Ending the Summer 2023
Thoughts on glass houses, football & farmhouses, and finding new inspiration for work
After composing this update over a few days in September, I started a long overdue “90 Days with no Social Media” break* and decided to hold this for sharing at a later date. What a refreshing change of pace the last two months have been - more on that later!
Following the busy schedule of the last couple of months, I came home from the Fair looking forward to enjoying the indoors, air conditioning, healing a broken toe, and praying for there to be no significant threat of tropical weather for August and September. While there have been no tropical weather events so far and the air conditioning is working as well as it can, the toe is not yet healed as of this post - so I’ll take 2 out of 3 for the time being.
Unrelenting Heat & Life in an actual Glass House
When we purchased the Ledner Residence, the landscape was filled with a wide range of trees, from magnolias to cypress. Those trees, many in various stages of dying, provided a canopy and shade over much of the main home, yet they needed to go - completely. When we moved in over the summer of 2022, the weather was mostly defined by the typical humidity filled, afternoon-thunderstorm laden march through the height of hurricane season. Needless to say, we were not prepared for the fringes of hell level heat of Summer 2023.
“This year also has has the most 100°F days: 13. The previous record of five was set in 1980. And, about two-thirds of the last 72 days have had "feels like" temps greater than 108°F” - Axios, August 23, 2023
When I came home from the Fair, I had one objective (aside from healing a broken toe): find a way to get the house cool and keep it below 75 for the duration of a fundraiser with approximately 50 guests. During the height of those temperatures, the original residence would reach the mid 80’s by late afternoon which, if you know me, is 20 degrees to warm. Some creative temporary solution had to be devised - definitely not enough time to replace the windows (and that isn’t really the long-term solution anyway). Enter extra thick tarps and foam-core insulation panels cut to fit the single pane glass found in most original doors and the triangle-shaped transoms.
Ugly? Yes. Effective? Yes. We’ll be asking Santa for help on making sure we don’t have a repeat in 2024.
Fall, Foodie Friends and Football Frustrations.
Some friends are easy breezy, others not so much. I know I am blessed immeasurably to have so many in the first category - and just about all of them have a love of really great food and dining experiences so you know we had a blast.
After my work trip concluded in Phoenix, I had the chance to continue my travels on to visit some friends just outside Philadelphia - the OG, not the home of our beloved #NCF - in a township called Gladwyne. What a refreshing change in perspective, surroundings and weather. These sweet friends were married just over a year ago and have begun restoring an 1836 traditional colonial-style Pennsylvania farmhouse situated on roughly 2 acres of beautiful lush grounds.
Not unlike our 70 year old mid-mod project, this home has amazing bones and now has the caretakers it longed for are bringing this almost 200 year old home into the 21st century. Similarly, they are committed to honoring the original architecture and maintaining, preserving and restoring as much of the property as possible. I’m looking forward to seeing how they bring what is almost a century-old, former community pool and pool house back to life. This project is straight out of This Old House - what a treat to see it now and enjoy a glimpse of fall that we won’t see in New Orleans for weeks, if not months, to come, with crisp air, a shifting sun and homemade apple crumble. Amazing food, good friends, friendly games and a little football (did in fact cheer on the Eagles to a win on the first game of the season) - nothing better.
A couple of weeks later, we hosted a fraternity brother of mine (/former roommate) and his long-time girlfriend for a quick getaway to celebrate their anniversary - a weekend that included watching her alma mater Ole Miss beat LSU, our alma mater Delta State beat University of West Alabama, and sadly losses by both the Bulldogs (to ‘Bama) and the Saints (to the ‘Bucs). We had a blast as usual - and ate our way around town including grabbing poorboys from Parkway and a French 75 or two, from French 75.
Who said spring was the only season of renewal and new beginnings…
These past few years have been quite the obstacle course with new challenges found around every corner and I’m not sure the end is anywhere in sight, yet. The real estate market has its share of those challenges right now, with unstable higher interest rates, rising insurance premiums amid fewer carriers, and unbearable tax assessments to name a few. I would be remiss if I didn’t remind myself of a couple of bright spots in our industry: the actual process of buying a home has undergone a technological makeover and has been streamlined more in a 2-year period than in the past 10 combined, and presenting a property in a visually immersive, more accurrate and often virtual way is the new norm.
I am proud to say that our team of real estate advisors have long been providing the same level of service to their clients from wherever they are - whether home or office, a coffee shop, the playground, or around the world. Now, as buyers and sellers have become comfortable with a mostly digital experience, the amount of physical office space has become less important than quality of that space with a new emphasis on versatile, multi-functional spaces for team members to collaborate, connect and succeed. We’ll be working on some tweaks to our spaces throughout the rest of the year to reflect these changing needs.
Earlier this month, my businsses partner and I joined over 100 fellow shop managers and license partners in Phoenix for EVLX - Engel & Völkers Leadership Exchange. It was reaffirming to connect with colleagues in person - from New York to Seattle, Florida to Minneapolis, South Carolina to Salt Lake and everywhere in between - and share our experiences with the challenges of today’s market, explore strategies to overcome them, and get a first-look at a range of enhanced tools coming to the EV digital experience for both advisors and consumers later this year.
“Our clients choose us because we are passionately competent about our work and are consistently providing a superior the level of service. We are not looking to be the largest or the first, because being the best in the business is more important. We are unapologetically different from our competitors, and our clients appreciate that.”
Sure, we can chat, meet and exchange ideas online, but there's something special about getting together in person and engaging the collective wisdom of an incredibly diverse group of colleagues. Look forward to seeing many of them, and over 1000 of our network’s advisors, in Las Vegas next March for EVX 2024.
*As a serial procrastinator, the idea of taking a break from social media was something I had toyed with since everyone became their own worst enemy and started becoming subject matter experts on any and everything that came our way over the course of 2020. While this scourge on society continues to grow, I choose happiness over hate, idealism over ignorance, acceptance over arrogance, compassion over cowardly behavior, and finding my own truth over blindly following false prophets.
I believe solutions to our problems will come from collaboratively engaging with others to find common ground and accept the fact that compromise does not mean defeat. An unwillingness to see shades the many shades of gray and the spectrum of beautiful colors that surround us only serves to further distance yourself from the real world we live in.
