Should Your Job Decide Where You Live? The Truth About Buying a Home in DFW

What's up party people, Todd Tremonti here. This is DFW Real Estate Weekly talking all things DFW residential real estate. And the question for today is, are we still buying houses the way we were 30 years ago? Are we still buying a house within a certain number of miles of your job because the commute is that important? Or have we opened our minds up a little bit that more real estate is available to you, more lifestyle options are available to you if the job isn't the primary decision-making reason for buying a house? Or is that not true and we're still doing this the way we've always done it? I'm not saying it's right or wrong. The question is, are we thinking about it enough? Are we still buying houses near the job because that's what we've always done? So another way to say it would be, do you live where you work or do you live where you play? So people love to say cities like to promote themselves as like work, live, play, eat, work, play, whatever it is. I'm just here to say there's nothing wrong with that. By all means, if you're in the office 70 hours a week or whatever, look to limit the commute for sure. We talk to clients about that all the time. We'll get into it a little bit as we make our way through the episode. But more and more and more people are considering job, but that's not the primary factor. For example, whether they want some more land or they want a larger home on a, a slightly more restrained budget. And they're saying I'll drive a little more or I'll find work that fits the home instead of finding a home that fits the work. So we'll dive into the angles on that, but just as like a quick snapshot, do you feel both of you who've got full price, Courtney and the Yanni Donnie, the English wonder himself in full world cup form right now, by the way, do you like my dress? It's very USA. If you guys aren't catching the YouTube, I'm going to wear it every day. This week should catch it for just that. Please watch it. I look like a flag. Okay. Proud to be an American. Okay. Here's what we got real quick. You're the record. No one told me congratulations today. Listen, real quick. Do you think nothing has changed or do you feel like home buyers, people talking in the neighborhood? I'm looking at Courtney here for our podcast folks. Is it the same old, same old, like you just buy a house near where you work or do you think people are thinking about that differently? Totally different. Okay. What do you think is different? I just think people want more out of there. In my season of life, people are looking at schools, put the money towards the house or put it towards private school. So I'm glad you said that because I think people are thinking about house has to be by the public school less than ever. Also, not that that's not still the majority, but a lot less than it was even five years ago, certainly 10 years ago, private schools, kind of the, the, um, university style model or the classical style model, or even some of these state online school things. Um, there are a lot less people. And again, a lot might be like, instead of 95, it's now 88 or whatever percent of buyers are less tied geographically to school or work. And that that's kind of my position. I don't have like extreme hard data on it. We have some data that more people are living further out, more people are wanting land and things like that. But just generally speaking, I'm asking your vibe. And so you're saying people are kind of home first school and work after is what you're feeling at the neighborhood mom level as well. Is that correct? A hundred percent and community. I mean, I think we live in a special place, but around here, you want your friends to be close and your enemies closer because otherwise you don't see people. I mean, your life is so busy. So busy. Okay. What are you thinking? Similar, are you in your circles and what you pay attention to? What do you think? Uh, I think in my circles and what I see, it's so dependent on your job. Like as I'm, if I'm talking to people that are calling into our office, I'm still hearing, I want to be within 30 minutes of where I'm going to work. I want to be within 45 minutes of where I'm going to work. So that's still like a top of mind thing for people. And then they're figuring out the neighborhoods and things like that. Secondary. Um, I know like for us primary was the right neighborhood. Yeah. One that was going to be able to be able to socialize and things like that. We're in Plato. We just applied to go to a different Plato school than what we were zoned for. And they're like, sure. Yeah. Usually you can get what you want, but that's what we got. Garland is very similar. People will move into Garland often because they can get more house for the dollar. And then it's a choice district where you apply to different campuses. Plano isn't technically choice. Right. They have some magnet programs and things like that that can allow you to maybe shuffle around. Garland is a true choice district, but, but yes. Okay. I think the premise we have laid out that we're all in agreement on Ian is leaning, making sure we don't ignore that the majority of people are still traditionally, you know, vibe of the neighborhood close to work, close to school that I'm not at all saying that's not still the majority, but my point is I'm just making these numbers up, but let's say 97% of people used to choose their home first by work commute or school locations. I think that number may be 10 or more percent down, meaning a large chunk. That's a big chunk in Dallas, Fort Worth are thinking, I want them to get the house, the land, the property, the community piece set up first, and then we'll right fit school or work or other factors, by the way, church, groceries, things, you know, all that kind of stuff. I did a quick search, but what the data shows is around 35% of people telecommute for their job. Now compared to pre COVID, it was like 20, 22%. So 13 to 15%. Yeah. Flexible. Yeah. And I think even post COVID when a lot of people had to quote, go back to work, meaning the physical work environment, a lot didn't. And I think we're just headed to continue with AI and digital, just a lot more virtual work. So all that to say now we've shifted our mindset. How does your job affect your home search? If you were in the buying process, we've established that things have shifted a bit. Remote work is a big factor. Commute time is a factor depending on if you're in person or where you work. Sometimes you're not choosing this, you know, the job is determining that for you. Hey, we're really relocating you or offering you a transfer to this exact spot. Sometimes housing is even provided in those situations. But when you think about buying a home with job as the driver, I find that a lot of people are in a hurry and they failed to do one of the big things we recommend, which is to always think about resale when you're buying, you don't have to let, you know, 10 years or this future potential sale totally dictate the process, but you'd be silly not to think about, okay, this home meets my job requirements, my location requirements. But when I go to sell it later, is this going to be marketable to others? Is this going to be valuable? Am I overpaying or am I getting myself in a perfect unique situation for me? That may not be a good situation for most people. And I'm going to be stuck with this home later. So one big tip here is even if job is driving your home process, you always want to factor in resale when you're buying. And what we mean by that is even before you've bought it, you need to think about when you're going to sell it, how much, how easy, how much demand. But if something unexpected happens. Yeah. And you can't predict all that, but you need to try to think what might happen here? What's the development in the area? Are things growing towards this area or away from this area? Is this area maturing or is this very new and fresh and things are changing quickly? You just need to think about those things even when you're buying, even when your job is dictating. Well, I think the biggest example of that is with new builds, right? So we just had a client recently whose home was, I'm going to, if I remember correctly, I think it was a 2022 build, right around the corner was a 2019 build, two doors down was a 2024 build, across the street was a new one. And it was like, oh man, I mean, they've been building in his neighborhood for at least seven years and they're still building. And then people are like, well, I can go get a new house. Why would I want to buy a used one? We've said that on the show many, many times that nobody talks about this, but a brand new house is occasionally like a brand new car where it's going to lose value for a little bit. It's going to go from brand new to no longer brand new. And if you're not careful, someone can get a brand new house three doors down or two blocks over at the same price or barely more, which is kind of effectively cheaper for a lot of people that are like, well, I can get brand new for $8,000 more. I'm going to get that one with financing. It's, you know, $4 a month or whatever the math is on that. This show is brought to you by the Todd Tremonti home selling team, where we guarantee to sell your home over the average price and under the average time. We also guarantee to help you buy a home and save at least $5,000 throughout the purchase process. Check out over 800 five-star reviews on Google. We'll get back to the show. So new builds is a big factor when your job is determining your search and you're going quickly. A lot of times new builds looking for existing inventory sitting on the ground is enticing, but you need to be very careful with this. The other thing that we're constantly talking to people about is considering the entire area, not just the most popular areas advertised on the internet and social media and YouTube, even though we do a lot of that, but some of the outer lying edges of the Metroplex are really, really, really great places to live. And you can get a lot more home for your money. The lifestyle out there is desirable to a lot of people, not to everybody, but space to grow space to live a little bit slower life, a little bit less traffic, you know, everything you need, but not 20 of everything. So with remote work, those edges of the Metroplex, especially right here in DFW, that the outer lying edges are really, really growing rapidly and have become some really, really awesome places to live, to buy. So again, considering that your job is the driver of your move, how do you approach that? And one of the biggest things we want to tell you is that you need a full time, fully dedicated real estate pro that has what we call a consultative approach. And if I had to just say that in the simplest way, you're looking for a real estate professional that actually wants to ask you questions, wants to learn about your situation, not one that's just going to prescribe. These are the hot areas. This is what you can afford. Let's go. But one that might say, Hey, tell me more about your job. Tell me about your family. Tell me about your kids. What are your hobbies? What are you interested in? What's important to you other than work? What's important to you about that commute? What have you had good experiences have you had in the past? What bad experiences have you had in the past? So you're looking for a full time, fully dedicated professional that has that context. Now here on the Todd Tremonti home selling team, which is what we do all day, every day, we only have full time agents and we have agents that specialize on one side of the Metroplex, either Fort Worth or Dallas, and that specialize on one side of the transaction, either working with buyers or with sellers. And when someone's doing both, they then get two agents working together in addition to our staff to support their full move. So whether it's job related or not, you definitely want a consultative full time dedicated professional. That's a true expert in what you're doing that can help lead and guide you and protect you from some of these mistakes. So Ian, when you're, when people are talking, calling in and talking to you, or we have active clients and you're helping them support, when people are thinking about like, what's that area like? They just want some info about parts of our market. What is it that you or our agents or anybody could do to gather that local market knowledge or figure out life in this area versus that area over there that you would recommend? I mean, honestly, like I tell people to go to our YouTube channel because we've got so many videos on different cities that are in and around the DFW area. Like there's a whole series on different cities with things to do and what to expect and all sorts of things. So tthst.tv is going to get you there. You're going to see all sorts of videos, not only on that, but on all sorts of other topics. That's honestly the first place that I sent people. Yeah. So tthst, short for Todd Tremonti Home Selling Team, tthst.tv, or you can just go to toddtremontiteam.com and click the video tab and you'll, you'll find your way over there. There are at this point, probably over a thousand videos, I don't know, eight or 900 at least. But there's an actual playlist that has all different cities and info. Yep. And there's playlists called moving to like moving to Richardson, moving to Aledo, moving to Fort Worth, whatever. That gives you not only what's this area like, but what's it like to make that move, right? So if that is what, how you found this episode, because you are making a move and it's job related, those would be really valuable resources. You could also just literally call our office 214-216-2161 and just chat with one of our full-time, fully dedicated real estate professionals. Courtney's right here helping us create content all day long for those YouTube channels, for our social media platform. So go check all that out. Fully dedicated. Keep her employed, folks. Full-time, fully dedicated. Please. Also, the YouTube channel was intended for this very reason, to get to know an area, to get to know the buying process. Maybe you've lived in Ohio or California for the last 30, 40, 50 years, and you just want to know how are these things done in Texas? That YouTube channel has got that as well. So just go to tatramoneyteam.com, click on that video tab. Last thing I want to say is that moving is always an abrupt and somewhat traumatic experience. So you kind of can't avoid that packing up your stuff, moving your family, switching jobs, or switching locations, or switching churches, or switching grocery stores, or whatever, is a pretty big, hard, kind of crazy shift in life. But it shouldn't be terrible. So knowing that those parts are always hard, it's very important that you prepare. And tuning into an episode like this is part of that preparation of saying, I want to do this right. So I want to encourage you to do that right even further. So either give us a call, 214-216-2161. Go to the website, tatramoneyteam.com. You can't spell that. Just Google us. You'll definitely find us. You can read over 800 five-star reviews. Or check out those YouTube videos and make sure that you have at least some guiding confidence of what parts of the area you're interested in or want to talk about. But our team is designed just for this. Our team is designed in your chaos to create some calm, in your anxiousness and excitement to create some clarity, for this to be enjoyable and fun, to kind of navigate the bumpiness of this, to run into the fire when things feel like they're just burning in every direction, and be that voice of clarity to get you to that future place you want to be. And I don't talk about the team just way too much on the podcast. But for a topic like this, where your job is dictating where you live, you really do need a pro. You're probably spending the bulk of your energy on your job and your family, and you need a full-time pro to help you figure out the real estate side. And we're here to do that at tatramoneyteam.com. So regardless of whether it's your job or preference or community determining where you move, make sure that you are thoughtful and you do what we call slowing down before you speed up and go fall in love with the and begin to make some major life choices. If we can help you reach out, tatramoneyteam.com. Also check out the other episodes here. If this episode or any of our episodes have been valuable for you, leave us a review. Let people know that it's valuable info, that we're here, that we're local, that we love what we do, and we could be a valuable voice for them as well. And then share this episode with anybody that you think may be thinking about a job-related move and just need to shift their mindset a little bit. Not that there's anything tactically brilliant happening here, but just needs to think for a second, do I want to let the job fully determine where I live? And if so, how, and if not, what are my other... tatramoneyteam.com. We'll see you on the next episode, folks.