Southwest Flavor Ep. 179 - James Wendling, Javier Avalos

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Ron Arenas (0:13)

All right, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Southwest Flavor. Happy Tuesday to all of you. We have a great show for you today. We got our co-host Ron Kirk from Arcadia Landscape.

Ron Kirk (0:23)

Welcome. Good morning, Ron. How are you?

Ron Arenas (0:25)

Doing good, doing good.

Ron Kirk (0:27)

Good, good, good, good.

Ron Arenas (0:28)

Look, we're almost matching. I have my green shirt on and you have your green highlights on or whatever.

Ron Kirk (0:34)

Hey, you're getting, right on the verge of starting to become with Arcadia, not Picture Rocks.

Ron Arenas (0:38)

We got our green lights, but the green lights are for Celtics.

Ron Kirk (0:42)

Hey, I got a sign coming here pretty soon. It's going to be right back here just like yours.

Ron Arenas (0:45)

All right. Very good, very good. Hey, our first guest today is James Wendling from Beloved Built.

James Wendling (0:50)

Good morning.

Ron Arenas (0:51)

Good morning.

Ron Kirk (0:52)

How are you doing today?

James Wendling (0:53)

I'm doing great.

Ron Kirk (0:54)

Thanks. Yeah.

Ron Arenas (0:55)

Thank you for coming on. It's been a while.

James Wendling (0:57)

Yeah, it has. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, I'm excited to be here with you guys today.

Ron Arenas (1:01)

So tell us a little bit about yourself first.

James Wendling (1:03)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, so I am married, have four kids. I have three grandkids, which is...

Ron Arenas (1:10)

You have three grandkids?

Ron Kirk (1:11)

Yeah.

James Wendling (1:12)

We just had our third actually, just a little bit ago.

Ron Kirk (1:15)

Congratulations. Thanks.

Ron Arenas (1:16)

That's awesome.

James Wendling (1:17)

Yeah. So I'm owner of Beloved Built Construction. We do kitchen and bath remodels. I also sell real estate full time and work at my church, Bridge Christian Church.

Ron Arenas (1:30)

Very good. You've been in the real estate game for a long time.

James Wendling (1:34)

Yeah. 27 years.

Ron Arenas (1:35)

27 years. So you've seen a lot of the ups and downs. Yeah.

James Wendling (1:39)

I have. I've looked through them all. And we'll see how this market plays out.

Ron Arenas (1:45)

Yeah. Tell us a little bit about this market right now.

James Wendling (1:48)

Well, it's definitely super interesting.

Inventory remains relatively stable. Buyer demand is down pretty substantially. The Fed just raised the rate again, which doesn't have a direct impact on the mortgage rates, but it does impact them. And now we're back at about 7 percent.

Ron Kirk (2:06)

Yeah.

James Wendling (2:06)

You can imagine buyer sentiments not really keen on that.

Ron Kirk (2:11)

Right.

James Wendling (2:12)

Right. Market's lower. You know, listings are staying on the market a little bit longer.

Ron Kirk (2:16)

Yeah.

James Wendling (2:16)

But I think it's a good opportunity for buyers to get out there and negotiate. They haven't had that opportunity for a number of years.

Ron Arenas (2:23)

That's true. That's true. I mean, it is a buyer's market right now.

James Wendling (2:26)

Yeah, it is.

Ron Arenas (2:27)

So, they're able to look at things and like you said, negotiate and get into the home that they want, but also with some of the concessions that they want.

James Wendling (2:36)

Yeah. Right. Make it as affordable as it can be with these interest rates.

I can't say we'll never, I mean, there's never an opportunity to do that, right? But the likelihood of us seeing 3% interest rates again, that's really, really minimal, right?

Ron Arenas (2:54)

Right.

James Wendling (2:54)

We might see them again in the fives, hopefully, that's my hope.

Ron Arenas (2:57)

Yeah. I think a lot of realtors say like five and a half is kind of the sweet spot.

James Wendling (3:02)

Yeah.

Javier Avalos (3:02)

Yeah.

James Wendling (3:03)

So I could see that. But I think at this stage, you know, buyers have an opportunity to get out there and negotiate, find a great home for their families or for their situation. Right.

Javier Avalos (3:11)

Right.

Ron Arenas (3:12)

And there's always, no matter what the market is, there's always people that need to buy and sell homes.

Ron Kirk (3:17)

Oh, yes.

Ron Arenas (3:17)

Whether there's a death in the family, you're retiring, you're upsizing for a family or you're downsizing because you're older.

Ron Kirk (3:26)

Yeah.

James Wendling (3:26)

Job changes.

Ron Arenas (3:27)

Job changes, divorce, moving out of town for your job or whatever.