22 questions with an LA realtor in swanky Larchmont Village
Alex Dionne of Larchmont Keller Williams on buying and selling homes in the red hot Los Angeles market
A few weeks ago on the Hear in LA Facebook Group we asked members to ask whatever they wanted of Alexandria Dionne, an LA realtor based in the ritzy Larchmont / Hancock Park area.
Did they have questions!
You can click the play button below to hear our entire conversation (echoey as it may seem) or follow along for the most pressing questions.
Tony Pierce: Alex, thank you for spending such a beautiful afternoon with us. Let’s start off with the questions.
The incredible writer, Dan Epstein asks, “Is it true that people are more likely to buy a house if it’s painted white? My realtor told me this years ago when I put my old house on the market.”
Alex Dionne: There’s a lot of schools of thought on this.
I helped a friend sell her house and she had this coolest taste. Like one room was painted this gorgeous green, but there was one room that was painted black. We kind of toned it down a little bit because she was like, “yeah, I guess if it’s a kid’s room, they’re not going to want it to be black.”
What you want in a house when somebody walks in — and this is why people stage or why they paint it white or cream — is you want to be able to walk into that house and get a feeling for it, but also see yourself in it.
Joe Armstrong asks, “When, if ever, will regular people be able to afford houses in LA again?”
Oh, I have worked with a number of clients that are not in the multi-million dollar range. There’s a lot of agents in my office who only work with big money clients. I’m not that person.
Occasionally one will kind of pass through that I happen to meet or know from somebody else. But I’ve sold a lot of condos.
I helped a client get into a house in Sun Valley. Have you ever been in Sun Valley, Tony?
Of course!
It’s great. And they have a whole equestrian thing out there.
You can have a backyard.
Oh my gosh, my client got into a house for $560,000. She has over 9,000 square feet of land. She has three horses and stalls.
There are people walking their horses through her neighborhood.
20 minute drive to Universal City.
Yep.
Or 40-minute horse run.
So I do think that there are places that you can get in LA.
Scott Sterling, an excellent writer from Detroit asks, “has she ever sold a home to a Black person who wasn’t famous?”
Yes. So I had a client from Chicago. I helped her sell her aunt’s house in Village Green and near Culver City.
She’s African American.
There you go. One. One in six years in real estate. One, Scott Sterling.
Ha!
Kezia Jauron asks, “how can I stop realtors from leaving flyers, note pads, tacky plastic pumpkins, and made-in-China USA flags on my porch every day?”
Man that is… I feel for her. I really do. I actually don’t like that either. I hate it. But I know so many agents who do it. For the longest time, that was a way to let people in your neighborhood know, “I’m your neighborhood real estate person. Here’s a little pumpkin you can carve. Here’s a flag for Fourth of July.”
Have you ever left anything?
No, but I have door-knocked.
If I had a listing — or if I had a client who was looking in a neighborhood — I would do a rundown of comparables. They call them comps of the area.
Here’s what sold in the last year, here’s the average price per square foot is… And I would print it out and have my name on it. And I would knock on the door.
The weirdest, hardest thing to do is knock on a stranger’s door, but what’s crazy is the amount of information you get back. And you see how friendly people are.
If somebody was home, they’d be like, “Oh, yeah. Oh, right. Wait a minute, what did that house sell for down there? Oh, I knew I knew them. I’m so glad they’re gone.”
Lauren Randolph aka Lauren Lemon the great Los Feliz photographer, asks, “How is it sustainable when there are like zero houses in LA being sold for under a million bucks?”
Should she move to the Valley or get a condo?
I think a condo is a great way to start building equity. You’re not throwing your money away every month.
The tricky thing with condos is they have an HOA fee. So it really depends on how much that is because that can jack up your monthly price.
But the thing to wrap your head around with owning is: you get to write so much off as a homeowner. So you really have to talk to your accountant.
But just getting back the idea of homes under a million. I just sent a property listing to a woman I’ve been working with. It was a house on Formosa sort of in the Carthay area. It was under a million. Two bedroom, one bath, adorable. Beautifully landscaped.
They’re out there.
What sort of things can you write off when you own your home?
So when you buy, you can write off a ton of the escrow fees. There’s a lot of fees that the buyer pays and the seller pays. And so you write off a lot of that. You can write off a portion of your interest.
Then there’s also various upgrading costs. Or if you work from home, you can write off a portion of that for your office.
Monica has several questions for you. What is the highest transaction dollar amount that you’ve had?
$5.6 million.
Using the formula you taught me earlier, does that mean after taxes, you got made $100k in commission?
Yes.
Was that a hell of a party at the Dionne household that night?
That was a good party.
Are you a religious person? Because I’d be thanking God for that.
Yeah, no. I definitely made some blessings and said thank you to my mom and dad.
A deal that big I would constantly be thinking, “at some point it’s gonna fuck up.” Did you think that?
Oh, god, yes.
When can you finally relax?
That is a great, great question. When you buy a house and put in offer, the seller accepts it, then you sign all the paperwork, and you’re now in what’s called an escrow. It’s like an entity, but it’s actually a physical company that manages the process. So you have to put 3% of your purchase price into the escrow account.
You have three moments to get out of the deal as the buyer. One is during the inspection period which can be as many days as you can negotiate, it can be as few as one day or it can be 17 days. It depends on what the seller will allow.
The other contingency period is the appraisal period. So you also have a number of days for that.
Then there’s the loan period — you have a number of days for that.
So those are the three main moments where the buyer, can say, “I’m done. I can’t. I hate this.” If they do that they get their 3% back and it’s over.
But once those three periods end, they pop the champagne.
When drive past that house. Do you blow it a little kiss?
I do. I do. I literally look at it and just go “God! Amazing!” I love that house, too. It is incredible.
Monica also asks, Have you ever had to fire a client?
It’s funny. I’ve never actively fired a client, but it’s more like they just sort of fade away. They sort of say, “well, we’re gonna take a break.”
And I’m like, “Yeah, I think that’s probably a good idea.”
Ben Sullivan, always in the running for the Nicest Guy in LA competition, asks, “What percentage of homes are haunted, and which was the most in need of ghost-busting?”
Asher Garber, also a great dude, asked a similar question: how many ghosts have you come across?
What is it with ghosts?
I don’t know.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Yes. Well, I believe in like a spirit, an entity. A feeling. A vibe. But I’ve never personally… I’ve been in some houses where, you know, there’s a secret door…
Some of these Hancock Park houses, you push a button and you’re like, “Whoa, where am I? Was this the speakeasy?”
That’s a huge selling point, right? Who doesn’t want that? First thing you’re going to show the people on your show-off tour?
Yes.
There’s murder houses in Los Angeles. I would imagine if there’s going to be a ghost there’s going to be one in a murder house.
Yeah.
You have not experienced ghosts in your travels, working? You’ve never needed to ghost-bust anything?
No. the only time I ever recall feeling a little edgy was, I once went into a property to do a quick tour.
I was by myself, but it was during the day, but I remember walking into the backyard and kind of looking in the back house.
And I remember hearing something and getting a little tripped out. And I was like, oh, and then I see a face peek over the fence. And we locked eyes.
And I was like, “is he gonna hop the fence?”
And I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope. Out of there. Gotta get out of here. Yeah, it kind of freaked me out. It wasn’t a ghost. That was a real person. But he scared me.
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This blog post was produced and edited by magical elves who trimmed down the transcript of the podcast to this representational sample and merged words and basically screwed everything to all hell so you should just listen to the interview for exactly what was said, ok.
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