THE OPENING TRAIL

Just like that, twenty-one days left of summer. The past three months have taught me more life lessons on how to run a business than I feel like any degree could have. Good brokers can go eight months to a year without closing a thing. Myself included. I spent a good piece of the summer on a deal that got wobbly over money that had nothing to do with the price of the property. It got wobbly over what the brokers were getting paid. So that’s what this one is about.

But before I get into that, it has also been a wild ride on a personal front. Scout said good-bye to New York, a hundred-year-old oak came down on her car, and there are now five dogs living in a house built for about two of them. C'est la vie, so they say.

FIELD NOTES

Alright, back to business. I got asked to justify my commission more than once this summer, and somewhere in there I quit taking it personally. Not because I got zen about it. Because the client had a point.

All the good parts of this job happen where nobody can see them. The forty parcels I drove past to find the one worth showing you. The deed research at nine o’clock at night. The owner who said he wasn’t interested three separate times before he finally asked what I had in mind. What you actually see is a signature and an invoice stapled to it, and if that’s the whole show, the fee starts to look like a cover charge for opening a door.

Plenty of brokers are just opening doors, and the client isn’t wrong to have gotten cynical. Every listing priced off comps that were never sales makes it harder for the next honest broker to say a number without flinching.

Two things fix it, and I learned both the uncomfortable way.

Talk about money in week one. Who gets paid, by whom, for what. It feels rude and premature and it is neither.

Then show the work while it’s happening instead of saving it all for the invoice. Send the parcel that didn’t pencil. Send the utility answer you hated getting.

Nobody resents a fee when they watched you earn it.

DEAL SPOTLIGHT

The city said no to outdoor storage and a lease that was ready to sign turned into nothing. Six days later that same tenant had product on the ground in a different building.

Anna Friddle led the listing and I co-listed it with her. Micah Williams with Lee & Associates, had backup options in front of his client by Monday, and then the real problem walked in: trucks delivering Friday, nowhere to put any of it.

A full lease was never papering in three days, so we used a license agreement instead. It lets somebody use a space without handing them a tenant’s legal interest in it, and it signs in hours rather than weeks. Thursday we executed it, Friday the product hit the floor, and the lease got signed that same afternoon. 92,000 square feet, closed August 21.

That’s the fee, right there. Not the tour. Knowing a second tool exists and reaching for it when the calendar has already run out on you.

THE BRIEF

The Woodruff Road annexation is nearly done, and more people should be watching it. Council passed first reading on August 24 for roughly 135 acres along Woodruff and I-385, including the Merovan Business Center, Sam’s Club and Chick-fil-A. It takes two readings, but about 85% of the property owners signed the petition, representing more than 97% of the land value, so this is not a close fight. If it passes, those properties move to city zoning and start paying city taxes and building to city standards. If you own anything in that footprint, your entitlement rules just changed.

The other one is the penny tax, and there are two of them. The county put a 1% sales and use tax on the November ballot in July, worth up to $1.1 billion over eight years for roads, greenbelts and transit. Then the city passed its own separate 1% municipal sales tax on August 10. If both pass, anything bought inside city limits picks up two cents on the dollar starting May 2027. If consumer spending pays your rent, go run that scenario before November.

THE LAZY BROKER AWARD

This week’s honoree is not a broker, which I hope nobody reads as a decline in standards.

I collected bids from several GC’s on a project this summer and one came back as a single number on a single page. No line items, no scope, no exclusions. Just a figure floating above a signature block like it had come to him in a dream. The other was itemized down to the detail and landed tens of thousands of dollars under it.

A lump sum isn’t a bid, it’s a wish with a letterhead. Ask for line items. The good ones are relieved somebody finally did.

We are all rooting for you.

THE SCOUT REPORT

Scout is a South Carolinian now, and she made a majestic exit. Her house in New York never even went live. An all cash offer over asking came in before it hit the market. Some people have a knack. I'm still finding mine.

Greer got a Charleston trip to himself. Eleven years old, no siblings anywhere in sight, an entire hotel room bed to lie down in the middle of. He took to being an only child the way a man takes to a hammock.

Scout and I took my niece to dog yoga in a plant shop with two (of three) of our doxies, where my form was comfortably the worst in the room and at least one dachshund treated me as furniture. It’s okay, I was along for the ride.

Next up is a Europe round up. Paris, London, Dijon and Annecy. Then, to actually round it out, we land in New York for Ludovico Einaudi's final tour.

If you don't know Einaudi, he's an Italian pianist with a minimalist, emotive style. And if you're an old soul like me, you know Doctor Zhivago. He scored the 2002 British miniseries, the one with Keira Knightley. Not the 1965 film everybody pictures.

It's the perfect sound for getting into a flow state, or for when you just need to reset.

That’s the report. The next one lands when it’s worth opening.

Haley