I'll be home for Christmas

Life is really short. I was reminded of that this week, and also the importance of family and friends during our short lives. It is so easy to get too busy being busy, and before you know it years have elapsed and dear people in our lives are now distant. I am pledging to myself to reconnect with family and friends I have allowed to drift, and to renew relationships which have gone fallow. I love being a real estate professional, and I love the opportunity Artesia's market provides me, but my priorities must be reexamined.

Christmas is a slow time for Realtors. Unless folks are in the middle of the buying or selling process, they generally aren't thinking about looking at houses or getting theirs ready to sell. We are thinking about Christmas plays at school, and office parties, and the food we will make and the family who may be traveling in or our travel plans to somewhere else. As Realtors, we normally dread the slow-down that happens this time of year, but I am thankful for it this year. Less demands from work allow us to focus more on family and I, for one, have been able to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. In past years, the holidays came and went before I had time to really taste the turkey. It is nice to be able to slow down a bit to feel the season wash over me and envelop me. I have Christmas spirit this year, and it feels great.

So, while I still spend much of my time thinking and about Artesia Real Estate and the market conditions that drive it, I am going to be intentional about leaving the laptop in its case while at home, and turning off the smartphone to be fully engaged in family and events of the season.

That said, I still have a living to make, and if you need advice or help selling or buying a home – I would love to be your Realtor. Call me - but lets wait until after Christmas to really start working on it and enjoy some time with our loved ones.

Scott Takacs: All Real Estate, All the Time (Except Christmas)

Cosmo the Crazy Cat

My cat is crazy. His name is Cosmo, he's Siamese and cross-eyed, and full-on deranged. He will be docile and content, allowing you to pet him one moment and biting, swatting, and running away the next. Without warning he turns on you, so my children never try to pick him up or get very close to him. It has to be Cosmo's idea to be affectionate or it won't end well. We love that crazy cat, but we often long for other cats we have had in the past who snuggled, purred, and showed genuine affection. No matter how much we wish Cosmo were different, he isn't.

What does my crazy cat have to do with Real Estate in Artesia? Not much really. But you can draw a comparison in this sense: Both my cat and the market for housing here are fickle, unpredictable, and no matter how much we wish they were something else, they are not. The market for property in Artesia is not what it was three or five years ago. It never will be. It may get very active in the future, and we may see prices rise again to new heights, but that will be a new market with new forces driving it. It may bear similarities to old markets, but it will never be just like them.

Markets ebb and flow, and very few have the talent and skill to time them Most who try to time any type of market lose. If you're considering purchasing or selling real estate, but have been trying to figure out what the market is going to do, that's very difficult. Real Estate Professionals work in that market day in and day out. We have the resources available to us to extract data from our particular market segment and make an educated estimate of which direction the wind is sweeping. There's almost no way of knowing with complete certainty what is in store in a dynamic and fluid market-place like real estate. The best way to wade in is side-by-side with a professional who knows as much as can be known about the arena you are entering.

Call, email, add a comment to this blog if I can be of service.

Hometown Pride

It's a great week to be a resident of Artesia isn't it? The Bulldogs are playing for another State Championship at the Bowl on Saturday. It's the Christmas season. Light Up Artesia is tonight downtown. What more could small town residents ask for, right? I, for one, feel blessed big time to be here, now. The thing is there are thousands of small towns across America where the residents feel just as lucky to be right there, right now too. But small towns are an endangered species. According to the census bureau, more people live in metropolitan cities than live in small communities for the first time in history. The trend is toward consolidation of urban areas and the slow decline of small towns and cities. I don't like that. I grew up in small towns, and I like raising my children in a small town, but they might not have as much of a choice about that as we have. How can we preserve our Artesia way of life for future generations? This is a questions I believe we better start asking and not just in a rhetorical way.

Small communities across America are deciding to take steps to preserve their unique lifestyle before they lose the choice. I have been reading about a project some small towns have joined designed to answer tough questions about their future. The Orton Family Foundation has created an initiative called “Heart & Soul.” H&S simply is a community planning program that brings together members of a community to discover what qualities and characteristics of the town are valued and make the city special. Then the community plans how to manage growth or decline going forward instead of just letting it happen. Various methods are used and there are some great success stories. I won't go into a deep discussion of the methodology or specific examples of H&S in other areas. I have included links to some relevant info if you want to delve deeper. My main point is this: Artesia is at a crossroads and I would like to see us work as a community to decide how to preserve what we love about this town, while being realistic about how to plan for, and manage, the inexorable change to come.

Partly, this is a selfish hope on my part. I want Artesia and the surrounding communities to experience smart, planned, and steady growth because I want the real estate market to be strong for the rest of my life. I depend on a healthy economy for my living. But some of my wishes are altruistic as well. My hope is that my children, and yours, will have the choice whether to make their lives and raise their children in this great town. If they want to live here, I hope there are opportunities for them to be able to do so in relative comfort. I fear that future generations will be forced to look elsewhere due to lack of opportunity here.

That's why I was so intrigued by the Heart & Soul Program. It seems to provide an excellent road map for cities and towns such as ours, where city leaders are non-paid, volunteers and simply don't have the time nor expertise for planning long term, and community-wide. What will it take to attract new business to replace ones which might leave? What can we do as a city to attract the type of professionals which might be needed by new industry? I have no doubt that Artesia can be a town with a bright future, but it will take effort and an eye toward the future. My preference would be to decide how we are going to change as opposed to reacting when change happens – as it inevitably will.

As always, I welcome your comments. Feel free to email me at scott@c21hp.com to share your thoughts or comment here on my blog page. If you would like to join me in exploring community-wide, proactive planning programs, I would love to hear from you.

Scott Takacs

All Real Estate, All the Time