Blog - Kleimer Real Estate

Planting Trees

September 27, 2017 by Ben Kleimer Leave a Comment

The man who waits for a roast duck to fly into his mouth must wait a very, very long time. I love this Chinese proverb.

It makes me laugh and at the same time feel a little sad for the man waiting for the impossible. The humor comes, for me, from the visual image my mind creates. Imagine Shel Silverstein drawing. A kneeling man, an over sized mouth held agape and pointed skyward. The mouth has more spaces than teeth and his skinny frame is decorated with dust, spider webs and other debris from his head down to the pile of dirt that has accumulated nearly up to his waist as he waits for the dead and cooked duck to fly and fly straight into his mouth. The image conveys the dangers of waiting or hoping for what we want by stretching the concept to the point of rediculousness by having the man wait for something we believe is wonderful but experience tells us is not likely to occur. Funny if it weren’t so sad right?

So why do I draw inspiration from a proverb that conjures a sad or even desperate image of man in my mind?

The image of that man wasting his life into ruin also brings to my mind thoughts of another proverb. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is today. The first sentence suggests, that if we want trees, we are 20 years too late. Like the man waiting for the flying roast duck we’ll be waiting in vain. The second sentence tells us that though we missed the boat 20 years ago, its not too late, we can still have the trees we desire. Some find this concept to be inspiring. Of course of course for many no tree ever gets planted. After all, if today is still a good day to plant a tree. So is tomorrow.

The concepts of these two proverbs considered together though is where I find the inspiration necessary for action. Together the expressed ideas move beyond the uninspired office break room poster. Together the proverbs tell us of the reward for taking action and the consequences for not doing so. When the sort of rah rah inspiration of the tree planting is considered with alongside the image of the waiting man, we now have motivation for real live adults. Carrot and stick. These concepts together provide the self aware person who is skeptical of taking action for action’s sake with the most powerful motivation of all. The realization that not only can a desired future be achieved, but that we must take action towards achieving that future.

What’s going on at Kleimer Vail Real Estate

November 10, 2015 by Ben Kleimer Leave a Comment

Being known as experts in buying and selling Vail properties constantly begs the question from everyone we meet, “How’s the market?”. Rather than engage in standard sales behavior with a reply of “I’m so busy!”, here’s an actual list of some of the transactions we are currently engaged in. Perhaps a property you know of matches a Kleimer Vail Real Estate Buyer profile.

A few of the things The Kleimer Company has been up to lately:

Buyer in Search of: International business owner searching for his dream mountain getaway for young family. Requirements: 4 bedrooms, 3 car garage, fantastic ski slope views and space for the kids to play. $4.0M to $6.0M. National forest access is a must.
Newly Available Opportunity to own in Vail Village. Mountain Haus View unit.
Pre approved entrepreneurial and professional Buyer looking to purchase his first Vail home. 3 bedrooms and a garage under $400,000.
Sold: Singletree neighborhood building site. Flat, beautiful views, .49 acres, $335,000.
Kleimer Co Seller in negotiations on last remaining high end Singletree homesite. $540,000.
Developer in need of: Development sites large and small. Our builder partner’s latest homes are about to close and he needs a site for the next luxury home. The Kleimer Co realtors are looking for a site to purchase or a landowner to partner with.
Buyer in Search of: 4 bedrooms in the Avon/Edwards areas with views of the high peaks, quality construction and lots of kids in the neighborhood under $1.4M. Help us welcome this repeat Kleimer Company Client back to town.

Snow Falls, Vail Real Estate Market Rises

November 3, 2015 by Ben Kleimer Leave a Comment

After a spectacularly sunny fall the snow is coming down outside on the first snowy day. The Aspen leaves were spectacularly bright and evenly colored this year. Yet as the snow falls, the Vail Real Estate Market rises.

Real Estate sales in the Vail Valley did not start out with a lot of strength. When compared to the previous year, January was up, February was way down. March was up. April was down. Since April however, the Real Estate market has been showing real strength. May, June, July and August sales dollar volume was up in each month. Way up. As of the end of August, Vail area real estate transactions total over $1.2 Billion dollars. 14% more over the same period of 2014.

Drilling down, this data show there is real strength in the market. Being a fan of Mark Twain the famous speaker, “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”, I always like to take a closer look at number sets. Why? Rising dollar volume of sales is good right? Yes that is true. Yet misreading market trends results in pricing homes too high for the market or too low with a seller leaving money behind. In recent years seller pricing has very frequently resulted in homes being over priced and going unsold because of overconfidence in the trend of rising sales prices. Since the market recovery began and dollar sales volume has risen, the overwhelming bulk of that upward trend came from strength of Luxury Properties in limited market segments. Today, the dollar volume of sold homes has been rising roughly in parallel with the number of homes sold. While home prices and sales continue to rise at the upper ends of our real estate market, transaction numbers and sales prices are now strong at the lower ends as well.

House Showing by roller coaster: Gimmick or Effective tool?

October 27, 2015 by Ben Kleimer Leave a Comment

How would you like to shop for a new home from the seat of a roller coaster?

By now you seen the video floating around out there in cyberspace which shows potential home buyers racing through a property listing in their very own car on a miniature roller coaster. Thats right a roller coaster. It seems that in the Netherlands the main attraction for a really fun evening at the theme park has been adapted to the often serious world of selling homes.

At one suburban looking home a full loop roller coaster track complete with descents, climbs and banked turns was constructed looping in, out and through a house for sale. In the video, potential buyers can be seen climbing onto one of the single passenger cars of the roller coaster for a personal tour of the home. The home tour begins with a descent into the garage, followed by a hard banked turn to the stairs where the car is towed up stairs to glide past the kitchen and through the living room before being towed to the uppermost level and finally outside the house and back to the starting point of the coaster. What a fun way to see a house!

The accompanying posts on Facebook claim that the coaster was built by the seller to attract attention to his house. Some posts claim the coaster was built by the realtor. Some claim the coaster was built by the homeowner. The reality it turns (video link) out is that it was built to attract attention to much more than this single house. As you learn from watching the BBC footage of the coaster tour, the coaster was built for more than selling just this house. It was constructed to be a part of a television commercial for the bank which owns the house and many others. I hope they were successful! For just one house, the cost of designing, permitting and building a roller coaster could not balance out for a property owner to offset a simple kitchen upgrade, and price reduction. As the centerpiece of an ad campaign intended to do more than sell only one home it is quite likely that the advertiser got the exposure it was looking for. Wether they got the exposure they were looking for or not, it sure looks like fun. Yet, wether measuring fun or home selling exposure I’m pretty convinced the coaster just can’t compare to the real live coaster we have here called Vail and Beaver Creek.

What you need to Know

June 3, 2015 by Ben Kleimer Leave a Comment

The market is up. The market is down. If the first two sentences were re written as questions, the answers to both would in fact be yes. The total dollar amount of property sold over the first four months of 2015 has swung wildly when compared to the dollar volume of sales for the same period in the previous year.
January up 41%. February, down 26%. March up 34%. April down 52%. Sales through April $488,997,567, 14% fewer dollars have been spent on Vail area Real Estate than over the same period of 2014. Yet, the number of properties sold is up 3%.

So are prices falling? No. Closer examination of the market sales statistics reveals that the local market is undergoing a transition. For several years local markets have been buoyed by the sales of high end properties. Though few in number, these sales can have a large effect on statistics, particularly during the winter months which typically see fewer sales transactions so the large dollar amounts of a few sales have an outsized effect on the total sales numbers for the area. Now the trend may be changing away from only very high end properties moving, to high quality properties selling in more regularly priced markets as well. Definitely take note of the fact that homes priced under a half a million dollars have really begun to take off. So much so that homes in that price range have doubled their share of the total market since the new year began. This is exciting because when, people buy $150,000 one bedroom condominiums, they allow the sellers of those condos to go out and buy $250,000 two bedroom condos which allows the sellers of those properties to move up the ladder as well. In a resort community such as Vail this spreading of economic prosperity across a widening base increases the quality of life for all and even strengthens the prices of homes priced higher on the pyramid.

The fluctuating nature of the sales trends shows that we are not entirely out of the woods quite yet. The strengthening of the base of the housing market means that we are now even closer to the point in time where real estate prices have recovered to their 2006 levels across all segments of the markets.

New Listing in Vail Village

April 1, 2015 by Ben Kleimer Leave a Comment

This is your opportunity to own a piece of Vail Village at the best value in Vail. Adjacent to Vail’s storied Covered Bridge, residence 444 at Vail’s Mountain Haus comes with a full suite of amenities. Enjoy views of Vail’s front side, sleep to the sounds of Gore Creek, and walk to everything.

In every season, this resort is teaming with activities and events. Mountain Haus is at the center of it all. Stroll to all of Vail’s shops, restaurants, summer farmer’s market, bike paths, trails and lifts. The facility hosts an outdoor pool, indoor and outdoor hot tub, in-house management and luxury hotel services. This residence offers strong rental possibilities to lower costs of ownership and a rare in-unit laundry facility. Enjoy The George Restaurant located on the lower level of the Mountain Haus for original fare and cocktails. For purchase information, call us!

At $1,615,000 this may be the best value in the building.