed against her head.

Upon seeing her face, Bubba pulled back.  “I’m sorry,” he said apologetically.  “I could only see your long hair.  I thought you were my ex-wife.”  He holstered his gun, stuttering, “I saw you were in Drew’s car.  I thought he had taken up with my ex.  I’m really sorry, maam.”

- Mountain Man

Even as a realtor, I never fully grasped the implications of the real estate market’s influence on so many other occupations.  With the downturn, which here in Cape May County, New Jersey began in mid-2005 and seemed to turn the corner and head back up in mid-2007, the realization really hit home.

The slowdown in real estate sales affected, first, those who build new homes.  I’m talking about masons who put in the concrete footing, followed by a few coarses of block to get the home away from the ground and any possible flood situations.  Then there’s the framers, who frame out the house and cover it in plywood.  Then there’s the roofers to get the shell waterproof, followed by the siding guys to put up vinyl siding.

Then there’s carpenters to install the windows and doors, and do other wood work.  Now the inside of the home is buzzing with electricians, plumbers, and heating and air conditioning crews.  After those tasks are completed, the drywall guys can enclose the inside walls and get them spackled.  Painters do their thing on the new walls in turn.

The kitchen requires installers of cabinets and countertops.  The kitchen and bathroom floors need a tile guy, and the bedrooms need a carpeting crew.  A carpenter lays down hardwood floors.

Finally, a landscaping crew sets irrigation lines and heads in the yard, then grass and shrubs are planted after the driveway is asphalted and concrete sidewalks are added. The house is ready.  It has used 17 different trades, employing about 40 workers.

The real estate industry also fuels title companies, attorneys, home inspection companies, termite inspectors, septic tank inspectors, water test companies, mortgage companies and bankers, and those professions called to fix a deficiency in the home revealed by one of those inspections.

The other aspect is all the companies who produce lumber, tile, carpet, concrete, block, roofing shingles, sheetrock, cabinets, granite and corian countertops, toilets, sinks, washers, dryers, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, dishwashers, windows, doors, heating and air conditioning systems, and even televisions and such.  Wow!  If new home building is off from the previous year, that’s a lot of manufacturing income and jobs lost.

Now that the real estate market recovery has begun here at the southern New Jersey shore, it’s nice to know that so many folks will be getting back to work.

- Mountain Man

To learn more about our real estate market, visit our website at http://www.JewellRealEstateAgency.com

Now that I’m in my late 50s, I find myself more often reflecting on life.  I sometimes flash to parallels between my actions in early life and how that influenced my later life.

I grew up in Wyckoff, a suburban town in Bergen County, the northernmost county in New Jersey that’s nestled next to and just west of New York City.  It’s there that I attended public school from kindergarten through the 10th grade, my “formative years”, so to speak.

I was in the advanced class from the first grade on.  We were the ones that were pushed, that the most was expected of.  We were to be the future businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc, the educators felt.

In the 5th and 6th grades, our entire class subscribed to the New York Times, which was handed out as we entered our class in the morning.  In those days, except for lunch and gym, we never left that one classroom and we had one teacher.  Our first subject of the day was always “Current Events”.  In it, students would raise their hand, then begin a discussion based on an article in that day’s NY Times.

I loved Current Events.  I was the first to raise my hand, covering subjects from the space race to President Kennedy to the United Nations to famines in Africa.  Little did I realize that my voracious appetite for reading the newspaper would 30 years later lead to me becoming a newspaper sportswriter, then sports editor, and even publisher.

I also was crazy about Geography.  I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the states, then all the countries of the world.  Give me a blank map and I could fill in just about every state and country and most of their capitols.  Later in life, this curiosity would lead me to live as an adult in Florida, California, Oregon, Maine, Montana, North Carolina, and St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.

The other subject that I excelled in was Mathematics.  I’m almost embarrassed to say that I put little effort into it because it came so easy.  I was a wiz, but I can’t take credit due to hard work.  I guess my brain was just set up for math.  I ended up majoring in math in college, and my abilities in math have been a major factor in my life.

Needless to say, I usually got “A’s” in the three subjects I mentioned.  The credit goes to my curiosity.  I wanted to know more and more.  “How?” and “Why?” drove my brain to dissect subjects, dig further, learn more.  Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it pushed me to excel.

- Mountain Man

The American business system is based on free enterprise.  You get an idea, then implement whatever is necessary to make that a successful business.  Hard work and ingenuity have their rewards, right?

Here in New Jersey, that’s not the case when it comes to starting a restaurant that serves liquor.  You see, the Garden State has quotas on liquor licenses.  Each municipality, if they allow liquor and many don’t,  is permitted one restaurant liquor license per 3,500 residents.  In my town of 18,000 yearround residents, that’s five restaurants that can serve liquor.

The only exception is the towns that had more liquor licenses than that before the quota took effect, which I believe was in the late 1970’s.  In the island town of Wildwood, winter population 4,400, there are probably 30 liquor licenses.

Back to my municipality, Middle Township, which is one of the five towns on the mainland in our county (the other 11 are island towns).  Our town is the county seat, and center of shopping, medicine, and the legal profession.  Plenty of restaurant chains would love to locate here - the one’s like TGI Fridays, Applebees, Olive Garden, Ruby Tuesday, Chili’s, Red Lobster, etc.  Nice family restaurants that serve liquor.  They can’t, of course, because there’s no liquor licenses available.

To get a liquor license in New Jersey, there are only two ways - your town’s population increases enough to hit that next 3,500 person plateau or you buy an existing license from another establishment that has closed.

When a town’s population does go up, the town auctions the new license.  The last one in my town sold for $660,000.  Yikes!  You gotta sell alot of beer to make that back.  A neighboring town auctioned one last year for $1.1 million.

Buying an existing liquor license is either possible or not depending on the town.  I bought one of two licenses in West Wildwood in 2001 for $110,000.  That was considered a bargain, but the location wasn’t great.  I sold the bar and license in 2004.  The license went for $200,000.

In West Virginia, where our second home is located, the liquor license system is fair.  It costs $1,150 to get a full license, payable to the state, allowing you to sell beer, wine, and hard liquor.  Anyone with enough gumption can get a license.  It’s free enterprise at its best.  To the victors go the spoils.

The whole process in New Jersey is un-American.  Anyone who wants to start a restaurant or bar should be able to.  Then it’s survival of the fittest.  That’s the American way!

- Mountain Man

The old adage in real estate is “location, location, location”.  But in the latter half of 2007 and now 2008, I believe the phrase should be “price, price, price”.

The media, while finally admitting that real estate trends are “localized”, isn’t exactly beating the drums to announce that the real estate market here at the southern New Jersey shore has rebounded.  The reason is clearly price.

That’s especially good news for first time home buyers, who were shut out of the market back in 2003 when prices wildly escalated.  In our market, sales prices rose 3% per month in 2003 and 2004.  That’s a whopping 36% a year!  So a home priced at $200,000 in 2002 jumped to $270,000 a year later and $360,000 in 2004.  Young couples just couldn’t afford it.  Neither could many families contemplating a second home in the Wildwoods.

In the first half of 2005, prices rose another 1% per month.  So by July, that home was now $380,000.  With so many folks looking to cash out at these higher prices, plus people trying to buy new condominiums and flip them for a profit, the market suddenly had too much inventory.  The rest is history.

Prices stabilized in the second half of 2005, then dropped in 2006, although many sellers didn’t want to admit that the market had changed so they stuck to their high asking price …. and didn’t get it.  Their properties just sat on the market - few lookers, even fewer offers.

In 2007, reality appeared to set in.  Sellers dropped prices again and again, in increments of $20,000 or more each time.  That home we talked about that went from $200,000 up to $380,000, had now dropped back to a more respectable $260,000.  At that price, buyers got off the fence and started buying again. 

We have seen a big increase in business since mid-2007.  The phones are ringing again.  Buyers are walking through our doors.  Our fellow realtors are reporting the same upsurge in business.

So before prices start to creep up again, don’t you think it’s a good time to buy?  The price is right!

- Mountain Man

To learn more about our real estate market here in the Wildwoods and Cape May County, visit our website at http://www.JewellRealEstateAgency.com

In 1976, I was hitchhiking east on Interstate 10 from San Diego, California with my then wife and dog.  It was about 85 degrees on this May 1st day.  East of San Diego, we got a ride in the back of a pickup truck from two guys in their 20s.  They would take us over the Alpine Mountains and let us off in Ocotillo Wells, a small desert town. 

By the time we hit the upper elevations of the Alpines, the temperatures had dropped into the 40’s.  Dressed in tee shirts, jeans, and sandals, we were quickly freezing our butts off.  As the truck hauled along at 75 mph, we pulled warmer clothes out of our backpacks and slipped them on.  We were shivering.

Eventually, we dropped out of the mountains and into the desert.  Before we knew it, the thermometer hit 100 degrees.  As we stripped down, I glance into the cab of the pickup truck and noticed it was filling up with smoke.

The driver swerved into the breakdown lane.  The passenger jumped out, then reached back into the cab under his seat.  He pulled out a red rag, like the kind that mechanics use, that had spots of oil on it.  It was smoldering and smoking like crazy.

He threw the rag onto the side of the highway, stomped out the fire, left the rag, and we got back on our way east.  Soon we would reach Ocotillo Wells and the ride would end. 

Four hours and three rides later, we were in a van with a guy with long hair and a real long beard.  He asked us if it was alright if he got off the highway and went into a small town to buy milk and bread and a few other groceries to take home to his wife.  No problem.

He got off the interstate and headed to the general store.  A few miles later, just as we approached the store, the van began to fill up with smoke.  The driver urgently pulled to the gravel shoulder.  We jumped out of the van and I leaned back into the passenger side and reached under the seat. 

I yanked out a smoldering, red rag.  In fact, it looked like the exact same red rag that caught fire a couple hundred miles ago.  Same oil spots, same everything!  Was it the same red rag that we left by the side of the highway?  Was it deja vu?  I’m not sure, but we all had goose bumps!

- Mountain Man

In listening to former soldiers give accounts of their battle experiences in World War II, Vietnam War, etc, I was always struck by a statement that was echoed by many.  “I never felt so alive”, they’d claim.  “I lived every moment.”

I didn’t really understand the meaning behind that sentiment.  Then, in 1976, I undertook my first long distance hitchhiking trip.  It would last  two and a half months, in which time I covered 9,000 miles along with my then wife and dog.

I’m not saying I was shot at (guns were pulled on us three times though), so my comparison is not that life hung in the balance at any moment.  Still, there were similarities.

Hitchhiking makes you vulnerable.  You’re traveling without the security of a vehicle.  You’re susceptible to weirdos, rain and lightning, biting insects, and that desolation feeling after spending four hours or so on a lonely road in the middle of the southwestern desert.

Evey morning when you wake up, you have no idea who you’ll meet that day, how far you’ll travel, and where you end up sleeping that night.  That anticipation is exhilarating, even exciting.

Your awareness level becomes intensified.  Standing by the side of the road, your eyes lock on every approaching vehicle.  You pick up their “vibes”.  Are they good people, or do they have bad intentions, a certain darkness about their character?  If your senses are hyperactive, you become a good judge.

The relationships you form with folks who give you a ride, though they last only a few hours, are inspiring.  There’s a feeling of “I’ll never see you again”, so they blurt out personal things about their life that they’d never tell a spouse or friend.  You’re a sounding block, an impartial ear.

Long distance hitchhiking isn’t for everyone.  It takes someone who is confident in their abilities and self assured.  But if you’ve got those ingredients and give it a try, you’ll find that you never felt so alive.

- Mountain Man