Montpelier, VT

Stick Season In Montpelier and Barre

I will admit, the phones aren't ringing as steadily, and I'm getting fewer email inquiries about our listings as I did throughout the spring, summer, and early fall...but it's not dead. Not by a long shot.

Two weeks ago I had three offers come in (2 are accepted, one is a short sale, so you never know when that'll land). Last week I added another offer and a new listing. Today I'm headed out to see about a listing, and then this morning I had an email inquiry wanting to know about selling her house.

I'm not going to count any chickens before they've hatched, but this is certainly a busier November than I thought I'd have. Back in January when I started (I can't believe this is my first year...I should've been doing this for a long time!), people assured me that it was the worst possible time to start a career selling real estate. My (perhaps naive) response then was that if I could make a go at it and stay in business when the market's down, when unemployment's up, and when people think it's a bad time to start a career selling real estate, then I'd have a grand old time when things turned around.

I think I was right. When I hear veteran agents talking about how this was the strangest, least profitable year in which they had to do more work to close fewer deals than in recent memory, I smile to myself. You mean it gets better than this?

Perhaps I better bookmark this posting, and read it again in January to cheer myself up. Then again, I spent all summer telling my wife that she'll get enough of having dinner with me come November. Well, here it is the week before Thanksgiving..

We just had a very interesting experience with a multi-family property in Montpelier, VT. It gets pretty cold here in the winter, and, with this property there are two furnaces servicing the four units. Ideally, they'd be split off and have each unit with their own separate heat source, but that's just not happening.

I called Montpelier Construction, and Malcolm Gray came right out to do the blower door test. Turns out the old building is leaking air like a sieve. That's bad for the environment, and it's costing money. I had Montpelier Construction spray foam the basement sill, seal all the basement penetrations (where pipes, wires, and ducts come through the basement ceiling and into the house), airseal the attic, weatherstrip the doors, and take care of a couple egregious air leaks within some of the units. Total cost was just around $2000.

But then the incentives start piling up. The electric company throws a little money at it. There's the federal tax credit. And then there's another source of state money used to help incentivize weatherizing. At the end of the day, it's going to cost me right around $400.

Last year we burned close to $4000 worth of oil to heat the place. The estimated savings from the work that was done was somewhere around 20%. That's a 6 month payback!

I love it when the right thing to do, the good thing to do, and the easy thing to do are all the same thing!

Adventures in Septic Tanks

Buyer loves the house. Buyer and Seller quickly reach agreement on price and terms. Things are moving forward swimmingly...foreshadowing...

Wrench! The buyers are using FHA financing, and, as such, the appraiser needs to know exactly where the septic tank is. No problem, right? I mean, the sellers know that, right?

Wrench! The sellers DON'T know where the tank is. They're pretty sure, but never had it pumped. No problem. I'll just go back and find the previous owners and check with all the local septic pumping companies and see who did it, and where the tank is. I like doing legwork, if it helps keep a deal on track.

Wrench! The previous owners never had it pumped. Neither did the previous previous owners. In fact, it appears as if this 1978 house has never had its tank pumped.

No problem, I say (have I mentioned that I'm an optimist?). I call a company out, they send this floating sensor down on fishing line, and later (when that didn't work) on a snake into the tank, and then go outside with a little wand to find the sensor's signal.

Wrench! According to the sensor, the tank is RIGHT NEXT TO the house. Now that just didn't make any sense.

A second company comes out (mind you, we're trying to close this in a matter of days, and the septic location is the last contingency!) The second company is much less high tech. He looks at the house. He looks at the yard. He says, "Probably right over there." Gets out a metal detector, and he's right. Gets out a notebook and a pencil, does some geometry, and starts digging.

Nails it! Spot on! But it's five feet down. Why? No one knew where the tank ever was, so somewhere along the line, an owner did some landscaping, and put a lovely stone wall and terraced the land...right on top of the tank.

--Prologue-not for the squeamish-

The "mat" or "cake" (the level of solid in the tank) was less than a foot from the top of the tank. That's 1000 gallons of solid waste. 1000 gallons!

What's It Cost to Heat Your Home in Montpelier, Barre, and Central Vermont?

I like little tidbits of information. Factoids. Trivia. Although there was a factoid in USA Today a couple months ago about what type of bread Americans prefer. That was an eye roller.

But here's something I found interesting from the Champlain Business Journal. It's a breakdown of price per BTU for different heating sources. Now, I have a couple of questions about the findings, but you know, it's a factoid. The study apparently made some assumptions about cost per gallon/cord/ton/kilowatt hour. Costs are the estimates for one million BTUs of heat.

Firewood: $12.99

Wood Pellets: $19.70

Oil: $23.58

Propane: $31.03

Electricity: $32.24

Here are some of my questions and observations:

We can more or less heat our home with our woodstove, but we sure can't get exactly the temperature we want in the upstairs bedrooms.

Does the electric include the times when you finish baking something and leave the oven door open to help heat the place? Maybe that's just me.

Honestly, the expense of propane surprised me. I had heard that propane creates less heat per gallon than oil, but that it tended to be priced lower in accordance. Lately that seems to be upside down, with propane costing more than oil, and still delivering less heat per gallon. Yikes.

The good news is that I know and can recommend a couple of people who can do a heck of a job airsealing and insulating your place.

Spreading Gossip about Barre Street in Montpelier

I learned in 2nd grade that it's not good to spread gossip. When I was a teacher (and yes, I taught 2nd grade), I tried to get the kids to understand the same concept.

Nonetheless...

Word on the street in Montpelier--and I've heard this from more than one person--is that Barre Street, long the gritty, shuffling along cousin to The Meadow, College Street, and Liberty Street, is the new cool Bohemian place to live.

Think of it as the Jamaica Plans of Montpelier.

Now I'm not saying that Barre Street is without flaw. But, if you look past a couple of interesting properties with accumulations of various holiday decorations, my source might be on to something. Kismet is a great restaurant. River Station condos have added a little more critical mass to the area (in contrast to, say, the old granite shed that was there before). There's the senior center that's pretty outdated, but if that can be turned into apartments or something else that's a little more lively (and there's lots of talk about what to do with that building), then it could get interesting. It's close to town, and affordable. Houses are smaller too than in the other neighborhoods I mentioned above. I'm getting excited just thinking of it!

There's still plenty of...um...grit on Barre Street. But let's just see what happens. Let's just see...