Ron Lyons: (00:58)
All right guys, welcome to another episode of the Ron LANs Real Estate Show. And as you may be able to tell, I happen to be Ron Lyons. So I'm gonna be here with you for just the, the next little bit. I don't know how long we're gonna go today, maybe 15 minutes, maybe 30, maybe an hour. I'm not real sure,

Ron Lyons: (01:21)
But we're at the very beginning of this podcast episode and lemme just tell you, I've got a lot of stuff on my mind today, but something that's really standing out to me is this Celina, Texas real estate market and how different it is right now. It doesn't have the same feel that we normally have in the middle of summer in Celina, Texas. And that's largely based on so many of the economic things have gone on. And I'll just kind of summarize it quickly. This isn't what this show's about, but I'll just tell you quickly under the last presidency, and I'm not talking politics here, but under that presidency, the real estate market got really, really ugly. Nobody was selling anything. Things were just sitting on the market for a long time. And from a real estate perspective, when the change in administration happened, got a new president, we were very hopeful that things were gonna change across the board. And for a brief moment, once Trump won that election, things really started to turn up and then tariffs happened and all of a sudden all of the wind went out of all of our proverbial sails and sails themselves. Not sails, but sails actual actually went back down again. The market got stagnant and it shifted very much again into a buyer's market. Now, as you move forward a little bit over the last few weeks, and that's the one good thing about this administration is things tend to go fast.

Ron Lyons: (03:07)
Now the tariff things have started to calm down. The market is starting to show signs of life again. We're definitely not back right now. It's definitely not at all a seller's market, which is so interesting 'cause I've sat right here on this side of this microphone and I've talked all about how it's a, a seller's market back in time and stuff like that. And we'd talk about the, the ways that if you were a buyer, how you could work really hard and do certain things in order to get your offer up in the,

Ron Lyons: (03:48)
In the front of someone's mind that was selling their house, how yours could be at the forefront of a big stack of offers. And now here we are talking about how you can actually sell your house because it's a, it's definitely a buyer's market. And here's what I want to do. I've gone through and analyzed about 20 properties in downtown Celina and I just drew a big giant square around downtown. There were 20 active listings. I didn't want anything that was too new. I did end up catching a couple of 2017 builds in there, but for the most part, most of the properties are older. And you're gonna hear me flipping pages here because I actually have notes. So bear with me as I go through these notes. And I want to tell you what this show is kind of all about.

Ron Lyons: (04:46)
And that is that I think right now is such a terrible reflection of who we are as a community as it relates to real estate for sale here. And you're gonna say, okay, that sounds really weird. How can we reflect as a community that in, in a way that has anything to do with the real estate market? And here's what I'm talking about. We are a small town, we're a small community still, or at least we still have that small town feel. We have a town square, we've got, you know, these, uh, things that make us who we are. We still love Friday night football here. We still support local businesses. We like the mom and pop type shops. We have all of that. Yet, when it comes time to actually list our properties for sale, especially around downtown, that whole small town vibe thing that goes away,

Ron Lyons: (05:49)
We always love to use the term shop local here. As a matter of fact, there are some people out there that'll come, come right out after you if you do anything that doesn't look like you gave local a chance first. And when I say local, I'm talking about local stores, local people who have businesses here, things like that. If you need something done, a service to your house, you need your garage door repair, you better check locally first and see if there's a garage door repair company in Celina before you go looking anywhere else. But oddly enough, even though we love to use that mantra and constantly, constantly, you know, say shop local, we do not do that when it comes to selling real estate. And it's shocking to me how much we have sold out to outside agents who do not know our city, who do not know this community, as well as the real estate agents that we have right here in Celina. And evidence of that largely can be seen when you read some of these descriptions of the property I was reading one while ago, and this guy's from Dallas and his description talks about how this house is in an area that's got a great small town vibe.

Ron Lyons: (07:18)
Okay, you're right, Celina does have a great small town vibe, but you're saying it from an outsider's perspective, it's very clear that you don't really get it because you're not here. You probably have properties all over the metroplex maybe, and I'm just making a guess here. Maybe you've got one in Richardson, maybe you've got one in Carrollton, maybe you've got a couple in Dallas and somehow, somehow you connected to having this one in Celina and you don't sit there and talk about it from like the, uh, perspective of a person who literally lives here, does life here and knows this community, knows what's going on. Instead you're like, oh, hey y'all just, uh, by the way, this, uh, this little Celina place up, there's got this really kind of cool small town vibe going on up there. Y'all should check it out. And I think that whenever we do this stuff, and I'm not casting any sort of shade or hate or anything like that towards any of these agents, I'm not doing that, nor towards anybody who chooses to use an agent outside of Celina, Texas.

Ron Lyons: (08:28)
It's certainly, it's your property and your prerogative and you can do what you want to do. I'm just making an observation and talking about it today, and I'm gonna be really interested to see what you guys think about it. But as I went through, let me get my, uh, lemme get my notes here and let's take a look at this and remind me in just a minute, you're not, not gonna be able to remind me, but remind me in just a minute to circle back around, I wanna talk about some of these vacant lots that are for sale Celina. Because some of these people who have these vacant lots literally think they're sitting on a gold mine. And it's so crazy because they've got them priced in such a way that, let's see, you could buy my dirt or my knockdown house here, which is basically still selling dirt.

Ron Lyons: (09:21)
It may have a structure on it, but if the structure is not any good, if it's not saveable, then you're really just selling dirt. And then quite a few cases out there right now, a couple in particular, people are trying to sell their dirt for as much or almost as much as you can, buy a super cute house on more dirt somewhere else in the city. And so it's kinda like, hmm, let me think about this. $300,000 for this rectangle of dirt that's this size. Or here's one, here's a rectangle of dirt that's even larger and oh, by the way, has a restored super cute house on it in this amazing little neighborhood for just $40,000 more. I think I'll spend my 40 K and get this really awesome house along with it. But we'll circle back around to that in just a minute. Let's talk about these, uh, these different houses that are for sale in Celina and let's talk about where some of these agents are from. So let's just see, I'm just gonna take the first 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I'm gonna take the first five properties. I'm not given addresses. I'm not doing anything like that because I don't want real estate agents getting all sensitive and calling me or texting me and saying, Hey, that was my property that you're talking about. I really don't appreciate that. I I don't honestly care if they don't like that. And I don't say that in a mean way. I'm not trying to say that in a bad way. I'm just saying that guess what, this is real estate.

Ron Lyons: (10:57)
If you're that sensitive, you're probably in the wrong job. And here's the other thing, everything I'm saying is actually true. It's very factual. So if the truth offends you, yeah, so sorry. So first five, the first one has a Frisco agent, the second one has a Plano agent, the third one back to Frisco, another Frisco agent. The fourth one actually has an agent out of Grapevine, Texas. And then the fifth one on this list has an agent out of Sherman, Texas. So first five properties, we've got Frisco represented twice, Plano once, and then, believe it or not, grapevine, Texas and Sherman, Texas. I really don't know what to say about that. It's literally shocking to me that we tout shopping, local support local, do all this stuff, local, local, local, local. But there must be an exception to that. Somewhere in that statement there's, there's a little tiny statement somewhere in the fine print that somehow I haven't seen that says, except for

Ron Lyons: (12:25)
If you're gonna sell a property in Celina, then don't shop local, then go outside of Celina and find an agent. I think it's really interesting, and I'm not a hundred percent sure that these people don't absolutely love and know Celina like the back of their hand. Maybe they do. Quite honestly, I don't know any of these people, so I'm not real sure that they do. And I, and I like to look at another couple of factors. Like I said, I'm very data-driven. I love looking at numbers and statistics and so many of these agents that I'm seeing, you can tell from their license number how long they've been doing real estate. And sometimes not only are these agents like from outside of Celina, but my goodness, they haven't been doing real estate that long either. So I'm not real sure why this is why this phenomenon is happening. But we'll talk about that in just a second and we'll see if maybe we can come up with some reasons. But let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Let's go on to number six. Number six, McKinney Agent McKinney, Texas. Let's see. And then finally right here, when we get to the seventh property, guess what, we have a Celina agent.

Ron Lyons: (13:48)
So out of the first seven, there's one Celina agent listed. So let's keep going. Number eight on my list has an agent out of Argyle, Texas, Argyle, Argyle, Texas. And then the number nine property. Guess what McKinney is back at it. It looks like we have a competition between McKinney and Frisco agents for some reason. I'm not real sure why. Oh, looks like Frisco's gonna get another one up on number 10. That's right. Another Frisco agent on number 10. Number 11 is a Dallas agent. Number 12, Plano hops in the mix. Number 13, Frisco puts another point up on the board. Don't get too cocky right there, Frisco, because guess what? The very next one, another Dallas agent. So let's just think about this for a second. I've gone through, what, 1415 of these now, and we had one so far, one Celina agent, you have to say, well, you know what, maybe it's because Celina agents aren't that great. Mm, I beg your pardon. We've got some amazing Celina agents up here. We have some very, very good Celina agents. And just like in every other profession, we also have some that aren't that great. So, uh, you know, Selena's not unique like that.

Ron Lyons: (15:35)
And I'll be honest with you about this, real estate is one of those careers that it's what I'd call a fallback career when you've done something else or you've had another trajectory in your career and then things may not work out for whatever reason. You have to find something else you can do, but you still wanna make good money. And real estate is one of those things that a lot of people fall back into. So when you fall out of one career, you kinda land in something like real estate many times. And that's understandable because there are agents out there, I'm one of them that does real well with real estate. But I've put in my time, I've put in my effort, I've been at this for a long, long time. I started doing real estate stuff back in the eighties. Now I've done a lot of other things too. My family was a real estate family. And so we had, hang on, let me just flip this page back here. I want to, I want to make sure that I, but I'm not missing any. I feel like there were some more Celina agents and there actually are, we're gonna get to those here in just a second. But, uh, my family,

Ron Lyons: (16:51)
My mom still a broker to this day, started back in the eighties and I started working in real estate in the eighties. It wasn't up here in Celina. I didn't get to Celina until 93, but started in real estate back in the late eighties and kind of cut my teeth doing all of this stuff, got out of it for a while, tried to, you know, kind blaze my own path, my own career, my own direction in life. Ended up doing some amazing things. One of those things is serving this city, Celina, Texas as a police officer for a while. And I ended up eventually coming back to real estate. I've been back at it now for some time. I, I think I'm maybe like 13 years back in this time around. I was in it for a long time before and now I'm back and I've got thir I think 13 years. And my family's still real estate family. My mom's still a broker. She's still actively a broker. And so I think that a lot of people get into real estate and they're not in it like that. They get into it because they did something else that didn't work out. Now here they are, they're a realtor and they look at people like me from the outside looking in and they say, wow, you can make a lot of money at this.

Ron Lyons: (18:27)
And that's an honorable thing to do, is to find something that you want to pursue and then go after it.

Ron Lyons: (18:34)
But so many of these agents, they're, they're part-time agents, they're not full-time. And they, they don't, they don't actually put all of the time and effort into being the kind of real estate agent that some of us are. And I can only speak for myself, but it's, you know, it's, it's a little difficult to talk about yourself because in it, it's right on that borderline of like bragging. But there are a lot of good agents up here in Celina, Texas. I'm in good company with them. But apparently when a lot of these people decide they're sell to sell their homes up here for some reason, maybe the, maybe all of our phone numbers are out or maybe our emails don't work, or maybe they just have one of those other connections to these real estate agents that are not in Celina. And that's one of the things that we have to contend with all the time.

Ron Lyons: (19:28)
And I mean all agents everywhere, including these ones who are out of town. And that is that a lot of people like to use a real estate agent that they, that they know very directly. There might be a sister-in-law, it could be a brother, it could be like, in my case, my mom's a broker. It could be something like that. Could be just a, an old neighbor that you had back when you lived in this city or that city. And so that's who you call. And that's good and that's bad. It potentially could be both. And what I mean is if they're amazing, if they're awesome, if they really know the market and you're trying to sell a house in Celina and they know the Celina market really, really well, then that's, that's awesome. That's an amazing thing. That's what you should be after her. On the other hand, if uh, if they're a real estate agent down in Dallas and they know nothing about this city and the best they can say is that it's, uh, it's this little town and it seems to have kind of a good vibe, that small town vibe, well maybe that's not such a great thing.

Ron Lyons: (20:38)
And again, not throwing any hate towards anybody, but just saying that you might want someone who really knows the town, who really knows the market that you're trying to sell in. Let's get back to this list real quick because I, I do know there's some Celina ones coming up. So let's see, we did the, the Dallas one last. So the next one, Frisco again. Then the one after that is Dallas. And then there's an agent who I know very well in town. She does a great job. She's one of the agents I'm talking about. She's super good. She's very, very good at her job. And she's got a listing right now for sale out there. She has her signs up here and there from time to time, but she showed up on this list. So there's another Celina agent. So let me go back, let me look on the other page here. So two, two Celina agents so far, literally two Selina agents. That's absolutely insane. Now I only have two more spaces on my list. So this would be, I guess, uh, somewhere around number 19 and 20, something like that. Here's the good news. They're both listed by a Celina agent. So if you combine all of them out of, uh, about 20 listings, four,

Ron Lyons: (22:15)
Four are Celina agents. Now of course, I'm a Celina agent as well. I'm based here. I live here. I love this city. And I have for 33 years, 1993, as I said, we're in 2025 was at 32 years. Many, many years I've been here. And I absolutely adore this city. I do everything I can for this city. I've got the best of Celina Facebook group that requires a ton of attention, effort, and effort. I've got the best of Celina website, of course, I have this podcast. I've got a radio station called Celina City Limits. I base everything that I do on Celina because I love it so much. In fact, my license plate on my truck says Celina. That's right. How many people do you know that literally that literally would have a personalized license plate that says Celina on it? Well, you may know one now, and that's me. And let me tell you this, um, I think my perspective from being in real estate

Ron Lyons: (23:26)
Is that we could probably do a lot better by hiring people from within our own market to list our homes for sale. I think we would do a lot better than what I'm seeing in these numbers. I'm seeing homes that are priced really, really incorrectly. I'm seeing really bad marketing done on these homes and not, not exclusively to agents that are outside of Celina. I saw, I saw one listing from a Celina agent that literally looks like the person went in with their cell phone on a dark day. And I guess that's acceptable. You're asking for over half a million dollars on a listing, and the best you can do with your pictures is throw up some, uh, some iPhone pictures. I don't know. I don't love that. I don't think that's that awesome. I mean, yeah, maybe the realtor saved two or $300 from not having to pay for professional photography, but doesn't your client deserve that?

Ron Lyons: (24:35)
I don't know. That's, maybe that's just me. I always do free photography for people. I don't do it. I pay for it because I know my limitations and I actually am good at photography. I'm very good with videography. I create a lot of media and I still wouldn't be the one to take pictures and post them up for people to see. Because let me give you an idea about this. When you're trying to sell a house, and this is, I'm, I'm gonna call this a realtor education moment. I'm gonna, I'm gonna help educate some of the other realtors out there real quick. And, and here's the thing.

Ron Lyons: (25:11)
You are trying to create an experience for the people who are interested in buying the home that you have listed. And when I say experience, I'm talking about a good experience. They, the buyers come looking for a home to buy. They're in the market for a home to buy. They want to fall in love with one of these houses. They have certain criteria. Maybe they want a three bedroom or a four bedroom and they want it, you know, in this area or this school district or this or that or whatever. They've got their things that they want, but now they have to find the version, the best, the best house that meets all of those needs, all of those requirements. Oh, and by the way, is something that they can see themselves doing life in that home. And that that speaks to them on so many different levels. It looks nice, it feels good. It's, it's comfortable. It reminds them of different things. Like they, they like it because it reminds them of houses they may have been in when they grew up, whatever, maybe it's just a trendy home and it just speaks to them because they're into something right now that's very trendy and popular out there. And this particular home has a lot of that. So it speaks to them.

Ron Lyons: (26:39)
So they're wanting to fall in love with a home. They're looking for the right one. It's almost like they're dating. It's like whenever you go out there and you start dating people, you wanna find that partner, but there's characteristics and traits that you're looking for in a person so that you can actually envision yourself doing life with that person, getting married, having a family, doing all of those things, the best and the worst of life, right? For better, for worse, all of that. And that's what these people are looking for. They're, they're dating by going to each of these different listings with their realtor, with their agent. They're looking, that's the dating and guess where the very, very, very first impression is made these days. It's online. They go, they hop on Zillow or something like that, and they're perusing through all of the different listings, and there's one that stands out to 'em.

Ron Lyons: (27:39)
It's, uh, the right price. It's in Celina, it's whatever else that kinda catches their attention. And so they click on it and they open up those pictures. And guess what? You're either gonna make an amazing impression or you're gonna make a terrible impression. Of course, you'll never probably know about all of the terrible impressions that you make because those people just don't show up, right? They just don't come to the listing. They just never call. They never come and look at the house. And there may be a few out there who will see and get this first impression that's not really so awesome. And they'll still go ahead and come look at it because they typically believe they've got the ability to look through some of that stuff. And they like maybe doing upgrades and, you know, doing some of the cosmetic stuff on a home so they can kinda look through that.

Ron Lyons: (28:39)
They're like, oh my God, these terrible pictures and this really, really godawful paint that's in this house. Like this person has like, oh, what color is that in the living room? And what the heck were you thinking when painted the kitchen that color? But they think they can change that and turn it into something adorable, and they actually get enjoyment out of doing that and God bless them because that does actually get some of these deals done. But by and large, obviously the majority of people are not out there looking for fixer uppers. So if you're a real estate agent, and here's, and here's the end of the class for my realtor friends out there, if you're an agent, do your client's and actual service and go out there and be a big spender. Spend the two or $300 and get good photography. Get at least decent photography at that level, and list the home with those.

Ron Lyons: (29:40)
And you're like, well, you know what? I don't wanna, I don't feel like I should have to pay her two or $300 outta my pocket and my, my client's not gonna do it. Uh, okay then kind of get out of the way. Kindly get out of the way. Let's, let's not do that. That's not a good thing for any of us. That gives all of us a bad reputation because like I said, there's not that many Solana realtors out there actually doing these listings. So we want to be extremely good at what we do. I learned a very long time ago that whatever I do, I want to be the best at it. So I study my craft, I practice my craft, I do everything that I can to be the absolute best at what I do. And my chosen craft is real estate. And so long before I'll actually go and meet someone, like in a listing appointment type scenario, I'll know everything that I can about their house, their situation, the neighborhood, the market. I will be thoroughly knowledgeable about all of that before I ever even go and see the home. I think that's what we should do and so much more.

Ron Lyons: (31:04)
And it is crazy because right now this kind of a market, this kind of a a buyer's market really thins the herd out a lot with real estate agents. I did a statistic, uh, a, a search a while back, it's been a minute, but a little while back, statistically in and around Celina, there were eight citizens per real estate agent in and around Celina. That's right, eight people that includes children. So that means that if you walk into a restaurant anywhere in Celina, Texas, at any given time, if there are 20 people in there, two of them are probably realtors. That's nuts because there's not two cops in there, there's not two doctors in there, there's not two mechanics in there, there's not two of almost anything else in there, but there's two real estate agents in there based on the statistics. So think about that. That means that we are highly saturated oversaturated with real estate agents in this area. And not all real estate agents do

Ron Lyons: (32:24)
What I'm saying. They don't take their craft and become a master of it. They can get the paperwork done, they can go through the motions, they can list your property on the MLS. And I guess if an offer comes in, they'll do some effort at negotiating on it. My experience is that most agents are afraid of negotiating. And I've said this a thousand times, but it's shocking to me how few of the people who choose to be real estate agents or realtors will actually negotiate. It's because naturally human nature is, we don't like conflict. So we, so we avoid conflict. And conflict comes whenever somebody says, oh, you want 500,000 for this house? Mm, we'll give you four 40 as our offer or whatever. And there starts the conflict and there's the uncomfortable part of it. And a lot of agents will go ahead and tuck their tail and go ahead in the corner.

Ron Lyons: (33:33)
And I'm not kidding even a little bit about that. One of the advantages that I have, and I leveraged this to the max, is the fact that I was a police officer in between first real estate and now, and when you're a police officer, you develop this thing called command presence. That means that you've got a very, very strong fiber about you. That you are incredibly persuasive and that you're very, very strong. You're strong-willed, have an awful lot of confidence. And some people say, well, you're really cocky. Okay, I'll take that title. I don't mind that at all in what I choose to do in real estate that serves me very well. Because if I'm weak or if I'm perceived as weak, or if I am any of those things, if I'm that agent that tucks my tail and hides in the corner, guess what my clients actually lose.

Ron Lyons: (34:30)
They don't win in that. So I, I have a feeling that a lot of people who have homes for sale, they go out there and they find someone a, that they are related to or that was a neighbor or that came recommended from a friend or a relative or something like that. And they don't really go through and search for and interview people that are real estate agents. They don't, they don't do that as a process. It's just easy. Oh yeah, my neighbor back when I lived in Carrollton was an agent. I'm gonna call her. And there you go. Then you have a Carrollton agent listing a Celina home and maybe probably not even doing it that well. And again, it's one of those situations where how do you actually know your home sits on the market for a long time? It gets very market worn, maybe eventually, maybe remember you don't like conflict, either you're the homeowner, you don't like conflict either. Maybe at some point it finally reaches terminal velocity and yeah, you go ahead and find another agent, one of the old adages out there. One of the things I've heard for many, many years is you want to, and this sounds bad, I know this is gonna sound bad,

Ron Lyons: (35:47)
But there's so much truth to it, and on everything that's a joke or a comedy or whatever, what makes it so funny is there is a, a little bit of truth to almost all of it. And in this case, this, this saying is you wanna be the firstborn, the second wife and the third realtor. Think about that firstborn, you get all the attention, et cetera, second wife, because by the second marriage, you've figured out all of the things that you didn't do right in the first one and then third realtor because the first realtor comes in and promises this pie in the sky number and wins you over with whatever personality, or I don't know what, then that doesn't happen. It doesn't pan out because their price was way out of the market. Oh, by the way, we happen to be in a buyer's market, so not a time to be overpricing. The second real estate agent comes along and maybe you modify the price a little bit

Ron Lyons: (36:54)
And you hope that there was really a flaw with the first realtor and that this realtor's not gonna have that flaw when all along. It's really not that. It's just the fact that you're kinda greedy and you want a whole lot of money for your house. So you're just trying really, really hard to hope that you get it. Then by the time the second realtor doesn't sell your house, then you move on to the third. Reality has fully set in typically by then and now you're like, listen, what's the number that the house is gonna sell for that third realtor gives you that number? And guess what? Now, now your home finally sells. It's kinda how it works. But I think it's very interesting that we don't use too many Solana real estate agents. It's shocking to me. It's very shocking to me. Now I stay pretty busy, but my goodness, if you look at the number of homes that we have for sale in Celina and look at how few Celina agents are actually on those kinda makes you start to wonder, and I wanna circle back around to this thing I was talking about with these vacant lots, because that's something that's very intriguing to me.

Ron Lyons: (38:07)
Now, I have bought and sold and helped people buy and sell vacant lots all around Celina quite a lot. I have some, I have some right now myself, have 'em here. I have some up in Gunter, I have them. I've, it's just, it's a faint, it's not uncommon. But here's the thing about that from an outsider's perspective, and you may be the one who actually owns the property, you may own the vacant lot yourself. You can look at it and you can decide for yourself that, oh, I think this is worth X, Y, Z. And I think my earlier example, I, I just kinda rounded it up and I said, $300,000, that's, that's kind of a common range in Celina, 200, $300,000 for vacant lots around downtown. And you say 300 is what I want. 300 is what uh, a real estate agent agrees to list it for. And I guess if you're fishing, if you're just throwing your line out in the water hoping a dumb fish comes along and buys it, then amen. And good luck and rah and I hope it works out for you. I really, really do. I hope it works out for you. We all hope for that one special fish to come along and bite on our line, right?

Ron Lyons: (39:34)
But here's the reality of the situation. Normally people who wanna spend $300,000, I'm just, again, this is just a random number. No, no, no reason for 300 other than that's just kind of a nice round common range for vacant lots in Celina, Texas. If somebody's going to buy dirt for $300,000, they're probably going to have to finance it. If they're paying cash, then that means that they're pretty smart about this already and they're not gonna give you $300,000 for your dirt. That's really worth 2 25, 2 40. And I don't know, I'm just making this up. This is just for the sake of discussion. They're, they're, those people are not gonna do that. So your fish just has to be even more special. Now, your fish has to be a naive fish to come along and bite on your line that you cast out there. And usually depending, depending on who you use as a realtor, and we're gonna call your realtor, that's your fisherman. If it's a good fisherman, a good fisherman's gonna look at that and you're gonna say, Hey, I want this really, really big fish because I want it to come on and take my bait and buy my piece of dirt here for 300 grand.

Ron Lyons: (41:11)
A good fisherman's gonna sit there and say, I'm so sorry, but you're not gonna be able to catch that fish. You don't have the right kind of bait, or this isn't the right water at the right time of year, or whatever the case is. And they're probably gonna turn it down. So if a, a real estate agent takes a listing like that, that kind of tells you quite a bit right there, good for the agent because they get some experience and they get another listing. Probably not good for you because you're not gonna sell your, you're not gonna sell your property. That magical fish isn't gonna come along. I mean it could, but if a hundred fish swim by one might be your fish in 99 or not, pretty soon you get tired of fishing. So you change your bait and your bait change means you lower your property down to 2 75 or two 70.

Speaker 4: (42:06)
Now,

Ron Lyons: (42:07)
Okay, you just increase your odds of getting that fish now by a little bit. But you're already market worn by now. All the fish know you're sitting on the shore with your bait sitting there floating in the water. So they're a lot more leery of it. They can sit there and look at how many days on the market and then eventually when you don't catch the fish you want, guess what you do, you finally put the correct bait on and then maybe finally sell. And that doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun to me. That doesn't sound like the way it's supposed to go. I think you price it appropriately to start with and then guess what? Then you sell it, then you move on. You take your money, stick it in the bank or invest it in something else and rock and roll. But that's me, that's my approach. That's what I like to do. Now here's the really funny thing that I see going on in selin with some of these vacant lots is there are vacant lots that are listed out there for, you know, any particular number and there's various different numbers. But if you look

Ron Lyons: (43:27)
And the data is readily available, if you look for as little as $40,000 more than what some of this dirt is selling for, you can get a bigger piece of dirt. So like, um, there might be a 0.13 or 0.15 or a 0.1 6, 1 7 of an acre. That's just dirt or a knockdown house. I'm calling knockdown houses the same as just dirt because there's no value in the actual structure. If it's a knockdown, you're truly buying it for dirt, you're buying the dirt and the location, right? But anywhere in Celina is considered really, really good. There might be better than there might be worse. And you can argue that a thousand different ways. A lot has changed recently with the way that the city of Celina is dealing with some of their commercial properties. It's nowhere near as easy. Now if you're on the interior of a neighborhood to flip something commercial, now it was pretty easy. But that all changed. The whole DTC downtown code changed here just months back.

Ron Lyons: (44:32)
Now, if you're on a major road like Oklahoma or Walnut or Ohio, different roads like that, you don't need what's called an SUPA special use permit in order to flip your property commercial. Now there's still things that are considered like the impact on the, the neighborhood and there's still certain uses that are prohibited and, and there's a, a kind of a, an idea, an overwhelming, you know, concept if you will, a master plan of how they want the downtown area to build out people who are really, really smart. Took a lot of citizens input and came up with this brilliant plan on how they want downtown to, to build out. But right now, if you're on the interior somewhere, if you're not on a major road, you're gonna have a harder time flipping your property to commercial use. Now that's just the way it is now you're gonna have to go in and get an SUP. So now all of a sudden, is your property worth as much? Because now whoever buys your property actually has to go down there and do that. So they're gonna gamble, they're gonna risk buying your little rectangle of dirt and hoping that they can then go in and get this thing flipped into what they want it to be.

Ron Lyons: (45:55)
It's a little different world now. Now they can side note here, they can give you a contract on the property and they could have a period of time built into it to do their due diligence. That is an option in some of the contracts where they can actually go and it's a feasibility period is what it is. And they can go then and have their meetings with the city and do all these things and find out whether or not they're gonna be able to do their commercial use on your little rectangle of dirt or not. But that can take months and months to get through those meetings to get definitive answers. So meanwhile, you're sitting here with a maybe sell in your little rectangle of dirt because you needed to get more money and you found some sucker of a real estate agent out there who's willing to do it because they don't know better yet. And someone does finally come along, they can't get financing because you've asked too much. And the comps don't support the price that you've got on your property. And these people are not independently wealthy. They're not gonna kick out 300 grand on your property. They don't just have that rolled up in their pocket. And if they do, they're smarter than to give you 300 grand for your property because it's not worth that.

Ron Lyons: (47:17)
But somewhere in there, somehow someone comes along that's in the mix, maybe they're gonna be able to get financing, maybe maybe they're gonna get to be able to do their commercial use on this little piece of dirt maybe. But they've gotta go to the city and find out. So you get a contract, it's got a feasibility period built in and it sits for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, maybe even longer sometimes as they're going through this process of finding out about their financing, is the city gonna allow my use on and on and on, all these things. And then at the end of the day, maybe you get to the closing table. A better approach would be from the very beginning, figure out what the property is actually worth. Save yourself a ton of stress and a lot of trouble. Get yourself a good Celina real estate agent. Find out the the true market value, not what you have in your head, not what you think. If you knew these things, then hell, you could be a real estate agent yourself, but find a person that you can trust, get that number and then let them do their magic. Let them market that home. More than likely. Someone who deals in an area kinda like I do downtown Celina is absolutely my specialty. I do anything in Celina, love doing downtown stuff and Prosper as well. I love downtown Prosper. I love Prosper in general. I feel like Solan and Prosper are like brother and sister.

Ron Lyons: (49:07)
We share a lot in common. We overlap school districts in some places. We both share Preston Road, the Dallas North Tollway, very, very similar in so many ways. I don't feel nearly as comfortable trying to sell in Frisco. Now. Something happens when you cross over three 80. It's just not the same as that one agent said. Not the same vibe. And going North Sherman's not my thing. McKenney is still doable for me, but I really, really specialize in Celina and Prosper. So chances are pretty good that if you talk to me, I'm gonna know everything about this market. If you come to me and ask about selling a house in Frisco or something, probably gonna send you to someone else that I trust down there. If you want to do something in Sherman, probably not me, and I'll be honest with you, and I'll tell you that I'm not gonna take a listing just for the sake of having that listing. Yeah, and I am unique like that. I think many, many agents out there will just take anything that they can get because guess what, it's one more sign up. It's one more maybe that somebody's gonna come along and buy that property. And guess what?

Ron Lyons: (50:35)
What do they have to lose other than a little reputation? And a lot of these people don't care about their reputation. Like I said, it's a fallback career. They don't care that much. They're still trying to build a name. They don't have a name, they're trying to build a name. But if you find someone in a specific area, chances are they already have a lot of network type connections. Other people who come back to them time and time again and say, Hey, I'm looking for another vacant lot to put another house up on. Or Hey, I'm looking for another historic home to buy to renovate. Or Hey, I'm looking for another flip opportunity. And so we kinda have this Rolodex in our head or in our phone of these people that we know we can go to all the time and say, Hey, I've got something. It's very similar to the other deals we've done. Great price, great location, great this, great that. And then we generally have an idea. Somebody like myself, especially only can speak for myself, but I'll have a really good idea of not only the property, the dirt, the little rectangle on the map, but I will also know what you can do with it.

Ron Lyons: (51:54)
I'll know what the zoning is, I'll know what it takes to sit through pre-construction meetings. I'll know what it's like to sit there and get these things through planning and zoning and to make sure that you meet all the requirements of the, that the fire department has, the engineering has that the impact that this particular use that you have in your mind is gonna have on the community so that we can go forward and actually have those discussions with the officials in the city and actually get you what you want. A lot, if not most real estate agents, and especially if they're not Celina agents are not gonna know how to do that. They're not going to have a clue how to do any of that. So just bear that in mind. I think there's a ton of advantages to using as, as they say in all those other ways, local shop local, find yourself a local Celina agent to represent your Celina property. And you're probably gonna turn out a whole whole lot better because we know this market, we know this city like the back of our hand. We live here, we love it, we breathe it, and we literally function in this ecosphere right here called Celina, Texas.

Ron Lyons: (53:26)
We're not from Grapevine, we're not from Dallas or Frisco or Plano or McKinney or Argyle or anywhere else. And God bless every one of those agents for doing what they do. Maybe one day I'll have a listing down in Dallas or something like that and I'll uh, I'll see what it feels like to have it flipped around. No, I won't do that because I won't ever take one like that. That's not correct. I won't do that. I'll never know what that feels like. I'll always know what it feels like to sell right here in my favorite city. Your favorite city, Celina, Texas. And guys, that's all I have for today. I know of taken up the better part of an hour. Thank you absolutely so much for staying with me. I'd love to get your feedback on this. Talk to me. Am I wrong? Did, did I forget something? Is there something, a different angle that I am not considering?

Ron Lyons: (54:18)
I'd love your feedback. Tell me what you think. You can either, you can either make a comment if you're listening to this on, uh, certain platforms and we're all over the place, if there's a way to comment, then by all means, leave a comment. If there's not, shoot me an email that's super easy. It's my first name at my old name, ron@ronlyons.com. Shoot me an email. You can also text me 2 1 4 7 8 3 54 42 1 4 7 8 3 5 4 4 0. Tell me what you think. Tell me if I'm off base. Tell me if I'm right on target. Tell me, tell me what I missed. I love getting your feedback, love having these, uh, moments with you guys talking about my favorite thing, which is real estate. And I love seeing you around town, which is, uh, what I hope to do. I'm gonna head out now and uh, maybe you'll see some of you guys around town, but either way, stay safe out there and God bless.

Speaker 4: (55:35)
Thank

Speaker 5: (56:06)
It's the Ron Lyons real estate show. Yeah, you turned up. Let's go In the real estate game, what you need to know is who you trust to make the bank account grow. Going to buy a place, look slick, stealth to sell it one day for generational wealth. Gotta take care of your kids. Set them month for day, but you ain't around to help them find their way. So grab the top deals with the number one, not a Instagram wheel, just in it for fun. Gotta climb to the top of get push down below. Everybody's trying to win, but what they don't know, the key to the deal. The name, the know Ron Lyon, the Real Estate Pro. So sit back, relax, let the knowledge flow. It's the Ryan Lyons sho