The Greater Nashville Association of Realtors(GNAR) membership was stunned last week after CEO Don Klein announced to his broad of directors that he would be leaving the association with the expiration of his current contract at the end of the year.
Don has been a fixture at GNAR for years having served in his current capacity for 16 years after having been its public relations consultant for many years prior to that.
Klein bleeds GNAR blue. Quite frankly, GNAR didn’t even have a color to bleed prior to his arrival as he has branded the organization with its logo, colors and elevated it to a higher place in the community. Through his efforts, GNAR has become more involved in government relations on the local, state, and national levels as he stays in constant contact with the elected officials on all levels. The GNAR campus serves as host for numerous events featuring mayors, governors, senators, representatives, council members, and representatives from the homebuilders, codes, the chamber, and the gamut of community leaders.
Under his guidance, the association has built 17 homes with Habitat for Humanity. He also helped found affordable housing initiatives such as the Affordable Housing Coalition with partners such as MDHA, THDA, the Mayor’s Office of Affordable Housing, Affordable Housing Resources, the Housing Fund, and others.
Each year, he is forced to a take one Realtor and groom that person as president, the face and voice of this association that he has built. His gentle, albeit omnipresent guidance, has contributed to the ongoing success of each of those Realtors as it is a 365 day course in leadership, management, politics, public service and the spirit of cooperation.
Klein has been recognized on countless occasion by the National Association of Realtors and many of the program that he started in Nashville are being incorporated on the national level as well as in Realtor associations across the nation.
Greater Nashville Association of Realtors CEO Don Klein
He will be missed, but he will make a difference wherever he goes and that place or those places will be better for having had him among them.
Sales of the Week
The sales of the week are located on Vaulx Lane located in the 10South area of 12South and both homes are representative of the burgeoning neighborhood’s depth of artistic flair and economic development. Realtracs, the regional multiple listing services, offers realtors several options in its “style” space ranging from the seldom used A-Frame to other designs such as Victorian, rustic, Cape Cod, cottage, ranch, colonial along with several others.
The respective listings agents in each of these homes opted not to choose from the offerings as both of the properties transcend those architectural boundaries. If they were songs, they would fall into the Americana or even AAA genre, meaning they are uncategorable.
These homes were built of infill lots created by the demolition of the former structures that occupied the lots. In the vernacular, they are “teardowns” a unique term in which verb plus adverb equals noun. While teardowns may baffle students of the English language, the properties support mathematical hypotheses and answer the age of question of “How much is a teardown worth?”
2607 Vaulx
For example, the home located at 2500 Vaulx Lane sold for $495,420 after Andrea Woodard, the Giselle of Nashville real estate, listed it for $487,470. The property was purchased for $249,000 by Dream Build Nashville LLC in 2011 and they built two structures on the lot.
Assuming its twin sold for the same price of $495,420, the builder accumulated $990,840 in total sales, so the lot, building sites, were 25 percent of the sales price, and that is the number developers and builders use. In some cases, the percentage can increase to 33 percent, but on anything higher than that, the numbers don’t work.
The omni-persistent Brian Stolzfus represented the buyer in the transaction. Both Stolzfus and Woodard are with Parks.
This house includes 2,154 square feet with three bedrooms and two baths, a powder room and was described as having vaulted ceilings, exposed cedar beams, partially covered entertainment deck, an ndustrial bridge overlooking the living room, honed countertops, and metal accent roofs and the price reflects a per-square-foot cost of $230. This does not include the two-car attached garage.
The 2500 Vaulx home is a zero-lot-line, while the home just up the street is a horizontal property regime. With math and English lessons behind us, we can move on to zoning.
2500 Vaulx
In a zero-lot-line property, there is a line through the middle of the dwelling, or at least a designed spot within the structure. On one side of the line, the person owns nothing, i.e., zero, while owning everything from that point, including the ground upon which the house is built.
Therefore, a zero-lot-line property is the same as a single family home with zero land on one side. The owner owns the roof, the exterior, the lot, the termites, and everything else.
The home at 2607 is a horizontal property regime, which translated from the original zoning means it is more like a condo. The association owns the land, and the property owner owns the structure. The roofs are treated as association property in most of these situations as in the insurance and other condo-like features. Consequently, there is less freedom for each homeowner, or more control by each homeowner.
At 2500 Vaulx, each owner can replace the roof at any time with whatever material and color available that would allow for a roof with a patchwork appearance. At 2607 Vaulx, the owners must agree on the roof and share the cost. The downside being if one side experiences financial hardship, the other owner must cover for his neighbor in the case of a leaking roof or dead grass. All the while, it is impossible to discern between a horizontal property regime and a zero-lot-line.
At the horizontal property regime at 2607 Vaulx, one side sold for $538,000 following a brief stint on the market with Keith Dowd of Village Real Estate Services. Dowd has emerged as a leader in development in the area and has a reputation for quality construction, similar to that of Dream Build. Ironically, Dowd touts his company as DreamInc. Dream Build, Dream Inc. What’s in a dream?
So Dowd sold his two homes for $538,000 each, or $1,076,000, and paid $300,000 for the lot, or 27 percent. B.J. Sons of Keller Williams Realty represented the buyer of the 2,847-square-foot home with four bedrooms, three full baths and a detached garage. This price reflects $189 per square foot and introduces another tenet in real estate math. As square footage increase, the price per square foot decreases.
Some may wonder why that would be the case. Each house only has one kitchen. A floor with cabinets and appliances on top of it is more expensive than a floor with nothing but air over it. At least at this point, air is free.
Bathrooms follow the same as its kitchen counterpart. A floor with a tile tub and shower and all the plumbing, electrical, fans and cabinets above it is more expensive than a floor that has a sheet rock wall running from it.
Richard Courtney is a partner with Christianson, Patterson, Courtney and Associates and can be reached at [email protected]