4202 Colorado Ave
Sales of $2 million or more are commonplace in Nashville, with many neighborhoods logging sales that were unimaginable four years ago. Those with seven-figure dreams dancing in their heads would have been seen as daft in 2019. And as that gave way to 2020, the news of the pandemic should have drowned those dreams.
And yet the market persisted and blossomed and began to devour buyers while casting would-be buyers to the curb, their generous, inflated, as-is cash offers thrown into the sewer.
Astonished sellers sulked, wondering if they could have gotten even more. Buyers were left licking their wounds vowing the next time they would make the sellers an offer they can’t refuse.
Even today, with buyers hoping to cash in on a market downturn, homes continue to sell with multiple offers. Grace Clayton, a veteran broker with Engel and Voelkers, had three of her listings receive multiple offers in one week with prices ranging from slightly more than $1 million to $4 million-plus.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Polonius advises giving fatherly advice to his son, Laertes, urging he should “never a borrower nor a lender be.” He said nothing of penders, which the Urban Dictionary defines as “a person who just keeps talking with the hopes that something they say will eventually make sense.” I define it as a person who waits for prices or interest rates to drop before buying homes.
There have been years when being a lender was not without consequences, such as 2009 when 148 banks failed and 2010 when another 157 followed. Things improved in 2011 when a mere 92 banks failed, data provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reveals.
2012 found failures in 51 different lenders, and the following years produced failures in 24, 18 and eight, respectively.
The FDIC has no failures on record for the years 2017, 2018, 2021 or 2022, although there were four in 2019 and 2020. History shows that banks fail. So Polonius’ advice was sound.
Polonius also offered some other tidbits that ring true today. “To thine own self be true,” for example. In real estate terms, that translates to “Get used to the prices and the interest rates and admit they are not dropping.”
Another line that has been reworked is that “Apparel makes the man” and “Give every man your ear, but few your voice.” Not bad for one short speech.
Back to pending – which he did not speak of – and borrowing. When the bard was barely 12 years of age, his father fell upon hard times and was forced to mortgage several properties that his mother had inherited. The family lost those lands. For those reasons, borrowing would not be a practice endorsed by Shakespeare. Yet he was no pender.
He became a homeowner after becoming a successful writer and, in 1597, purchased the second-largest house in Stratford for 60 pounds. He later bought 107 acres of farmland and an apartment.
At one point, there was a grain shortage, and he sold 20 bushels of malt to a neighbor on credit. The neighbor defaulted, and Shakespeare had to sue for payment, hence his aversion to lending.
Should a buyer have been interested in the property at 4202 Colorado Avenue in 1597, there would have been no lending involved as the price would likely have been some beads and a pelt or two. But such was not the case last week when the property traded for $2.05 million.
The listing was held by Clay Tate of Parks and Mary Frances Evers of Viva Properties for $2.195 million. Kristie Gogo, whose name could place her as a character in a play or movie and who hails from Williamson Real Estate, represented the buyer, who was able to negotiate $145,000 from the list price.
Is the price drop indicative of a falling market or is the $620 per square foot for 3,307 square feet higher than it would have sold for in 2021? The answer is that there were no sales of more than $2 million in 2021 in Sylvan Park.
The listing material notes the property includes a studio, is recorded as horizontal property regime (HPR) and can be used as a short-term rental. For the record, Shakespeare performed in a similar manner when his father died as he moved his sister into a cottage connected to the house and turned the main house into a pub.
In real estate matters, it is better to follow the advice of Shakespeare rather than that of Polonius, as William was no pender.
Richard Courtney is a licensed real estate broker with Fridrich & Clark Realty, LLC and can be reached at [email protected].