Transcription of Chris Lynch for the show Home in Maine, #89
Dr. Lisa: Today on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour, we’re explaining the importance of homes and why people choose to make a home here in Maine. I couldn’t think of two better people to come in and talk about this notion than Christopher Lynch, who is the president of Legacy Properties Sotheby’s International Realty and Mike LePage, broker/owner of Re/Max Heritage. Thank you for coming in and having this conversation with me. It’s good to see you both.
Mike: Good to see you.
Chris: Thanks.
Dr. Lisa: Our longtime listeners will know that Mike LePage has been on previously, I believe it was a year ago in January talking about your very personal story and struggles with cancer and overcoming SIDS deaths and all these very interesting things that make you this wonderful person that I’ve loved to have in my life for a long time, not only as my own personal real estate broker but also my friend. I hope people who are listening go back and listen to that show from January of 2012.
Mike: That show ironically called Joy.
Dr. Lisa: It’s called Joy, right. That’s the idea is that you … actually, you’ve had these things happened and you’ve managed to find joy in your life. Chris has also managed to find joy in his life because I had a conversation with Chris just yesterday talking about choices he’s made to go from Wall Street, many hours, not that much time being able to at least spend with your family and your kids and just one day saying, “You know what, I got to change my priorities. I’ve done what I need to do over here and I’m going to move to Maine and I’m going to do things differently.”
It’s interesting to have you here as people in the real estate field but it’s more interesting to have you here as people. Is it unusual for two people who are owners of their own agencies to sit together in a room and have a conversation like this?
Chris: Not at all. Mike and I spend time together in a number of different venues in real estate and frankly, outside of real estate.
Mike: One of the things that people forget is that real estate transactions typically have two people coming together to either buy or sell a home and usually, there’s a broker on either side of that and the better that we know each other, the more we cooperate, the better it goes for both of our clients. That’s really been true with Chris in my experience.
Dr. Lisa: Real estate strikes me as a very unique sales situation because you aren’t just selling a product and you’re not just selling something that is impermanent. You’re selling a very real part of a person’s upcoming life. You’re selling them possibly a piece of their dream. Does that present challenges at times?
Mike: I don’t even think of it as sales. I had been in sales in my life before. I really believe what we’re in now is the service industry because we are really trying to help while we’re working with a buyer. We’re trying to help them find what’s right for them. That’s a process. It’s a psychological … it’s an emotional process and one where the better you get to know your clients, the better that you can represent them.
Chris: We find that the emotional attachment that so many sellers have to their home is where they raise their kids. It’s where they had their daughter’s wedding. It’s where they had their son’s graduation parties. It’s where their whole life is wrapped up and all those memories on every corner of the house.
They attach a tremendous amount of value to that including financial value, where the buyer coming in doesn’t have that. They’re looking to clear that space and make their own memories going forward. Early on, it’s very, very difficult.
Mike: For the seller, too, that emotional value of leaving a house is very real. Once over the financial aspect of it, if they’ve lived there for 20, 30 years, their kids have grown up there, the little marks are on the wall where they grew another inch, those things are very emotional for people. It’s a tough process to go through for them but at the end of the day, I think it’s part of our role to make it as smooth and seamless as it can be.
Dr. Lisa: I can attest to this because as I said, I’ve done a lot of buying and selling of houses with you, Mike. I know that you and I spend a lot of time, I guess, driving around cars and looking at various places. I think you’re making an enormous decision about something that isn’t always completely rational. It’s a hard thing to try to bring both your brain and your heart together to make a decision that could have a really significant impact not only emotionally but financially.
Mike: The bigger challenge sometimes is there’s two brains and two hearts involved in the decision so helping them find that match too is part of that creativity, I think.
Chris: The moving process brings out a lot of that emotion. They’re in the attic cleaning out boxes that they haven’t opened in 25 years. One of my agents was just with a couple and they pulled out a box that had their … their daughter is 40 years old, 41 years old, pulled out a mask that she wore on her third grade play. They were arguing over whether to keep the mask or not and it brought back all those memories of the times in the house.
Really is it’s that getting the two people on the same page to begin with and helping them understand that where they’re going is probably going to be simpler, likely cheaper. There’s a sustainability element for their lives to moving on, but it’s very hard to cut the cord.
Dr. Lisa: Do you have to help people with the idea of letting go?
Mike: Yeah, that’s a big part of it. Listening to Chris talk about that experience reminds me. I was with my sister. I grew up in Bath. I was with my sister this week and visiting my parents. We drove by the first house we ever lived in. It’s a tiny little ranch in Bath, Maine.
It just struck me how everybody needs four bedrooms, two and a half baths. We grew up very happily for the first eight years of my life before we moved to only a slightly bigger house and this tiny little three-bedroom house in a little neighborhood in Bath. That was really grabbed me as a perspective that I hadn’t had in a while.
Dr. Lisa: Mike, as you said, you grew up in Maine. You grew up in Bath. I know you went away and you came back. Chris, you grew up in Andover, Mass. You spent time on Wall Street and made this big decision to change. There’s something about Maine for the two of you that caused you to come back here. What was it?
Chris: For me, it just seemed like a perfect place to raise kids. Working on Wall Street, I was there for 17 years, typically, left the house at 5, 5:15 in the morning, got home between 9 and 10 at night on a good day, traveled quite a lot both domestically and internationally. We had three kids at home, my wife, who I very rarely saw, most of the weekends were either working or recovering from the workweek.
A month after my 38th birthday came home and said, “Let’s go do something different. Let’s take the kids. Let’s go someplace where they can grow up a little more slowly, where we can enjoy ourselves, enjoy our kids, enjoy our family.” The Greater Portland area was one of the few spots as you go up and down the Eastern seaboard that has … we were also looking for more vacation element, as well, outdoor lifestyle element, an oceanfront element that they have the school systems, and the Greater Portland area, with the access to the ocean, was really relatively unique. The Greater Portland area frankly was substantially less expensive from an entry price point in places like Marblehead, Massachusetts, which would have been high on that list or Annapolis, Maryland, which would have been on that list. It was also much less crowded. We just felt it was going to create opportunities. Our kids at the time were going to fourth grade, second grade, kindergarten. We just had a one-year-old. It was a really neat time for us as a family to do something very different.
Mike: How did Maine hit your radar in the first place?
Chris: I was a Bates grad. I came from Massachusetts to Bates, Bates to New York. I knew Maine. I knew the Greater Portland area. I loved my time at Bates, the lifestyle here, the fact that there’s very little crime, very little traffic, easy access. It had always been on my radar screen as a possible resting stop.
Mike: I think that’s pretty common for a lot of people. Lisa and I were talking earlier about what first attracts people to Maine? Why do people return here after they’ve done some things in life? In Maine in particular, there are a lot of touch points like Bates, Bowdoin, Colby. Historically, the Naval Air Station in Brunswick is one of those places where people maybe only spent a year here, maybe two years but something grabbed them.
To me, in that Brunswick area, it’s that drive out to Bailey’s Island. In my mind, that’s what people think of when they think, what is Maine like? It is like that but it’s of course so many other things too.
Chris: Summer camps. I had lunch yesterday with someone who was a camp counselor at one of the Maine camps back in late ‘60s or early ‘70s. He left the state. He wasn’t living in the state at the time, just here for the summer and met his wife, then fiancé and the verbal prenup was that at some point they would have to live in Maine.
It’s that connection through being a summer camper and a summer camp counselor. We hear that a lot, that connection with just with some of the fantastic times in their lives, largely due to the outdoors, just the fantastically beautiful lakes, ocean, mountains, hiking, woods. It’s just really special.
Mike: I worked for seven summers at one of those summer camps. None of the campers were from Maine. It’s a camp that still exists. It celebrated its 95th anniversary last year and I went. It was this great celebration. A number of those campers were now in their 50s, like I am, have a summer home in Maine on a lake, just taking it in, exactly what you were talking about. There were so many camps in Maine. It’s just a real draw and it’s their first experience. They keep coming back.
Dr. Lisa: One of the reasons that we wanted to have you in today is because the Kennebunkport Festival is coming up very soon. I know that Legacy as a big sponsor of the Kennebunkport Festival and Mike as someone from Re/Max and Re/Max has sponsored the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is very much affiliated with the Kennebunkport Festival.
Mike: All coming together.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, I made all those connections work. We wanted to talk about specifically why that part of the world? Why that part of the state? Why Kennebunk had such a draw? You have Walker Point. You have the Bushes who live there, still live there. It just seems to have become this great spot of activity and energy.
Mike: Chris really touched on it when he was talking about his story of moving to Maine. Part of it is, I think, a lot of people, if they had the opportunity, would love to live in a home that looks at the ocean. Maine has more waterfront than California and …
Chris: Florida combined.
Mike: … Florida combined, right?
Chris: Combined.
Mike: I was quoting you from last week.
Chris: 3,500 miles.
Mike: Over 3,000 miles of waterfront. That makes it affordable. It’s also as far as north as you can go in the United States and our population is low. There’s real opportunity for people to live for half price even less than that compared to what it would be in Massachusetts, even New Hampshire. That’s the first point, but I think it’s more than that.
Chris: I don’t know what brought the Bush’s to Kennebunkport originally. Maybe it was before my time. Maybe it was always a great destination. Clearly, it’s become very, very, very popular. It’s probably what we see in our business is probably the biggest feeder market for potential buyers. Not everybody buys on that market but they come. They enjoy it. Maybe they’re looking for something a little different, something a little more remote, a little more private, more peaceful, less expensive. It also happens to be one of the more expensive marketplaces in the state. It really is a fantastic draw for people from all over the world to come and dine and play and go on whale watches and harbor cruises and see the Bush estate and meet all kinds of interesting people, not just in the summer anymore but year round now.
Mike: It’s also, too, those people that spend some time in Kennebunkport. It doesn’t take them very long before they go to a place and then they’re known already. It’s such an intimate place that relationships are built quickly. There’s a familiarity that happens. It’s much faster in a place like Kennebunkport. That dock square area is just so small. You walk around twice, you start to see people that look familiar because you just saw them yesterday. Mapleton, Alison’s Restaurant and all of those places are just really great spots.
Mike: Maine Association of Realtors has a campaign ongoing called Pinch Me. It’s got a lobster on the advertisement for it. Pinch Me because a second home in Maine is affordable and mortgage interest reduction is one of those things that threatens the real estate business and the privilege of homeownership and working hard to maintain that through our contacts in Washington, D.C. and locally. That whole piece of having a part of Maine in your portfolio as inexpensive as it is becomes really important to people.
Chris: I travel the country and making presentations on Maine and what Maine has to … to real estate agents in different markets. I’ve been in New York, in Boston, Washington, D. C., Montreal, down to Florida, across to California. I meet with agents. I usually start the presentation by saying, “I’m going to guess …” In Montreal, I’m going to say, “I’m going to guess that everybody has a connection in Maine in Montreal.” About 50 or 60 agents in the room and I could all see that they were all nodding their heads, “Yes, yes, yes.” I hosted a gathering afterward. There was one woman who came up to me and said, “I don’t have a connection.” I said, “I’m sure you do.”
Mike: You do now.
Chris: You do now. It turns out as we talk through for about five minutes, her brother and sister-in-law summered in Ogunquit for five years going back about 10 years ago. She had sort of forgotten. From time to time, they still talk about coming back, renting and possibly even buying a place in Ogunquit. I said, “See.”
Connection to Maine is really very deep and it’s broad in all these cities. The feeder markets to Maine that everybody knows someone here. They’ve all been here to visit. They’ve all left with this feeling, “What a special place.”
Mike: It’s notion on second homes, many people think that someone from out of state is coming and buying a fairly expensive second home. A very high percentage of the second homes in Maine are in the middle of the woods for taking advantage of that asset or on a lake, on a river …
Chris: On a pond.
Mike: On a pond. It’s sort of a getaway. What do they call it a staycation? Stay in May for your vacation because a lot of people haven’t really explored all that Maine is. Depending on where you are, there’s just some spots in Maine like Katahdin. I don’t know what percentage of Maine have ever taken the trip out to Mount Katahdin. One of those really special places that needs to be seen before you go to Boston.
Chris: My wife hiked it last year. I canoed around it the year before but I haven’t gone to the top.
Mike: Let’s do that.
Chris: I know. We should do that before you get too old.
Dr. Lisa: All right. I feel like the inmates are ruling the asylum a little bit here. I think that you’ve provided this really broad idea of why it is that people come to Maine, why it is that people stay in Maine. Both of you have children who are on the older side. I guess, Mike, your kids are all … you have your final ones in college now.
Mike: Two seniors.
Dr. Lisa: Chris, you have a few more years. You have an eleven-year-old.
Chris: I have an eleven-year-old. He’s at fifth grade.
Dr. Lisa: Do you think that you will stay in Maine once that you’ve … you’re in these great school systems, all of those things we just talked about. Will you stay in Maine once you’re done raising your kids?
Mike: I don’t know. I’ll always have a place in Maine. I don’t ever anticipate leaving Maine permanently. With four kids, if they’re in a central play. I have two kids in Denver right now. Where is the ocean there? I could see moving somewhere else but always having an anchor here. That’s so far in the future. That’s at least 10 years away.
Chris: Same with us. To answer your earlier question a different way, so much of what drives that second home purchase is where their kids and grandkids are. That attraction is when you see a number of buyers who are buying homes today in hopes and expectations that their kids will come for the summer. If they’re too busy working all summer, they’ll send their grandkids for the summer. They’ll get to enjoy Maine in a different way with their grandparents who now own a place on a lake, in the woods, on the ocean in Maine.
Mike: Really, we need to turn this around to you. You’re one of 10 children who grew up in Yarmouth, Maine. Your parents are still there. What’s the story with your siblings? What percentage of them are around and your nieces and nephews and such? What do you think?
Dr. Lisa: Mike, that’s an interesting question. We’ve had … most of my siblings have gone away, and many of them have come back. The big draw is that my parents are still here. My parents made a conscious decision to stay here. They actually bought a big enough house so that all the grandkids can come stay. I do think there’s something very special about Maine. It keeps families here, and it keeps them coming back.
Mike: That was part of our experience is when I first married my wife, Megan and I moved to Seattle where she worked as a lawyer. We loved it. It was just a great city. The irony of it all was we came back here the fourth summer that we’re in Seattle just for a vacation.
As we were on the plane heading back, we were like, “Wow, what a tiny little place Maine is.” That was in August. In October, we sat around the dinner table and said with our two-year-old, “Will we ever move back to Maine?” The answer that was yes. On December 27th, we got in a car and drove back to Maine.
My wife started working at law firm with 21 other first year associates. One of those is still in Seattle today. We just felt really lucky that when we moved back to what we considered home, it was Maine. For some of them, it was other places that I find less appealing.
Dr. Lisa: I really appreciate the support that both of you have offered. Maine Magazine, Maine Home Design have offered at the Kennebunkport Festival upcoming and have offered the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and actually, the support that Mike has personally offered me and my houses and the support I know, Chris, that you’ve offered Kevin Thomas, the publisher of Maine Magazine. What you do is really important. People who are listening, it’s really, really important and it’s so much more than as we said about sales. It really is helping build the community. You’re doing really good work. I’m glad you took the time to come in and talk to me today.
Chris: Thank you for inviting us.
Mike: It was fun.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been talking with Christopher Lynch, who is the President of Legacy Properties Sotheby’s International Realty and Mike LePage, broker/owner of Re/Max Heritage.