By Kelly Evans

Joe Vita’s office sits quietly on the lower floor of a square gray building, on a corner that faces the H&J Tire Company and the Mirage Restaurant & Lounge. The location of Vita & Associates is, like the owner himself, a little unconventional.

Just a block away lies Main Street, where a person can pass by at least a dozen realtors just by strolling down the sidewalk. But Joe Vita is not like those other realtors, who represent both buyers and sellers of homes and properties. He is the area’s only exclusive buyer’s agent, a professional choice he made several years ago when he decided that realtors have a conflict of interest by representing both the buyers and sellers of real estate.

His unorthodox decision to shed half of the typical realtor’s business by working with buyers only has not been easy.

photo by Kelly Evans

“The market here is a seller’s market,” he said, referring to Lexington and Rockbridge County. “Historically, we’ve had more people coming here than we have properties to sell them.”

While Vita has a unique vantage point on the local housing market, other realtors agree that the market has steadily grown throughout the last few decades, as the area continues to draw new residents from around the country.

Darryl Magee, owner of Stonewall Country Properties, believes that the market is driven primarily by professors at Washington and Lee University and Virginia Military Institute. “Those two schools are a huge part of our economy,” said Magee.  Since colleges are more stable than say, manufacturers, the local economy tends to do well even when the national economy is faltering, he said. But the favorable atmosphere of Lexington and Rockbridge County has not gone unnoticed on a national level.

Colonna is the owner of Colonna & Associates, which her husband founded in the mid-1970s. She has witnessed an increase in the number of people who come to Lexington from other areas of the country, especially in the last several years.

"We’re selling more properties to people from New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, and Connecticut,” she said. “They’re driven by our lower taxes and are willing to pay more for our properties.”

“Lexington’s prices are higher because of the desirability of the community,” said Magee. “The thing that is happening in the last two years is a boom in new housing and I think that will continue to increase. There is a demand for houses here bigger than our supply.”

Greater demand in the area has been pushing prices up steadily over the past few decades and especially within the last ten years. The average selling price of homes in 2005 was $252,868 in the Lexington area, according to data obtained from the Rockbridge Multiple Listing Service (MLS), a service provided by the Virginia Association of Realtors. That’s double the 1997 average selling price of $126,196, a 100.4 percent increase over eight years.

Yet according to realtors, the local housing market is poised for steady growth for 2006, reflecting the pace of the market throughout the last decade and trumping the cooling off in housing prices that is occurring in many other parts of the country.

“Lexington’s just a very nice place to be,” said Ruth Ann Herring of Herring Real Estate. “It’s just a very sophisticated college town.” But Herring is concerned that the influx of buyers to the area has priced many people out of the market. “We don’t have enough to sell people,” she said, which means that sellers can ask - and receive - high prices for their homes. “I really feel sorry for some of these people,” she said of those who cannot afford to buy here. “I’d really feel discouraged.”

Vita agrees that prices have “significantly increased” over the last thirty years. “Entry level housing is hard to find,” he said. This leads many people to look outside the Lexington city limits and consider building a home on property a couple miles into Rockbridge County. “The builders are booked,” said Vita, which other realtors confirmed. Vita has been forced to bring in builders from the Staunton and Roanoke markets, who in some cases have actually saved homeowners money by building their homes more cheaply than local builders could.

Vita’s own son, Anthony, chose to buy in the Roanoke area when he began looking to buy a home several years ago. He runs a successful Web site domain-hosting company, but even so he was priced out of the local market. “Anthony bought a great home in a wonderful location [in Roanoke],” the senior Vita said. “He could not buy that house here.”

Though he recognizes the challenges that lie ahead, Joe Vita remains optimistic about the future of his business. The future of his office, however, may not be as bright; he currently resides in the planned location for Lexington’s new courthouse. But for now, Vita & Associates will continue to work with buyers from their modest office space, embracing their unorthodox methods with pride.

"I'm a buyer's broker," said Vita. "My perspective is kind of unique."
 

Produced by Washington and Lee journalism students.

Lead supervisor:      Prof. Claudette Artwick

Reporting supervisor: Prof. Doug Cumming

Editing supervisor:  Prof. Pamela Luecke

Technical supervisor:  Michael Todd