Emily Farber, Lepic-Kroeger, Realtors

Real estate is a wild ride, but did you know there are predictable patterns when you look at data from a macro perspective? For instance, now that summer is winding down, and we're heading into fall, there will be a bump in activity (listings and sales)? Take a peek at the third picture and you can see it happen year over year. From my own nose to the grindstone perspective, I know it to be true--I've had a sudden (yet predictable) increase in the number of people reaching out to me to help them sell their property before winter falls, buyers hibernate, and things freeze over literally and figuratively. ❄️ Look at that chart again...what hits the market in August and September will likely be closing in October. Do you have some big plans in the works? Now is the time. Let's get it sold!

David and I had our 23rd wedding anniversary this weekend. Whoa. That’s a long time. We look like sweet little fresh faced babies in these pictures.

In many ways we’re very different people. I like to think our different personality traits complement each other, but sometimes we just drive each other crazy. Has it always been easy? No. Were there points where we thought about giving up? Yes (but we didn’t). Has it been worth it? Yes.

Story time: David and I went to the same high school (he’s two years older than me), but we have no recollection of each other from school. I never dated anyone during my high school years and spent plenty of time thinking I might be a lonely, awkward spinster for all of eternity 🤣. Things are funny like that…I was passing my future HUSBAND, the future FATHER of my four children in the hallway, probably every day, and didn’t know it! My mom was his elementary school art teacher. As a child, he thought she was kind of mean and strict. As an adult, he loves her, thinks she’s funny, calls her on the phone to chat, just because, and fixes her television remote control kerfluffles on the regular.

Some things I’ve learned over the years:
1. Relationships have tides. Sometimes the tide is in, and sometimes the tide is out (days, months, years?). If you hang on long enough the tide will come back in.
2. There are no perfect people. Even you.
3. Trust is like the air you breathe. Without it, your relationship will be on the ground gasping, flailing, dying.
4. Fight for what you want to protect. Treat your home like a precious place. Make it a safe space to hold your loved ones, and protect them from the storm.
5. Find a person who you enjoy as a human being, a companion, a partner.
6. Kindness, care, humor, humility…they all make things better. Be generous in all of them.
7. People are not static. Hold space for change and growth. Encourage them to be the best version of themselves.
8. Being right doesn’t make it right. Being stubborn and right doesn’t fix anything…most of the time.
9. Hold each other’s hands and hearts. They are a gift.
10. Don’t forget to have fun together. Don’t be too damn serious.

🚨NEW LISTING!🚨
This east side ranch is a looker--from the lux walnut hardwood floors to high end built-in plantation shutters, 788 Sherwood Dr, Iowa City, is a must see for buyers looking quality paired with a quiet, yet convenient, location. DM me for more information or to schedule a showing!
🛏️ 5 bedrooms
🛁 3 bathrooms
📐2,818 sq/ft
$545,000

🕯️My daughter and I made hand poured candles today at a candle class in West Branch. The oil scent profile I picked for my candle was called “sage and cypress.”
My favorite part? Watching my daughter try to use an old fashioned typewriter for her candle label . 😁

Tura Lura owner, Erika, hosts fairly frequent classes which are fun for time spent with those you enjoy—check out her website! 💕

Happy Mother’s Day from my home to yours! I tried to take a family portrait with the timer on my phone with moderate results. I present them all to you because it’s symbolic of real life. Cheers to all the mamas in all our glorious imperfections doing our best for our people…because the result is perfect. With love, Emily.

It's the north Coralville location you've been hoping for with views you've only dreamed about! 565 Lincolnshire Pl, Coralville, is a 5 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom home that makes the best of both traditional and modern floor plans.
✅ Formal dining room
✅ Open concept kitchen and family room
✅ Light drenched sunroom
✅ FOUR bedrooms on the second floor (and the fifth in the lower level)
✅ Light and bright walkout lower level
✅ Open space AND pond views (no backyard fence maze here)
You're going to want to see this one!

Have you taken a moment lately to reflect on the people in your inner circle? I was struck by the power of human friendship today. Making quality time for friendships when you’re in the middle of it all (raising children, navigating aging parents, working, managing a household, keeping on top of everything) is HARD. By the time the end of the day rolls around and I actually have “time” I’m often exhausted and only want to put on my pjs and park myself on the couch.

This is my friend, Hannah. Isn’t she just beautiful? Look at how she radiates kindness from her very being. She really does sparkle. I am so thankful she came from across the world, all the way from Australia, ended up here in Iowa City, and I somehow had the good luck of finding her as a client, selling her a house, but far more importantly, gaining her as a friend.

She took me out for a ✨fancy✨ lunch today to celebrate a win in my work life and generally just make a big deal out of me. It feels silly to even say that, but she put on a dress, heels (!!!), makeup and sashayed herself downtown all for me. I declared us, “ladies who lunch,” which was a bit lost in translation from American English to Australian English and I had to explain it to her, just as she did to me when she asked if I wanted to meet “arvo” (in the afternoon). 😂

I don’t have a lot of friends, but I do have a few very good friends. That’s just how I’ve always been, and it’s ok.

I hope you have a few special people in your life who celebrate you. Think you’re wonderful. Hold your hand when you’re feeling down. Sit across from you and let you talk in circles when you’re trying to work something out. Send you thoughtful texts that contain more sentiment than just emojis. Really listen. Gently hold your vulnerabilities. Let you into their inner lives, messes, hurt, dreams and all. Hold space for you when you think you just can’t any more. Give you a gentle kick in the rear when you need it.

Thank you, Hannah, my friend, I am honored to have you in my life. 🥰

Low housing inventory is forecast to be an ongoing bottleneck in the US housing market in 2024. Approximately two thirds of current mortgages are at rates below 4% which has created an "locked in" effect hampering the normal turnover as people postpone the usual upsizing and downsizing seen through the various stages of life. While this may not be the news that we want as an industry, it does present incredible opportunity for sellers. Buyer demand is there, and largely untapped. A seller who appropriately positions his or her house in the market will likely be very pleased with the terms offered by buyers. A word of caution: Because buyers have access to more information than ever, it is imperative that sellers price their home realistically in order to not proverbially trip over their own feet.

The secrets to getting the most offers on your home--a few of these may feel counter intuitive, but I'm telling ya, it's the truth!
1. Price your home conservatively. Don't push all the way to the tippy top of what you think you might get "to give some wiggle room." WHAT?!? I'm not telling you that you're going to SELL low, I'm telling you to PRICE slightly low. There's nothing people love more than the idea of "a deal." The goal is to get AS MANY people interested in your home as possible and willing to compete against each other for it. The market and those buyers will drive your price up. Trust me.
2. Your home having four bedrooms and three bathrooms is not a selling point. "The fourth bedroom in this well-kept home opens up so many opportunities! Room to grow your family, the space to finally get your home business up and running for your future financial freedom, or the space build that ripped body in your tricked out home gym!"...now THOSE are selling points! Do you see what I did there? I took a boring fact and turned it into POTENTIAL and desire.
3. Everyday life and selling your home life do not look the same for most people. Staging can take your home and knock it into the next ballpark. You know how those goofy looking teenagers suddenly look like super models when they dress up for prom? Yeah. That's what staging does for you home.
4. If you want multiple offers on your home in order to get the best possible terms for your sale you must create competition. The way to do that is get your property in front of the MOST qualified buyers. Where are those people? Working with real estate agents and looking on the MLS.
5. It's MORE that just slapping a listing on the MLS, though. You want sparkling photos, bomb video, effective social media and more. Marketing has changed...think about the ways you get interested in products and make a purchase. Is it from newspaper and TV ads? I didn't think so. Get a modern plan that works multiple avenues. Work the plan. Reap the rewards.
6. How do you do all the above? Hire a professional real estate agent who knows what's what.

Thoughts:
1. The snow is heavy as all get out, and it’s slippery underneath. Be careful.
2. We sure do have a long ass driveway. 🤣 ☠️ Consider things like this when house shopping.
3. I have snowdrifts on my roof…which are better than icicles, I guess.
4. It’s about to get cold-cold. Better get that snow moved and your cars cleared before everything is incased in an iceberg until March. Don’t forget about the cursed pile at the end of your driveway left by the snowplows…unless you want to launch yourself Dukes of Hazard style in reverse every time you leave for work for the next three months.
5. I love the silence after the snow. ❄️

This is a story of, “No good deed goes unpunished.” A few days ago, a small rubber bouncy ball disappeared in my kitchen. I figured it rolled under the fridge, so I pulled the fridge out from the cabinets to look, and sure enough, the red ball was under there, but I also discovered some dog hair, dust bunnies and long lost goldfish crackers. I decided to sweep up the crud as long as I had access to the space.

I cleaned up, pushed the fridge back into place and carried on with life. Days later, the mat we keep in front of the fridge was wet. Uh-oh 😬. Something was leaking. We pulled the fridge out again and discovered the fridge’s copper water supply line was leaking. A section of the line was very corroded, and apparently my moving the fridge around was the line’s “last straw.” Luckily the hardwood floor wasn’t too damaged because we caught the leak early. I placed a bucket under the leaking connection joint to catch the water and added dealing with the problem to my mental “to-do” list (which is rather long 🤣)!

The fridge sat, annoyingly, in the middle of the kitchen for two days, the line slowly leaking into the bucket, while I waited for the magic fix-it fairy to make it go away. Alas, the fairy skipped my house. 🧚‍♀️

While I’ve never fixed something like this before it didn’t look too difficult. I figured nobody knows how to do anything the first time, and we all have to learn, or you have to pay someone else to do it, right?

It seemed like I needed to cut the line to remove the cruddy, corroded stuff and essentially start over. I took a picture of the problem and headed to .

A helpful Ace employee helped me identify what I needed in the plumbing aisle—a little copper pipe cutter, a copper pressure fitting (and some little dodads that go inside of it) to connect it all to the fridge’s flexible water line. She explained the basics to me and sent me on my way.

Two trips to the hardware store (it’s never just one🤣) and a little bit of water wiped up after I didn’t tighten the nut enough the first time, and we’re back in non-leaking water dispensing business! 💧 I did it! 😊

✍🏻 I write to you with a cautionary tale from my own life. We had an "incident" at the house a while back, where an unnamed Farber child overflowed the the upstairs hallway bathroom toilet (the kids' bathroom). A somewhat alarming amount of water all over the floor was mopped up, and I optimistically thought it was a case of "no harm, no foul." HAHA! Slowly over the next week I noticed bubbling in the paint on the kitchen ceiling, which is situated directly below the bathroom in question. Eventually I came to terms that I was going to need to pop the biggest "bubble" and accepted the fact I was going to have to repaint the ENTIRE kitchen and living room ceiling (curses to you open concept room). HAHA!

But...water seepage kept happening and it became apparent it wasn't just water from the initial overflow incident "working it's way out." It was happening each time the toilet was flushed. I called a plumber. He came out, expecting to install a new wax ring on the toilet, and discovered that apparently the issue has been slowly developing, likely for years, and he couldn’t reset and tighten the toilet down because the floor around the toilet had rotted. The kids told me, "Oh yeah, that toilet has ALWAYS been loose, ever since we moved here (we've lived in the house about a year)." Side note: I never use this bathroom, so it wasn't on my radar. Greeeeeaaaatttttttt. 🫠

The only was to fix it would be to tear out the tile in the bathroom, cut out the rotted section, patch in some new sub flooring and retile the entire bathroom.

I laid in bed that night and thought about mold in my kitchen ceiling. I accepted the fact I was going to have to do more repair to my ceiling that just painting it. I got a drywall saw and started cutting. And cutting. It was wet. And moldy. I cut and cut until the drywall was dry and showed no signs of mold. I pulled out the insulation. We ran a dehumidifer and a fan. We sprayed a special mold killing solution all over up in there. I ended with a large and unsightly hole in the kitchen ceiling.

Story continued in the comments...

Sometimes it feels like adult life is all work with nothing left over for extras. A while back I saw a FB ad for a wreath-making and wine-drinking hosted at and taught by the owner of , so I decided to give myself something different to do and signed up…plus talked a friend and coworker, into coming along. After a quick lesson from Beno, we were set loose with a grape vine wreath, boughs of pine and ribbon and we each made a Christmas wreath.

Traditions in your home matter. You may not think your kids want to participate, or care after a certain age, but they do. I have a story for you:

Sometimes when I see pictures of other people’s homes gorgeously decorated for the holidays I feel a little like my attempts fall short. I’m not big on seasonal/holiday decorations. I easily feel overwhelmed by the heaviness of all the “stuff.”

Our son, Abe (pictured in the red and black shirt on the first pic), has been out of state for college. The first semester has had its challenges with homesickness, so we were all excited to have him back for Thanksgiving. He had a list of things he wanted to do while here in Iowa City, and of utmost importance was picking out the Christmas tree and decorating it. He did not want us to do it without him. Normally we wouldn’t decorate the tree until early to mid December, but he wanted to be there for it, so we did it the Friday after Thanksgiving.

The last few years of picking out the tree and decorating it felt a bit like the magic had faded. Teenagers aren’t all about “family time,” you know? But this year, the magic was back. Everyone happily participated, and they wanted everything “just so.” The “right” tree farm (Handley’s). The “right” kind of tree (long needle vs short needle). The “right” lights (multicolor not white). The “right” ornaments (I gift each kiddo an ornament each year that has some sort of funny or significant meaning). The “right” Christmas music (old school).

When they were little they used to take blankets and lay under the tree, gazing up into the branches with lights. Ikey, who is 14 and now over 6 ft tall, tested it out. It still looks magically right. ✨

You don’t need perfection to make your traditions matter.

Reminisce about the weird old ornaments (one of ours is an antique glass lemon). Laugh about the now-funny stories (Ben and the police car ornament), let your heartstrings be pulled with the homemade ornaments.

Make those memories and don’t worry if they look “social media perfect” or not. That is not the important part. ❤️🎄

I don’t have any carefully curated Thanksgiving pictures of the big day. We hosted and fed 19 people at our house and it was:
A. A lot of work (y’all…I cleaned the oven)
B. Too much food
C. Wonderful to see everyone
D. All of the above

If you guessed D, you are correct! ⭐️

🌲I DO have pictures of our trip to the Christmas Tree Farm on Friday morning. We arrived very early, because the crowd at Handley has grown over the years to almost a competitive sport level, and if you don’t arrive an early enough you’re going to be parking a mile out on a windy gravel road and hiking in.

We may or may not have brought a contraband saw so we could avoid waiting for a tree cutting guy to get to us through the hoards.

😱RELAX, everyone. Because of our extreme early-birdness, and decisive tree picking skills, we found a tree cutting guy pronto, the saw stayed in a pocket, and no forbidden self-sawing occurred.

Even though it was supposed to be a “short needle tree year” (my preference), I didn’t feel like a battle of wills against four children that are now bigger than me, so I let them have their way. Tree decorating will happen tonight! 🎄

👎🏻 💵 Home affordability is in the gutter, according to a report released yesterday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

📈 Due to the pressures of rising interest rates and low inventory, NAR found that the income a homebuyer need to purchase an "average home" in 2023 jumped to $107,000, up from $88,000 the year prior— and increase of 22% in one year (the largest jump on record since such data began to be collected in 1981). But the housing market continues to churn. The organization found…

More and more homebuyers are single women 🙋🏻‍♀️. The share of single women buying homes is almost double that of men. They’re also slightly older—a single woman buying her first home is 38 on average, while a single man is 33.

Buyers are older overall. The average first-time homebuyer is 35, up from 29 in the 1980s, and older people continue to have the itch for new digs...NAR found that the median age of a repeat homebuyer last year was 58. In 1981, it was 36.

If there's ONE THING that sets both buyers and sellers on edge in a home purchase transaction, it's the INSPECTION PROCESS 😬. It's where transactions can go off the tracks 💥 if all parties do not have reasonable expectations. So...let cool heads prevail and let's talk about it!

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Can social media sell your house? It's a weird thought transition to make, but when you're going to sell your house you need to stop thinking of it as a HOME and start thinking of it as a PRODUCT.

⭐️ The MOST USED aspect of our "digital lives" is social media, and your "customers" (the people who might be interested in buying your house) are there! In fact, worldwide, people spend an average of 2.51 HOURS a day on social media.

When interviewing real estate agents add their business social media acumen and presence to your radar. Do they create the kind of social media that you find interesting, visually appealing and engaging? Do they create unique quality content or does it feel like generic templates? Do they use a variety of social media posts--long form video, short form video, posts, stories, still photos? What platforms do they regularly use?

Social media is an important part of marketing your property. Make sure your agent is on top of their social media game in order to give your property the widest and best exposure to potential buyers!

Into every homeowner's life some expenses will fall. Darn it all! 💸 We opted to replace our aging air conditioners. Yes, plural, as in TWO. 🫣 Why did we choose to do it now, rather than wait until they broken down? Our old, noisy A/Cs were 21 and 22 years old, respectively. The average life expectancy of an A/C is about 15 years, so we were living on borrowed time. We decided to spend the money on replacement when we were able to plan it, instead of hoping the finances were in line when the inevitable happened. We also know the way Murphy's Law works...those old air conditioners would probably break during the most beastly summer weather (along with everyone else's) and then we'll be stuck with no air conditioning for days on end. 🥵

We got three different bids for replacement of both A/Cs with high-efficiency units, and there was a significant price spread between the different companies--a $4,750 difference from highest to lowest bid, to be exact. Different companies carry different brands, but all came with at least a 10 year warranty. It is worth doing the research to determine which brands would be a good fit for your needs. As you know, price is not always the final determining factor, but it is good to know as an informed consumer. Ultimately, we chose to go with two Heil A/C units from a local company that has been in business for over 40 years.

I have learned that A/Cs never go on sale. The price is the price is the price. And the price only goes up each year, as most things do, so the same new A/C unit you need this year is only going to be more expensive next year...

I also learned that the old A/C units get salvaged, rather going to the landfill, which I thought was interesting.

David and I considered heat pumps, which seem to be the way of the future for HVAC systems in order to have access to rebates on the purchase, but ultimately decided the cost benefit analysis wasn't quite there for us. If our furnace was at the point of also needing replacement we may have ended up going that route.