Asheville – “Anyone can tell you that real estate is hot right now! It’s very obvious to anyone looking for or selling a house right now. Things are booming so much that Real Estate Agent David Plyler with Lusso Realty has had to put together a team, The Plyler Team, to handle his volume of clients.
Formerly a law enforcement officer, David got into real estate in 2017. “I’ve always had an interest in it [real estate] for years… decided I was at the halfway point…[and] jumped into it,” he explained.
David has three other full-time brokers to help him serve his clients to the fullest in the residential real estate market. One team member acts as a transaction coordinator and administrative assistant, and two others as buying agents, while David handles most of the listings.
David said he got serious about his interest in real estate when he had a bad experience trying to sell his house a few years ago. “We went through about four different agents. There were things that were misrepresented to us. One of the agents was not truthful about the marketing they were doing and our house was on the market for two and a half years.” He’s also down to earth. “I’m not a typical real estate agent. I don’t drive a fancy car. I’m not going to wear a suit and I’m pretty straightforward and down to earth about things, and I think people appreciate and find value in that.”
Plyler sold his first property back in May of 2018. By the end of the year, he had sold $5.2 million in property. Last year he did about $17 million in 67 transactions. He expects, with his new team formed, to have a big increase.
As for the market in the area, David said, “For buyers, it’s very competitive. There’s just limited inventory.” On the flip side for sellers, “a lot of the houses are selling over the list price. In many instances, they’re on the market for a very short period of time. Frequently with multiple offers, which is almost the norm.”
Is the market just another 2008?
David addressed what’s on many people’s minds – “is this just another 2008 where the bubble is going to burst?” He says no and here’s why. “2008 had a lot of mortgages done for people that should have never been done because they were overinflating what their ability was to pay that back.” David says lending is a lot tighter now. “This is being driven by” people who can work anywhere in the wake of what happened with COVID and are moving to the area.
On the other end, he said people are seeing the equity in their homes soaring and are taking advantage and selling their homes, yet there’s still not enough inventory.”
So does he see relief to rising prices in the home market? According to David he sees increases in building material costs on a nearly weekly basis and “I don’t expect that we’re going to see any big market crash. Some people actually are concerned about foreclosures and things like that, so many people have positive equity in their house. Even if they couldn’t afford to stay there, and they had to sell, it’s not going to be a foreclosure situation because there’s equity there. So they could sell and rent for a while and start over.”
Not a sales industry, but a service
David says he and his team approach the client as they are doing a service for them, not selling for them. “I’ve had some clients I’ve worked with for two years before they found the right place, so we’re very ‘no pressure.’ We approach it as a service industry rather than a sales industry.”
On the listing side, David says he always does professional photographs, drone videos and even will bring in furniture and stage the house working with an interior designer. No additional charge. They do a virtual tour of all their listings.
“I actually bought a large amount of new furniture that I store, that we own so that we can stage a house ourselves and we just have a conference [with the interior decorator] with the placement design of things. All that’s part of our service. We don’t charge anything extra for that,” he said.
The Plyler Team is the first team inside Lusso Realty. They work inside Buncombe County and every county touching Buncombe. “I could work for someone at the beach and live here, but we stay within the market that we know and are essentially experts here.”