Realtor launches new management company

By Bill Walsh

By Bill Walsh

Times-Democrat Staff Writer

This, nearly every real estate professional agrees, is a great time to buy a house. Banks own a lot more property than they'd like, and have become a lot more accommodating when it comes to negotiating their sales.

The flip side is, this isn't the greatest time to be trying to sell a house.

Still, one person's challenge is another's opportunity, and local Realtor Julie Emery's launch of Piedmont Property Management is the right venture at the right time.

In her work representing buyers and sellers, Emery switched companies, joining Century 21 in July, then kicked off a new business which specializes in rental properties in August.

Clients are "mostly people who would love to sell but can't take that bath," so they rent," Emery said last week.

Fauquier and Culpeper County, where she also does a lot of work, "have lots of people in that situation right now," Emery said. "They get transferred, but can't afford to take that kind of loss."

To help them out, her services include finding tenants, doing the background screening, calling references, and running the credit check. She also collects rents, checks that property is being properly looked after, and is the go-to person for repairs — especially, she said with a laugh, those that are needed in the middle of the night.

The rental market is "pretty strong," Emery said, though it is beginning to soften a bit. "More and more families are in the position where they are renting out their homes, so there is a lot more inventory at the moment, and prices are getting a little softer," she noted. "I think we will see that for a while."

The bulk of her time is still spent on listing and selling homes, Emery said, but she has hired two part-time employees to help her run the new company.

"Once you get the tenant in the property, theoretically, if everything is going well, it's not a huge time commitment," she said of the new business.

In truth, Emery would like the local real estate market to take up even more of her time.

In Fauquier, that means getting past the current stalemate.

"If you look strictly at foreclosures, prices are dropping dramatically," Emery said. "At first, that wasn't true. It took a while for the banks to figure out that they needed to drop the prices. They finally got it.

"The problem has become your average homeowner has just proven completely unwilling to take that hit. Either they don't have to sell or they are unwilling to. For most homeowners trying to sell, competing with the price of foreclosures is really tough.

"The buyers are buying the foreclosures, and pretty quickly. You are seeing a lot of foreclosures go under contract in less than a month. But the average homeowner won't budge, and the buyer is only looking for the things that are a bargain. It is tough right now."

The standoff is a buyer's godsend. And they shouldn't be so worried about getting the money to get in the game, Emery said.

"If you've got good credit, there is still money out there," Emery insisted.

"You may have to come up with more of a down payment than before. But there are still loans that have very low money down. No money down is gone, and that's a good thing. But if you have some cash, and you have decent credit, you can get a mortgage, And interest rates are low.

"The perception is that no one can get a mortgage, and that is simply not true," she said. "There is a little too much fear out there."

Piedmont Property Management can be reached at (800) 851-1563 or by e-mail at ppm@julieemery.com.

An astute observer of everything having to do with real estate, Emery also writes "Home Notes," a popular blog on the Times-Democrat Web site.