Connections! in SW Florida - Featuring Jack Price with Vision Home

Hello. Hi, Jack.

Hi, Renee. How you doing?

Good. Good to see you. I'm waiting for a minute because I can't really say good morning and I can't say good afternoon. What do you say when it's noon? Good noon?

Good noon.

I like that.

Well, welcome everyone on this rainy, stormy day that looks like it's trying to turn into some sunshine. My name is Renee Hahn, and I am bringing you Connections in Southwest Florida today. The whole purpose when I started doing these Connections interviews and livestream was about connecting local people with local businesses, because we all know COVID has kind of put a wrench in how we were used to doing business. And I thought with so many people on the internet and on social media, it would be a great way to showcase some of our businesses that we are so blessed to have in our community. Today, I get to talk to Jack, and Jack is a business owner of multiple businesses. We're going to focus on one of them, but I'd be remiss not to share, and Jack can even share a little bit about this, he also is the proud owner of Price Moving. But we'll talk a little bit about his other business, Home Vision, today. But Jack, before we jump into the business part of things, I'd love for the audience to get to know you a little bit, if you don't mind sharing.

Sure. Um, 2011, moved here from New Jersey. Uh, lived in New Jersey my whole life and, uh, decided to come down to Southwest Florida. I live here in Naples. Um, I went directly into retail, first time working for anybody in my life. Uh, I enjoyed it, but I like that entrepreneur, get out of the four walls. So we've created a couple companies here in Naples. We handle Fort Myers to Marco, and we're actually enjoying it. It's very fun. I love doing what we do, and that makes it easy. Um, yeah, we actually created, uh, Price Moving. Um, if you would like, I could go into that, um, in a little bit of detail if you, if you want.

Yeah, absolutely. Before we get into the business side, so what drew you to Naples? I always like to ask people who are trans and so many people are. What, what brought you to the Naples beautiful place that we enjoy? Or I'm not sure if you're in Naples proper or Fort Myers.

I'm hanging in there, Renee. You're lagging a little bit. It's a rainy day here in the Sunset State, and I think we're getting a bad connection.

There she is.

I tell you, these— for my first 3 weeks of doing these, we had zero problems. Now the rainy season's hitting and it's given us something else. My apologies.

Coming from the Sun State, we had a cloudy day and it's probably messing with our connection here, so I apologize.

No, it's okay. I don't know if you heard the question. I wanted to hear what brought you to sunny Southwest Florida.

I was gonna say the beaches, but I'm from New Jersey, Ocean City, New Jersey, so I just wanted a change. Lived in New Jersey my whole life, and a lot of people talk really good about Southwest Florida. And, uh, not a disappointment at all.

Absolutely love it.

Well, it's funny, I'm part of some of these groups where, you know, Naples Moms and different things where people will come on from other areas that are curious about it. And everybody always wants to know, what's it like? Was it as good as what you thought? So we're thrilled to have you here. As an entrepreneur, I started— Jack, you've got a couple of successful businesses, and I know we're here to talk about Vision Home today, but I'd be remiss if I didn't Have you just talk a little bit about the moving side?

Yeah, sure. Really cool story, short version of it. I have 3 sons. I've been married 30 years to a beautiful woman who's my rock. My middle son in 10th grade decided to open up his own moving company. And Troy Price opened up Price Moving and started it with a Jeep and a trailer. And running around handing out Instaprint cards, and he's made it to what it is today. We have multiple employees. At the same time, I partnered up with my 3 boys opening up a staging company, and that's Vision Home. We actually hire Price Moving to do all the staging and the setups on every job that we get, so that way we don't sub it out to a local contractor that's sending different employees. Touching our furniture and doing setup. So we have it from the beginning to the final stage of setting it all up. We run both companies out of one building, and Price Moving is known in the local area for their moving jobs, moving residents from their new house to their— or for, you know, from their old house to their new house. So that is the base of Price Moving, and it's subbed out for Vision.

That's fantastic. So, and I happen to know I had on my calendar, I just want you to know, Jack, it was, I could show you, it was on my calendar. I saw that you were selling some of your staging stuff Friday from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. And darn it if I didn't.

Yeah. I see that you're frozen again, but I'll talk about that. We decided, Vision actually took off. It's a 2-year company, and unbelievable the success that it's had. We've staged almost 100 houses already in 2 years. We've made a name for ourselves, and we're competing against the top players out there in the staging business. We have a system. It's just not a staging company. We have a system from the beginning to the end. But what we do instead of bringing the—

the house, open up.

We decided to open up a, uh, uh, retail one time a month on one day for maybe 6 or 7, 8 hours and offer our inventory to the public. So we, uh, we go on Facebook and Marketplace and we, uh, only market that target in that platform. And they show up. It's a really cool feeling because they don't have to go pay retail or they don't go to a consignment shop that has used furniture. This is furniture that's been in model homes that's never been used personally. So for them to come here, get designer product less than retail is something really cool for our area.

No, I love it. Do you— I have to ask, do you have an email list to get on to be notified in case someone's not, uh, on Facebook to see those?

I think you said email, uh, address because you're breaking up. And when you're, uh, freezing, you have a perfect smile, by the way, Renee.

You know, I'm always smiling, so maybe that helps in this case. I was just saying, do you have an email distribution list to find out when those sales are?

Uh, we don't do it by email, but we use Facebook only, and it seems to work. Everybody shares They know that it's something really cool that's going on here that we do once a month. So they're telling friends and family, and when we open these doors, you know, you got a whole bunch of people, you know, coming to the door as soon as we open. So it's a really cool thing.

Awesome. Well, one of these days I'll have to make one of them. Well, Jake, tell us a little bit about, you know, I am of course, because the nature of what I do in real estate, familiar with staging services. That HomeVision utilizes. But do you have other scenarios outside of when people are doing it for their, their home sales? Anything else that maybe people like myself may not even be thinking about where staging can be, can help?

You know what, that's a great question, Renee. We get it all the time. People think that maybe they do partial, maybe they just fill in on what they have. Maybe they don't do the bedrooms because it's cost-effective not to. When it comes to staging, I always use this scenario. It's like back in the day when you jumped in the family car and when mom and dad were shopping for a house, you did a drive-by. You know, that first impression is so key. So now with the ages that we live in now, you have to have that first impression. So you have to stage the whole house, everything. So when we come in there, we recommend that we bring out the old, we use Price Moving to clean slate for us, and then we come in with a clean pallet. We come in there, we do the rugs, the accessories, everything has to be done. The definition of staging, I always say, is you have to make it look like somebody lives there, that it's very clean and organized. You can tell the difference. Maybe some paint, definitely do staging. Did I lose you? Hang in there, group. Renee's hanging in.

There was something wacky going on with the internet again. I'm so sorry. I just—

If your listeners are hanging in there this long to hear me talk, they're pretty good.

I love it. Well, one of the things I wanted to ask about Jack, and maybe this is unfair, but Oftentimes I think people will, they do the same thing with homes, right? When they see improvements are needed, we all sort of take and inflate the numbers, right? We think something's going to be more expensive. Sometimes it is, but I also find that happens with staging and styling homes and why sometimes when you enter into those discussions with homeowners about the value in doing it, they're immediately thinking huge price tags. If we took an average, if you look at the size homes that are most typical, what would you find? I don't know if it's fair to ask you, but what kinds of prices are people usually looking at for, let's say, a 2,800-square-foot house that needs to be staged with 3 bedrooms? Anything you can share that maybe will help dispel and give a little bit more texture to what people might think?

Yeah, sure, that's a great question. We get, we get that all the time. So people just get a ballpark of what it's going to cost. Uh, again, we're at the top level now. When we first started this business, uh, it was $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 range. So on average, this, uh, sell that, the whole stage package to the customer, you know, it was based on a 1% or maybe, you know, between $8,000 to $10,000. Uh, our company has, uh grabbed a niche out there from the $1 million and up, and the quality of furniture that has to go into that house compared to the $300,000 is obviously totally different. So to stage a house like that, 2,800 square foot, let's say a $2 million house here, you're looking about $20,000. So that consists of everything inside and out. We also do around the pool area. We think that that's very important to stage that as well. Staging is, uh, you have to do it properly. Less is better. So you average probably about $20,000. We also have a package now where if the homeowner thinks that it's a hot listing and the listing agent agrees and they think it's going to sell fast, we have a program where it costs less than that. Let's say, let's throw a number out there of maybe $12,000, but then after 3 months, on month 4, they'll start paying monthly fees. So a lot of customers take advantage of that program as well.

I'm— I tried to move to see if it was me. I was able to hear everything, but it looked like my connectivity was— I'm at least being able to come in for key questions here as we go through. So keep smiling. Yours keeps going. With that said, what do you have additional statistics that may help people when they're trying to decide whether it's the $20,000 investment or something else, how that return on investment really does make a difference? I'm not sure if the agents share that back with you. I know there's some national statistics. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, that's another great question, Renee. When, when I get that question, it's all based on facts that come from the listing agent, because a lot of homeowners, majority of them, are in love with the listing and they have a hard time not using their furniture. So you can't be invested in into an investment on a personal level. You gotta let the experts do what they do. So we work with the listing agent. Uh, there's a lot of comps in the area. It tells exactly how fast they sold in your price range. It's very important as the homeowner or the investor to do the homework, go out there and see exactly what your competition is out there. So if you have a $500,000 house and there's 4 of them in your area, Go see the other 3 and see exactly what you're up against. If they're staged beautifully and yours isn't and it's empty, then your competition is going to normally outsell you on your property. Uh, I highly recommend that you stage compared to having an empty house or a unit, a townhouse, because it gives the option of time for that buyer to walk through and find negatives that's wrong with the unit. So if you take the time and stage it properly, they will engage and stay in the house longer than running to the next listing because they're not interested. So it keeps the people in the listing longer, which allows the listing agent a longer time to sell that property. It sells it quicker on the market. The facts are given to us by the real estate world. So it's not something that we're coming out saying, hey, we're stagers and this is the numbers, and they're not our numbers. So we were guest speakers at a NABOR and there was a lot of listing agents. I lost you, but I'm still here.

I'm still here. It just bounced back. You know, one of you said some things that resonated with me, Jack. One, I always tell people, people room, and people are surprised by this one. I'm trying to keep a kitten at bay who's trying to come into the video screen here. People are surprised. They think empty rooms actually look bigger, and it's quite the opposite. Oftentimes, particularly with bedrooms, and if they're smaller bedrooms, people, buyers will look at them and think they're smaller than if they could envision what that room looked like with a bed and two end tables. So So that's one thing I think, you know, one small example of where I've found staging a home helps. The other one you talked about, which is getting people to stay. If I took two houses and let's hypothetically said that we could duplicate the same house twice and one was empty and one had furniture, I can almost guarantee the showing in the unfurnished house is quick, right? There's nothing, you walk in, you walk through, you leave. I tell people I love having bar stools. You know why I love having bar stools? I can see when they're turned. You know what it tells me when they're turned? Somebody sat down to talk about it. Those things, if somebody can sit down and have a conversation about the home, they're starting to connect with it. And so I think, you know, just some of those, those aspects of staging can be so powerful. So I just wanted to, to second what you were sharing about the big difference that it can make.

We also offer, uh, something that's pretty cool. We're on the same page. We're mutually aligned with the homeowner, the investor, and the listing agent. So we want this to sell as fast as possible. A lot of our competition is set up, uh, where it's just monthly payments and they lease you the furniture as a staging company. I want to sell this as fast as possible. So after we stage it, our designer comes in and we furnish out the whole model. We pay for and offer the listing agent high-quality video and drone shots and pictures. We give that to you to use on your MLS. We had a couple houses we put our heart and soul into it, and a couple listing agents took pictures with their iPhone and used that as their, you know, pictures on the website. So we do that. And then after that, third thing that we offer is we get together with the listing agent and we promote that with an event. It could be a small, just cheese and wine party on a small listing, or if it's a $5 million house, we have 200-300 people show up. So we, we're part of that as well. We get involved with it, with the actual sale. We promote the listing and we help sell it, and that actually works out pretty well.

Well, and I'd say that's something that's really unique to Home Visions because I'm not sure everybody does that. So for those listening out there, either if you're a seller thinking about putting your home on the market or you're an agent, I think those things that you've talked about are big differentiators that not everybody's doing, Jack. So thank you for sharing that. Um, the other thing that— and I apologize, you may have said this and it may have been while one of those moments where the internet was interrupted But we all know down South Florida, there are certain home styles that people just want to walk into and buy them as they are. And when they sometimes fall in love with the seller's furniture, it can be hard to part with that if the seller was planning to reuse it. If somebody's used your services, I imagine there's a purchase price that you could put together for if somebody wanted to buy that out, that furnishings outright from you. Is that accurate?

That's another great question. I keep saying that. I guess it's because you're, uh, the real estate expert. Uh, we created a thing, it's a turnkey package, and in the beginning we thought if we were to not sell our merchandise and use it in 3 or 4 different properties, you would make more money, and the numbers prove that. But we want to offer that to the buyer. So if we offer a turnkey package, which We found out there's a lot of customers that are totally interested in that, where they just want to bring their toothbrush and show up. Uh, we sell that directly to the buyer. So it stays out of the transaction of, uh, you know, on the title search and all that kind of stuff at closing, uh, has nothing to do with the sale. Uh, they hand us their information. We contact the customer and they buy that directly from us. We've actually been very impressed because that means we're doing a good job, that people want to buy our furniture turnkey instead of go retail shopping.

Now that's perfect. And I believe, Jack, if somebody does that, you can usually put that price sheet together to have at a listing so that as people are looking through it and start asking questions, you've, you've got that on hand as an agent, correct?

Yes, we actually provide that to the listing agent, pictures of every piece down to the bars of soap and, and towels hanging on the rack in the bathroom. So it's an itemized list. It could be, you know, 300 to 400 items usually to stage a home, and it's all provided from the very beginning with the price at the bottom.

Fantastic. What do you think— well, first let me ask a question more specific to the the times, because as we discussed earlier, this, this whole venture of doing these, um, business showcases was around keeping things going during COVID and making sure that businesses were still visible to, um, you know, the people who lived here or live here. What, you know, have you guys been affected by COVID? What are you seeing in your business model? Has it slowed? Are you guys able to offer your, your same services. Give us a little flavor of that if you don't mind, Jack.

Yeah, we've been blessed. We took a look at our companies when this actually started. Vision on the staging side, obviously real estate and everything had just come to a complete stop. The switch was turned off, rightfully so, we understand that. On the price moving side, I was amazed. Here we are, lockdown and, you know, quarantine so to speak, We came up and provided a really safe environment for our employees with the gloves and the mask and wiping the vehicles down from every move. There were a lot of customers out there that had previous promises. They were moving out of their rental property. They purchased this. There were so many projects that still happened. We pretty much realized that the moving business is essential. It was a good feeling to help people out because they thought that they weren't going to get help. They had to move out at the end of the month. They called other moving companies. They already had us pre-scheduled and thought that we weren't going to show up. So Price Moving has been working every single day.

Thank God. That's fantastic. I wanted to ask Jack, on Price Moving, do you guys do only locals? Do you do cross-state moves? Tell us a little bit about your reach on the moving side?

We handle religion, that's a stage that we do, and our guys go in there and we set up the whole stage. And then we do local retail stores. There's a bunch of big box stores here that sell floor samples, and the public has to buy the delivery service to get it off their floor, so they'll contact us. So we do retail home deliveries. But the biggest part is the moves, and we do just the state of Florida. So we do a lot of East Coast stuff, it comes and goes, but we basically are Southwest Florida from, you know, North Fort Myers down to Marco Island.

Fantastic. So all those New Jersey people that are going to want to come down here now that they've been locked in their houses and they've watched just walk out and enjoy nature during the homestay. They're going to have to meet you at the border. Jack, are you there? I think we may have temporarily lost him. He looks locked up. We've got a guest appearance here from the kitten.

There she is.

You were locked up for a minute. I could see myself this time. I would— I don't know if you heard me. I was just sharing that for all those New Jersey people that were in lockdown and watching us play out on the water and walk in our neighborhoods in our shorts and sandals, they're going to have to meet you at the border. Jack, were you able to hear me?

We just all have to be smart about— yeah, I can hear you. We just have to be smart about it because I am still in touch with a lot of my friends and family in New Jersey, and they're in lockdown. And I watched a special today where a local gym opened up, and everybody thought that they were gonna be taken away and arrested and everything, and the local police department allowed them to do what they're doing. So again, they look at us down here thinking that we're out at restaurants and bars and out on the beaches and and not obeying the rules. Actually, Florida is obeying the rules, but we're just playing it smart. I went to the beach the other day and everybody was social distancing and doing the right thing. We had one incident down here and we feel that it was, uh, you know, East Coast where they're in lockdown, they came over here to use the beaches and, and really didn't obey by the rules. And we, we got shut down for 2 days, so they reopened it back up. And I got to give Floridians a lot of credit. They've, uh, They've played by the rules and we've been opening up. Now, as of today, we're 50% in the restaurants. So our governor sees that we're doing what we're supposed to do and we're gradually getting back to 100%.

Yeah, and I know a lot of people are excited that they can now go to their fitness centers in person in some cases. So it's slow. I think we've done a great job of keeping people safe here. And still allowing enough safe leniency to enjoy all the things we like, you know, about the natural settings that we live in. Jack, let me ask you this. I always like to give folks an opportunity to give some closing statements, but some thoughts, but before I do that, I want to take a pause just to highlight some of the other businesses I have coming up around the corner, and then we'll let Jack finish up here. I've got Gosh, tomorrow Naples Home Watch, we've got Boring to Bombshell Nails, I've got on Thursday we have Paw-Tee, not the potty that you use, but Paw-Tee as in pet paws, Paw-Tee Express. I round out the week with Clear to Clutter, and then we've got a pest control business coming up shortly after that. So, if you or someone you know has a business and you'd like to be showcased there's no cost. This is just, um, the donation of my and your time for 30 minutes. And so very low commitment, easy to do, but hopefully a great way to keep connecting the great businesses that we have and that we love about living down here in Southwest Florida with those of you that also enjoyed the same. So feel free, if you've got a business you want showcased, renee@yournaplesexpert.com. I'll do these until I'm not getting requests anymore, and then we'll kind of phase them out and assume that people are back and running. So if that means somebody wants to do one, one, one week and I don't have any others, I'll keep doing them because my time is your time. So just a reminder of what's coming around the corner. And Jack, what I like to do, we've got 2 minutes left, and I really want to give you the stage to share anything that either we haven't talked about or anything that you want to leave the audience with. About either of the businesses or just life in general. Let me turn it over to you and let you share any closing thoughts you have with our audience.

Sure. Again, I spoke enough about our companies. It's not about me. I wanted to reach out and speak to you people today about not being scared to get out there and at least start doing what we're supposed to. You know, we're Americans and everything that we have, we've earned. I don't want to get any more handouts or get political with you people, but I think that we need to get back out there as Americans. And, and if it's just starting slow, baby steps to get back to where we are. I feel for the guy today at the workout facility, the gym. You know, I heard him speak and I get chills right now talking about it because if it was my companies and I didn't have to shut down and had harder times through this, uh, really bad times that everybody's having, I think that we would have lost our business. So I understand the people out there that aren't allowed to open and they're struggling, and I just hope that all states open up the same system that we have here in Florida and just let people get back to business.

I wish everybody safe and, uh, It's a hard time right now, you know, you get choked up and lost for words, but this is the times we'll look back with my grandchildren and talk about it.

Yeah, I know, Jack, you make an excellent point. It's, you know, it's eerie in a sense because I read an article, I think it was still over the weekend, that was talking about some of the businesses that have had to permanently close their doors, and they were talking about restaurants. I think Agave is not reopening, I know there's a Perkins, Stevie Tomatoes, some of those places, and I think that's unfortunately sort of just the start of what might be a longer list. You know, these small businesses that are so vital to the community don't have a lot of liquid assets and funds on hand to continue to pay overhead costs, and the longer they stay closed, the harder it is to reopen the doors. I think anything that we can do, and this isn't to take anything away from the national companies we have here, they're very much a vital part of our community, but, you know, think about your, whether it's your eating habits, your shopping habits, anything we can do to maybe step up some of the local nature of those things so that we can help some of these businesses get through these tougher times, I think is going to go a long way. So thank you for, for using your time there. And I, and I do think I was liking it to someone the other day, Jack. I said it sort of reminds me of back when I was still dating. Thank God I'm not having to do that anymore, because you kind of, in relationships, you go through this awkward stage where you, you might start to like each other, but you don't really talk about it right because you're still just being casual. I almost feel like we need to go through that with COVID right? I run into people and, and you're not sure what people's acceptable boundaries are. You're like, okay, do I need to measure 6 feet off? Should I pull my mask out? What are they thinking? Do they want to grab a drink, go grab a drink? If I invite them to grab a drink, are they going to think I'm irresponsible? So we're going to be in this sort of awkward dating stage, I think, that all of us are going to go through as we figure our own boundaries out of when we're comfortable, getting comfortable again, and, and what situations we're willing to put ourselves in. And I think we just all have to be— not be judgmental. Um, we're all feeling it, and I think if we're respectful and maybe have some outward discussions going into those of, hey, I'm comfortable with this, if you're not, let me know, and, and hopefully we'll all be having cheers together and, um, getting a little closer on the beach in the coming months.

So again, I'm a hugger and I love handshakes from the guys, man. And I can't wait till that day gets back. I want to shake a guy's hand and look him in the eye and say, hey, how you doing? I'm Jack. And I miss that part.

Absolutely. Well, Jack, thank you so much. I know you're incredibly busy as you run these two successful businesses. I wish you continued success. I'm glad that you You have been one of the companies that has continued to do well. That is nothing to be ashamed of. There are businesses that have been able to do the nature of what they do to continue to do well during this time. I commend you as a neighbor and business owner that you too are trying to help others. So thank you for blessing me with half an hour of your time. Sorry, there were a few technical storm-induced issues. But, uh, I appreciate you and thank you for sharing your two businesses today. I hope you have a fabulous week.

Beautiful. Right back at you, Renee.

Thanks everyone. Have a wonderful week. It's Monday. There's a lot of it left.