Julie Hooper knew she wanted a caliche block home when she found this one in the Lavaca neighborhood. EXPRESS-NEWS FILE PHOTO

This is a recent article from the San Antonio Express-News.  It features Julie Hooper’s home in Lavaca.  Julie is an agent with me at King William Realty.

By Jason Buch

Julie Hooper’s home in the Lavaca neighborhood had unflattering additions and the more-than-100-year-old building material was hard to identify when she first saw it in 2005.
But its old caliche stone sealed the deal.

“You could really not even see what it was, it was so covered up and had been added onto so many times,” Hooper said. “But because I knew what I was looking for, I knew it was caliche block. And I’ve always wanted to live in a caliche block home.”

Hooper said she wanted a caliche block home because they tend to be old — she estimates hers was built in the 1860s — and the thick blocks keep the interior cool during the summer. Eventually, the whole house underwent a complete redo, but the caliche block stayed.

“There is something very special about caliche block homes,” she said.

Hooper, who’s a real estate agent with King William Realty, said that for some buyers, their list of must-haves is set in stone, so to speak. But for most buyers, what they want in a house often changes when they get out and look at real homes. Much like Supreme Court justices trying to identify obscenity, home buyers can’t define the must-have items they’re looking for, but they know them when they see them.

Even trivial items can be a selling point or a deal-breaker on a home.

“I’ve had people fight over light fixtures,” Hooper said. One seller’s choice not to include light fixtures in a sale almost sunk the deal. But the house’s termite infestation ended up saving the day.

“The seller left the light fixtures she was in love with, and the new owner paid for termite treatment,” she said.

Even though buyers may go into the process with a set of prerequisites for their new home, that can change once they see what’s out there, said Ann Van Pelt, a real estate agent with Phyllis Browning Co.

“The must-haves very often fall by the wayside,” she said. “We have in mind what we want when we go house-hunting, but we get swayed by something that is so appealing that we sort of forget the two-car attached garage that we absolutely had to have.”

It’s hard to tell what will trigger that must-have mentality, Van Pelt said. It can be something minute or something huge.

“Sometimes it’s just that it’s a perfect piece of real estate and sometimes it’s something as simple as a beautifully redone kitchen. And sometimes it’s just location,” she said.

Many times when a buyer comes across a “hidden jewel” or a house that is unlike any they’ve seen before, they’ll make a decision on the spot, Van Pelt said.

“It’s interesting what grabs people,” she said. “Sometimes it’s simply the practicality of having space for a family. But when you get beyond that pure practicality, sometimes it’s just something that touches your heart.”