Real Estate Chat with Daryl Fairweather from Redfin

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and ninety one, which is airing in late March. Sarah will be interviewing Daryl Fairweather. She's going to be talking about her career in real estate, which I know a lot of our listeners are involved in in one way, shape or form a great career for people who are looking for something that is never the same thing day to day. So we're excited to hear from Daryl about that. Meanwhile, I'm involved in real estate in the renovation version of time. Oh my goodness, it is a going well. When this eras we should have started, we have should have broken ground at least start with some of the demolition, provided everything got worked out with the Historic Commission. In our muntains, do you know what muntons are? Sarah no. I Okay, here's a new word for people. We're going to learn something on best of both worlds today. M you in ti n Those are the little wood strips in your window that are between the panes, and they are different wits depending on different kinds of windows. And apparently there are some that are sort of more of historic eras than others. And so the width on our new windows is being taken into account of whether it matched the width of the muntains. I think I'm saying that right, muntains, muntins. It's like it sounds sort of like mutton like the lamb, but it's whether they were the right with And it turned out that some of the doors we were replacing had thicker ones than the windows, and so when we had put in to do them all the same as you kind of just might do as you were ordering all at one time, this sent up a flag of historical accuracy. But hopefully this is all worked through at this point so we can start on this long and expensive project. You know, in this house, which historically dates back to like nineteen ninety. I don't see any muntains in this room. This must be a very regional kind of situation. Well, your windows flat planes, like you, I don't know, and down here, you know a lot of people have hurricane windows which would not fit a Munton. But I'd rather the house stay up. Yeah. Yeah, so it's just just flat glass. I mean, what are you? What are your looks? It's like sliding metal, you know, there's no there's no wood, there's no wood. Yeah. Well, we don't get a whole lot of hurricanes, so that wasn't really fair enough in your house was a little older than nineteen nineties. Yeah, yeah, a little. It turns out that's going and we'll be dealing with that the rest of the springing into summer, et cetera. I'm just telling myself it's going to be gorgeous and wonderful when done. So let's hope. Have you been doing any home improvement projects on your house? Sah? Not really? Oh well, I did do one thing, which is that I didn't even do it. Josh did it. So I had previously all of my free weights in a disheveled plastic crate in a pile, and now they are in an organized, little rack and it looks much much nice. So now they don't all fit, so I have some of them kind of shoved underneath. But it's like worlds better than it was before. And as our most recent episode about toddlers has to do with, I think part of the reason we felt comfortable getting an actual rack is because our kids are now smart enough not to like try to topple it over, although they're so heavy that I don't think they could necessarily, but it would have made me nervous before. So yes, that has been a lovely home improvement project. Probably cost a whole, like one hundred dollars or something. We yeah, we don't do a lot, partly because we don't own the house, so it doesn't feel like I want to be investing that much in it, not knowing how long we're going to be in it or anything like that. But I have to admit, like, I'm excited for this interview because I get kind of why some people just like to hang out on Zillo for fun. Oh yeah, it's kind of interesting, it's fun. Oh yeah, see what the houses around you? Are listed for and what Zilla was claiming they are worth and well, especially right now because everything is like in so much more flux than I've ever seen, you know, if there used to be trends or whatever. Now it just feels like everything's like, I don't know, imploding in different directions, and it's just made it more interesting to me for whatever reason. So, yeah, the real estate market around here is fairly hot at the moment. There's a very limited supply of houses on the market, and so it would be an awesome time for us to sell our house. But I am not going to sell our house until we can move into the other one, or at least that we're reasonably close. Like I just it seems like it's to be so much more trouble than it is actually worth. So we are we are holding on that and unfortunately may miss the peak heat of the market this spring. But I guess in life you can never entirely well, we like fully missed out, like we sold at like the world's worst time, and now the house that we sold is worth like a full at least according to Ziloh, like twenty to thirty percent more like painful, painful, But then again could we have held onto the house for that long? Like could my husband have taken his new job and commuted that button? Like no, The answer was no. So it is what it is. I've kind of accepted it. I'm never going to win the real estate game, or least that's how it seems, but it is still just an interesting spectral spectacle to observe as an outseiad. Yeah. No, we sold our apartment in Manhattan at the absolute worst time was basically the fall of two thousand and eight. We had wanted to move to a bigger space so we had the kid and it was a one bedroom apartment, like we got to have more. He was a toddler. It was time to spread out a little bit. But yeah, it's pretty hard to time and sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't. And we probably got a little bit of the break in our favor on the house we purchased in terms of timing, and so we'll take that that we were able to buy it before the market really heated up with this kind of post coming out of pandemic time. So you know, you win some, you'll lose the So let's see what our what our interviewer has our interviewee has to say, our expert has expert has to say exactly. I am so excited to welcome today Darryl Fairweather from redfinn. We know that real estate and homes and all that kind of stuff has on a lot of people's minds lately as those things have been in flux, and so when Daryl's friend and colleague, I believe, reached out to suggest her as a guest, I thought that sounded fantastic. Darryl, would you like to introduce yourself and tell everybody what you do? Sure? Thanks for having me, Sarah. So, my name is Daryl Fairweather. I am the chief economist at Redfin. For those of you who don't know, Redfin is a technology powered real estate brokerage. As the chief economist, I study the housing market. I lead a team of economists and we look into housing trends, whether it's how prices are changing, how the supply of homes is changing, or how people are moving across the country, which is really topical right now. Yes, I feel like it's never been a hotter topic than it's been right now now because this is best of both worlds. And we also talk about how work and life fit together. Can you give us a little bit of your background in terms of when you had kids, and I know you have a couple of little ones at least. Yes, So I am a mother of two. I have a boy who's about to turn three next week and a little girl is about to turn one in two weeks. They have similar birthdays, so this has been a background. So I first had kids back when I was working for Amazon. I worked for Amazon before I work for Redfin. My husband is a stay at home dad, which has allowed me to have the best of both worlds in a way and be a mom and continue to work during the pandemic. I have my baby at the beginning of the pandemic when on attorney leave during all of this madness, and then came out of attorney leave and was working remotely, and I've decided to continue working remotely full time. We moved from Seattle, where we were originally located when I was working for Amazon and then Redfinn, and now we're in Wisconsin, a lot closer to my husband's family and working remotely full time, and it's been really good so far. I enjoy being close to the kids and getting to spend the mornings and little breaks during the day with them. And also we're in this really pretty lake town, so I'm excited to raise my kids here. That is wonderful. That sounds like a very illustrious pandemic real estate story. So was it that you was working remotely something that had not really been on the table beforehand? I know that's kind of the story with a lot of companies, is that everyone realized, hey, this works pretty well. Is that how it played out, or it's been casually allowed. So before the pandemic, I would work remotely maybe one day every two weeks. When I was pregnant, I was working remotely more often just because of the morning sickness and it was really hard to like, you know, get out of bed and get to the office. So when I was pregnant, it was probably more like one day a week every time I just woke up and went straight to the bathroom. I would just stay at home and said, but then the app during the pandemic, everyone's working remotely, and yeah, we all get to try out how it feels. So my team was already remote so it wasn't like that big of a change for us, but it was the first time I have been working remotely full time, and it's been nice, especially with two little kids. I know, for some people, like two little kids work here remotely does not work at all, but it works for us. Why do you think that is. Do you think that's because it's so You're actually I think in a little bit of an unusual guest, and that I don't feel like we've had the stay at home dad situation in that many we have a few more people that rely on either family or outside childcare, like at my house. So tell me how that evolved and whether you think that's part of the formula that's made it a successful transition. Yeah, I think that has definitely helped. I mean, it hasn't been completely stress free because before the pandemic, when I would go to work, my husband would take the kids to like the YMCA, or take them, you know, to play groups or things like that, and that really hasn't been an option. So it's still been a bit of a challenge. But we really didn't have to stress about childcare because we already I mean, he was already the full time caregiver, and it was a little bit helpful that I was at home too, especially because I was breastfeeding my baby. When I had my friend kid. I would go to work and I would pump, and that was just really hard on me. I don't know how it is for other moms, but lugging milk back and forth was really just a pain in the butt, especially when I was traveling for work too. So it's been really nice to be home and to have that, and I think that's made it easier for him too, since at least I'm still handling the feeding. You know, it's interesting, I wonder I haven't looked into this, but I would guess that breastfeeding rates have increased during that I would think so too. It's so funny because I haven't given my daughter a bottle. I mean, she didn't really like bottles, and so by the pandemic, I haven't gone anywhere, so she literally hasn't had a bottle and she's about to turn one and then I'm going to start weaning her so she'll be bottle free. That is amazing. Yeah, for me, I found the pumping phase the most traumatic part of motherhood, so it's almost like, Wow, maybe I should have some more. No, just kidding. So you're in the throes of things one in three is really difficult. Yeah, let's pivot a little bit and talk a bit about work. So you are obviously in a booming sector right now, now I can imagine, So what are I guess give me like a sense of the top couple of trends you have seen over the pandemic, including maybe how your own story kind of fits with that, and I would love some Obviously you don't have a crystal ball, but since that is part of your job, whatever you can share about where you see things going, I would love to know. Yeah, so let me just back up and give like the history of the housing market from the beginning of the pandemic through now. So when the pandemic first hit, everybody was just locked in their houses, right, and the real estate market really took a big pause. Buyers stopped touring, home sellers were pulling them off the market. But that really didn't last too long. That lasted maybe about a month where no one was just buying or selling homes. But then once people were stuck at home spending more time in their homes, demand for homes just went through the roof. And also at the same time, mortgage rates fell to record lows and when mortgage rates are low, it makes it more affordable for people to finance buying a home. So that also spurred a lot of demand for homes, and the trends that we're seeing that have been true throughout the pandemic is well. During the beginning of the pandemic, people wanted to get out of the city and go to rural areas. I mean, at the beginning of the the pandemic, everyone was really fearful of crowds being in crowded spaces, so a lot of people just got out of the cities and went to rural America. That has subsided a bit, and now people are coming back to the cities, probably because people are more optimistic about vaccines and things reopening. But some trends have still stayed. Wanting more space. People want a home office because everyone's working from home, and I think a lot of people are planning on continuing doing that post pandemic with kids being home from school and a lot of areas people want different like closed off spaces within the home. So before the pandemic, open floor pans are really popular. Now people would prefer if there was just some privacy throughout the home. That may go back to normal with open floor pants. I think post pandemics people will want to probably host parties and celebrate when things are over. People want a lot of outdoor private space again because you know, when things being closed, people will want to entertain in their own backyards when they do have you know, their bubble over to the home, or just be able to let their kids in the yard when they're home from school, or enjoy their yard for themselves. So big backyards have been popular, swimming pools, things like that. Also what's been really interesting is that, I mean, the pandemic has caused this huge recession, so there are a lot of people who haven't been able to afford homes at all. But the people who are able to afford homes are really affluent. So there's been a big surge in demand for luxury homes and for second homes. So it's definitely not been an even increase in demand. It's you know, higher earners who are out there buying their next home or a second home. This is so interesting, and I want in one second after we take our break, I want to talk about how sustainable that is because I'm sort of I'm like, wow, that's sounds great for right now, but we're going to take a two minute break. We'll be right back. Okay, we were back, and Daryl had just discussed kind of all these changes that have happened. People are wanting more space, more outdoors, maybe a little bit more closed closure within their home, but we don't know how long that's going to last. She mentioned that the affluent are the ones carrying some of this trend. I wonder if some of it is, like all that money that people were not spending on experiences in travel is now just building up and people think they're more flush with cash than they normally would be. Is this sustainable, because I'm curious what you think. The way the housing market is is not sustainable. So home prices are aroup seventeen percent year every year, which is a really high number. In a normal year, it's more like five or six percent. Even in that in what we would consider a hot year previously, like seven percent would be really strong price growth, So seventeen percent is just unheard of. I think what you talked about is true that people don't have the ability to spend money on vacations or going out to restaurants, and so instead people are putting money into their homes, whether it's buying a new home or renovating their current home. It's really nearly possible to get a contractor out if you try to do renovations. I'm sure you're familiar with this, but a contractor like won't return your call unless it's really a big project and it's worth the money. So a lot of people are doing more do it yourself projects, especially because they have more time. I think that post pandemic things will settle down. It's not like home prices are going to fall, So I don't want to give people the advice of just wait until next year to buy a home, because it probably will be more expensive. Next year. Mortgage rates will probably go back up and home prices will continue to increase, just not increase at this really really fast pace. But that's one of the since that everybody's rushing to buy a home right now is to take advantage of low mortgage rates and just get home before prices go up even more. Wow. So I'm gonna pivot a little bit and ask about something that is not all that popular that I myself we are an outlier for. So we're too physician household, we have decent, very steady incomes, and we're renters. This came about in part because we've had two houses and both times we ended up not doing very well when we had to turn them over, and both times when we did have to turn them over, it was because of kind of a job switch, so it wasn't like the timing was entirely up to us. And unlike some professions, you know, remote work is not really an option for us. And in fact, my husband can't be too far from the hospital because he's a surgeon that has to rush in the middle of the night. So we rent. But we're weird how how well whenever I I mean, I don't have basically any colleagues unless somebody has just moved to an area that plans on doing that. And we rent well below our means, so that it's not like we feel like we're throwing that much money away, because really it's just not that huge of a percentage. Are you see what is happening with renting? Who do you think would benefit from renting? Are there some people that you think are jumping in and buying out of what the factors that you mentioned it might be better off. Not yet yeah, so I would recommend home ownership to everyone. I think that there are certain scenarios where it makes sense to own instead of rent. So here are the basic rules of them. I think for determining whether you should own or rent, if you plan on staying in the same place for more than five years, you're probably going to be better off owning versus renting because you'll save money over time instead of paying for rent. And if you want to see what it's like in your current area, because it does vary from married area, the New York Times is a really good rent versus own calculator that you should go look at. That's one reason. Another reason would be that if you want to do modifications to your home but you can't do all renting, then owning is a good option. If you have a unique preference for a kitchen, or you know, you want to remodel your bathroom, things like that, you can only really do that if you're owning. Another reason to own versus rent would be that you like taking care of your home, so when you're renting, you may not be the one who's mowing your lawn or you know, fixing up the house, painting it. Things like that, but you are indirectly paying for it. Somebody's doing that, your landlord's going to be doing it. If you would rather just do that kind of stuff yourself and then pocket the money, then owning gives you that opportunity. And then what's another reason to own versus rent if you have trouble putting aside money for your savings. So a lot of people think of home ownership as a really great opportunity to build wealth, and it is. That's definitely true, but it's not the only way to build wealth. You could, for example, rent and then set aside a couple hundred dollars every month towards a savings account or put it into the stock market, and the stock market historically, over time, does have better returns on the housing market. Usually a stock market goes up about nine percent on average if you stay in the stock market for like thirty years. The housing market is closer to five percent. It depends on the year, but that's historically what we see. So you can actually earn more returns in the stock market, but it is a bit riskier and you really have to stay in it for a long time for that risk to even out. But it's a perfectly reasonable way to build wealth. You don't have to necessarily build wealth in your home, but I think it's a good way for people to do it who wouldn't think to do it otherwise. And I think in our case, it's it's that five year part that is the key to it. Well, it's two, it's two of those things. It's the five year thing. And I think people do have to be a little more thoughtful about whether you really like, you know, you take new job, how do you know that you would want to be there five years like that You might think so, but like really like so, I think that's really interesting. My first time that I bought, I ended up taking a new job. One year after I bought my home sold it. I lost a little bit of money. Luckily, I like made it up in terms of the job being a better opportunity. So you kind of have to weigh the whole big picture. Sometimes you might lose money on selling a home, but if it's for an opportunity that is good for you, then you know you're a net winner. So yeah, it can be tough to predict the future, but you got to, I guess, make a guess. All right, here's another future predicting question, and this is going to apply more to people in certain areas than others. I'm in South Florida. Climate change and uncertainty about flooding we were previously in Miami Beach was part of our decision to decide to rent. I think I would feel more comfortable buying in an area that I felt was less environmentally at risk. Is that something that you see becoming more salient in people's decision making? Was that part of your choice to move to Wisconsin? Like I think about, like, oh, I want real estate in Vermont, Wisconsin, like all these places that like might actually get nicer with climate change. Yeah, that's actually part of my story too, is that? So when we left Seattle, one of the reasons we left was because there was this really big forest fire that caused smoke in Seattle. And this has been happening. I lived in Seattle for four years, and three out of the four summers I lived there, we had smoke so bad that you couldn't even go outside and breathe the air, and it would last for like two weeks at a time. So we saw this coming in Seattle, we decided to just like take a road trip and go visit my husband's in laws and Wisconsin, and then once we got here, we were like, well, this is actually pretty nice, maybe we should stay. So that was the impetus for us. Even considering Wisconsin in the first place was just like trying to get away from the forest fires. And those forest fires were really bad. They hit the entire west coast and there was like nowhere you could go to escape it without driving, you know, across the country. So that was a factor for me. I don't know if I'm I think I might be, but unique in that I think it takes people multiple times to really feel this isn't going to change. At least that's how it was for me, Like it took three out of four summers living in there to be like this, this is really how I want to be living every single year. And I think that's probably I think it varies from area to area because people in Florida are probably used to some flooding, used to hurricanes obviously, but I think it's going to take it being more extreme to the point that people decide to pack up and leave, and it's not going to happen gradually. I think it'll happen kind of all at once. That's how it happened in the last four in the last housing crisis, what was that home values kept going up and up until one day they just like dropped, and they dropped, you know, very dramatically. So I think that's probably going to be what happens with climate change home values. Renting is a way to protect yourself against that. I've been looking into rents versus home prices in Florida, and it seems like rents are going up faster than home prices. So I think this might be a sum that people are a little bit wary of owning in Florida, but have to look into that more. It's just a hypothesis that I have. So yeah, it'll be really interesting to see what happens. I think. I think it's hard for people buying a home because if they look at like the rent to own equation in Florida, at the surface, it might seem like owning is a really good deal, but you have to question, like, why is that a good deal and is it a really good long term investment if climate change starts to degrade the value of the home. And something that people sometimes fail to put into the equation is that actually, wind insurance if you're on the coast in Florida can be otherworldly expensive and it's something that nobody actually really mentions during the buying process and then you're like, wow, oh crap, I have to pay another fifteen thousand dollars a year like that. I wasn't planning on. Like it can be significant. It depends how close you are to the coast. So insurance is probably gonna be where a lot of this comes up first. Like on the West Coast, fire insurance premiums are going up. I hadn't heard of wind insurance. I should definitely check that out out. And then the flood and insurance is yeah, for us, the flood insurance there's a little bit of government regulation. I guess it's like through FEMA, so it never became crazy. But the wind insurance is private, and it's some homes actually get to a point where they cannot like that, you can't even find a policy basically, and they just so yes that that can become a factor in certain areas, and I'm sure it really varies because some areas of the country are going to be more at risk to change predict too, because everywhere it's going to be somewhat affected. And like we know Florida, for example, is going to have sea level rise, but in other parts of the country it might be coming up in unexpected ways, like more flooding or droughts or more rainfall. So I think it's really hard to predict, like where you're going to be safe. There's probably nowhere where you're completely safe. There's going to be some changes everywhere. So do you think you'll be staying in Wisconsin for like the foreseeable future? Yeah, I hope. So, I mean I say that every time I move like I'm not again, and then we end up moving. But I am operating as if we're going to stay here for the long term. That's awesome, all right. To have one more moving question for you, which is like any specific tips for moving with kids. I know it can be very daunting. And it sounds like you made your last move when you had really young children, so getting settled, preparing the kids themselves, what did you learn in the last iteration of your process or what have you seen as trends professionally? Yeah, so, well, my kids are young enough that they weren't really aware of what was happening or just thought it was a fun adventure. We did a road trip, which made it. I mean it was just because of the pandemic that we did it a road trip. We had blown with the kids before, but when we did the road trip, one thing we did was just like have short days, stop at parks along the way to give them a breather. Yeah, and just kind of make it like like a fun thing, like we're going on vacation or something, instead of moving. I one thing that usually happens during normal times is that people tend to move during the summer when kids are out of school, so that it's not like disrupting their school patterns. During the pandemic, that hasn't been the case. We've been buying homes and moving all year round because of remote schooling hasn't just been you don't have to play your kids out of school to do it. Yeah. I would recommend setting up the new rooms kind of similar to the way the old rooms are set up so it feels still familiar, Yeah, and letting your kids have like something familiar when they're traveling. I think that helps to just not make it so jarring of a situation. No, that makes sense, and I guess emphasizing you got to bring them near family, so I'm sure that was a huge jow. I was like, oh, you get to be near Well, they were young, but still that part's exciting. My kids love new playgrounds, so I feel like that was what's sold them, is just getting to kind of new playgrounds. That is awesome. Well, we always wrap up by sharing a love of a week every week on our podcast, So do you have one ready or do you want me to go ahead and start. I want to hear yours first. Let me hear where you got, all right, I guess I will start with grocery delivery because this is something I didn't used to do, and somehow mid pandemic, I swished and I was going to the grocery store during the pandemic. I was just wearing my mask and whatever. But then one week I think my husband was working, I was like, I'm going to try delivery, and oh my god, I don't know that I'll ever go back. It is just so amazing to be able to just click, click, click and have it brought to you, and it seems like more and more stores are doing that. And of course pick up is another option as well, but we currently do the Whole Foods Amazon Prime type. But obviously there are many iterations, but I'm a big fan. That sounds great. I should do that more often. That kind of reminds me. I think. The one thing that I've loved during the pandemic is since I haven't been able to travel, one of my favorite parts of traveling is eating exotic foods that I normally won't try. So one way I've been doing that during the pandemic is just ordering exotic sauces from around the world I never would have tried before. So I got this one sauce from Ghana. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. It's called shito and it's like this shrimp paste spicy sauce. And then I tried this other sauce from southern Mexico called salsa macha. And I've just been like googling different food blogs and trying to figure out different things to try and then just getting them shipped from these different retailers. So I can, you know, feel like I'm still getting that exotic experience even without traveling. That is so much fun. I love that. I like that idea. It's like you could pick a region of the month or something, and then you could make multiple dishes using any given sauce. Very very cool. I love that. Well. Where can our listeners find you, or if you are you out there in the Twitter h or Instagram world, or where can they find you? You can follow me on Twitter It's at fair Weather PhD. And if you are more interested in like these housing market trends, you can go to the redfin News website. Just google Redfin News and all of the reports that my team produces are on that website and you can see how home prices are chained or how migration patterns are changing different housing trends. How cool that that's publicly available data. I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We will, as always share everything in the show notes and I hope you have a wonderful day at work. Thank you you too. Well, that was great, and now we go to our question section. So this is a common question. We get a version of this, which is what to do with your childcare situation as your kids start to get a little bit older. So our listener writes in that she thinks it may be time to tuge our child terror situation and I'm struggling with it. They've had the same wonderful nanny since their older daughter, who is seven, was three months old. Prior to COVID, this caregiver was working from eleven thirty to six thirty Monday to Friday. Their younger daughter, now for will be starting kindergarten in the fall, hopefully at the same school, so she just doesn't see us needing the nanny as much going forward. We'd love to have the ability to have someone come out in the morning sometime to help with drop off. From time to time with COVID, things have been in flux. This listener's husband has been working from home and sort of had less business in general, so he's been way more available. However, they've kept their nanny for the same number of hours, just you know, because they haven't wanted to make any big changes yet, She says, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to have this conversation with her, and at the same time, I'm resisting finding a new person with reduced hours because I do like having the stability and reliability of her care as a backstop. For instance, summers are a long time when hourly needs will change taking kids from school to after school activities will presumably be a thing in the future, and then, of course, not knowing what her husband's work situation will be long term, she says, anyway, do I need to just put on my big girl pants. I think part of the challenge is after six and a half years, obviously have a very close working relationship, and so it's hard to know how to deal with this because it's not just a business decision. So Sarah, what do you think? Yeah, this is so hard. I mean, we have some similarities to this. I think my first instinct would just be like, don't make any sudden moves right now, because so many factors have been in flux for the last year and probably are going to continue to crystallize in different directions, and it's harder to predict. And it's a lot easier. I mean, if you can handle it keeping her at the same number of hours, you can always change that later. But she may not want to work a very part time job and it sounds like you really like her, and then she may not, you know, be able to stay with you. So I do think, and as Laura is going to I think mention a conversation is very important about what you want, But for us, our biggest thought has just been like looking at the big picture, even though things might be a little bit more limited right now. I would want I would want like a year of stability where I'm feeling like I really really need much more, much less before I made a big change. And I know that might sound conservative, but it's like I know that if I didn't have someone I could fall back on all of the time, that would really change a lot of the dynamics around how I feel about work, how I feel about rushing home. And it's not even that I do fall back on her all of the time, but it's like knowing that if I have to stay late or go to an early meeting and not do drop off like I can, is very valuable even if I'm not using it, and I'm paying for that, and I'm willing to pay for that. And there's other ways that you might be able to find value even if it's not in the same coverage you had before. So I think I mentioned recently, you know, having more household tasks perhaps being done by the person thinking about how you might let's say, have them come in really late one day or as late as they want, or skip a day if you don't need her one day, but then cover a date night or a date weekend every month or so like there are you already mentioned kind of doing that in in your note. And I think that restructuring might be a better move than going to a significantly lighter load, especially when you don't know what activities and lifestyle is going to look like going forward. Yeah, I totally agree with this. And there were two parts of the questions. One is she was like trying to psych herself up to have a conversation. I'm like, okay that yes, the answer is yes, you need to have a conversation because I can tell you for sure that your nanny is wondering about this, like are they going to fire me tomorrow? Like I mean, you just with somebody that has been with you this long, you owe them to have a conversation about how this is going to play out long term, because she wants to know. She probably is worried about it too. The second matter, though, is what is it going to look like going forward? And I'm listen her. So this family did not scale down their nanny, despite the husband having a much reduced work schedule over the past years, which suggests to me that they are in a place financially where it's not you know, every dollar is being spoken for here like that they had the ability to do that, so they're not really t on it. And if that is the case, it's a different matter. It's like, could you use thirty five hours of help or even third ham and just you know, pay the same amount. You don't have to have her there thirty five hours a week. Like what the person cares about is that they are earning the same amount, right that how many hours it is is kind of irrelevant. You know, obviously you personally probably don't want to be paying two hundred dollars an hour for such things. But the number of hours is not the thing that they're it's if it were less. It's the amount they are getting paid per week. So could you use her for I don't know, thirty to thirty five hours a week? And my guess is that yes you could. Now you may want it to be different hours from eleven thirty to six thirty, although those are not bad ones. If your kids are in school till two and you have things like grocery shopping, cleaning, the house, she could make your dinners during that time, to do all your laundry, if you have personal assistant type stuff. If this person is able to take on a lot of managerial kind of things in terms of house renovation projects for instance, or something like that, I mean probably you could think of stuff that a person could do for two hours a day, which is what that pretty much comes out to. And then they're there, Like if you've got a sick day, if you've got your school is closed because of a COVID thing. You have that reliable, full time person who's going to be able to scale up when you need it, even if you don't need it one hundred percent of the time. And as you said, you are going to need it in the summer, so it's your If you don't keep this person, you are going to find yourself every May scrambling to figure out how you're going to do summer coverage. Whereas if you have this then it's a little bit more obvious. So that's my inclination. You can talk to her about how flexible she is. Now, maybe this person has I don't know, their own family and has certain hours they have that they have covered. I don't know what your situation is. But if this person has some flexibility, she may totally be willing to move those thirty five hours around a bit too. That she may be able to come some morning at seven thirty to help you get ready and then bring the kids to school, do the grocery shopping, and work, say a seven to eleven, seven thirty to eleven thirty day and then have a longer day some other time or not. I don't know, but you know, just getting you might have some flexibility with there, and so you can have that conversation with her, say, listen, we would love to have some of this. You would be absolutely our first choice to do. This. Is this something we can work out to gather and hopefully yes, And then you know, you have this relationship going for the next two three years, which you still have little kids that until you have a situation where they can kind of reliably be left home alone. You do need regular support if you are both working. Yeah, and this is such a hard one because you're right, there is this emotional component. So I think the openness helps being like this is what we need? What do you want? Like, how can we both you know, come to a good agreement where everyone's happy and everyone feels like they're generally getting what they need, and if you can't, then that's okay. You know. I don't mean that in a bad way, but in a way that like, you know, if if you really only need a part time person at some point, and that person only wants full time work, then it might be time to gracefully, you know, try to transition to something else and maybe that person can still be your like weekend person, or you can keep her in your life some other way. I mean, I could, I could see something like that happening long long term going forward, depending on how things play out, but I it would have to be kind of a mutual choice. Yeah, I mean I always said, they still they have a four year old, like the idea that they're not going to need childcare, and if something goes wrong you have a four year old, like, you can't do it, can't take him to work, you can't take it work, you can't. So yeah, there's there's just you're not out of the woods yet at that point. So keeping that in mind that this is probably still something you need in your life for a while is going to be probably the right mindset, all right, well, this has been best of both worlds. Our interview has been on real estate and careers, and that we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.