Welcome back to the Boomtown podcast. I'm your host Cameron Walker, the broker and owner of Cameron Walker Realty. Today with me as always, Megan Hines, an absolute fantastic co-host for the podcast. Let's dive in. We're going to talk about some questions people have had online, whether it's coming from Reddit, Facebook, YouTube comments. There's a little bit of back and forth with people. Sometimes it's local, sometimes it's people looking to move here. So, we're going to dive in and talk about some of that back and forth we had. And when we say back and forth, let's just clarify here a little bit. We're talking about Cameron on Reddit because he is actually a prolific Reddit troll. And this is something that um, you might not know. He is like the Marty McFly of Reddit. If you say anything about Huntsville, it's like a deer to him. His whole head turns red and he starts typing. So um, so yeah, just so we know what we're actually talking about here. It's Cameron. In my defense, a lot of times, uh, I am agreeing with people about Huntsville, even some of the more negative comments or, you know, the critiques, but when somebody's on there spreading misinformation, um, or if it's a one-off, right? So, a lot of times people, they express their anecdotal evidence as if it's empirical, and that, um, I have a problem with. So, you know, a lot of times I offer a counterpoint at 2 AM. Very reasonable. Most of the time, it's reasonable. Just ask me. So, let's talk about, you know, the topics that you are defending our great, great area about. Um, I think, uh, let's talk about a few of them. So, what stands out to you? What do people get wrong? And what do you have to really get in there and talk about? The number one thing is really the 'but it's Alabama' kind of thing. Um, they misinterpret rural Alabama and Huntsville as being the same thing. And having grown up in Alabama, having lived in several places across the state and visited many others, the delta between rural Alabama and a city like Huntsville that's high-tech, high education focused, there is almost no greater delta in America. So, and particularly when it comes to things like income, healthcare, and education, three things that Alabama is not known for doing extremely well in, it's all about where you look within Alabama. So when somebody's just kind of poo pooing on, you know, Huntsville really, and I don't want to call any other areas of Alabama out by name, but they're talking about somewhere where you have some uneducated farmers that have generational poverty and those school districts have no funds. Um, the parents don't have the education level to pull them or their children out of that. So it becomes systemic and that's a horrible situation to be in and a lot of compassion for those people, but that's not the situation Huntsville is in. So, a lot of times I'm having to weigh in and kind of explain that difference for people because they've never been here. They see whatever's on whatever news or media they follow and they think about Alabama 50, 60 years ago rather than what we are today. People get into the idea of some stereotypes about—very much so. Very much so. Um, yeah. And you have been really good about educating them. Thank you. Um, so can you think of any specific—I know that you told me a story about how you actually showed up at um, at a meeting for the—Was, what was that meeting for? Was it the chamber or something else? Was it—You'll have to give me—Yeah. So you were at a, and somebody turned around and looked at you and was like, "Oh, that is the guy from Reddit." Because they said your name. Yeah. There was a tech meet up and um, you know, I handle a lot of the tech and marketing things like that for our brokerage and they're going through introducing everybody and we're all kind of spread out almost like covid area distance just because it was a big room and relatively few people and we were all introducing ourselves. They came to me and I said I'm Cameron Walker, you know, the broker and owner of Cameron Walker Realty just like I open with the podcast and this guy was sitting I don't know 20 feet up to my right he about broke his neck looking back at me as soon as I said my name. So pretty sure given the group of people that were there. We're all Redditors. There's no way we're not. And uh given his response to me, I'm sure we had a little toe-to-toe at some point. Yeah. Um so what else are you um defending about Huntsville on a regular basis? What do people get wrong the most? It's a lot of misinformation about location. So, uh, a lot of people that come into these threads, they think, um, it's a horse I've probably beaten to death on this podcast, but they think they're in Madison, and they're not. They're not within the city limits. And so, you constantly see people in there that I mean, dozens upon dozens of threads of people that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying a home thinking they were within Madison City limits only to find out they're not. Yeah. Yeah. And in many cases, they don't understand why they're driving past three or four other schools to drop their kids off at another school. So, even if the school district wasn't important to them, the geography of things are. So, um there's a lot of cases where if you're in Huntsville City Schools, you could be 30 or 45 minutes in good traffic from where your kids go to school, from where you live. And so explaining to people why that is and how Madison is both a city and a mailing address. And mailing address could mean Athens, it can mean unincorporated Limestone County, it can mean Huntsville, it can mean unincorporated Madison County. Each of those different taxes, different utilities, different social services, different schools, different elections. And so people aren't aware of that when they're moving from a distance. And it's not unique to Madison. Owens Crossings suffers from this as well. You'll see people that wind up their kids go to New Hope even though they have an Owens crossroad address so they think they're within the city of Huntsville and they're not. And so and uh or they wind up going to Madison County schools. You could be in Gurley and wind up in the Huntsville city school system or you could be in the county system. Um so this is surprising to a lot of people and it's not unique to any given area. You could be in Harvest and actually be in Huntsville. Could be in Harvest and be in Athens or Limestone County. So, I just see a lot of people on these different and even in Facebook groups complaining about this and not understanding why. So, I like to get out in front and I usually give a longer explanation like I am right now. You know, I'm always one to use a thousand words when one would do. But, uh, as a warning to others, right? So, if you're moving to the area, all these areas are great, but you need to know what it is that you're moving into before you spend four or $500,000 and not get what you thought you were. Yeah. And the internet being the internet, people are constantly pushing back and going off halfcocked with their opinions and you end up getting into it with them, right? Yeah. You see a lot of people um really piling on somebody that didn't know. Well, how are they going to know? They're moving here from Missouri, Colorado, you know, Chicago, and if they didn't stumble upon this information in their research for whatever reason because it's not clear, then why dogpile on this person? Like and that's something like that really frustrates me. Everybody's an expert suddenly on Reddit. You know, we're all real estate agents on there. We're all programmers. We're all experts on every topic. Once you've heard three other people say it, you're like, well, I know this. And people start jumping in and it becomes the consensus. And often it's wrong. Absolutely. And a lot of times people are asking for clarification. Why am I driving past three schools to get to this other one? I live in Madison and those schools are in Madison. And they have no idea the delineation. And it's ignorance, but it's not like willful ignorance. They're actually on there asking for help to become educated on it. So, that's just really frustrating for me. In general, Huntsville is a very warm and inviting place. Reddit has a bit of a tent towards being a little more aggressive and um I, you know, just get on there and kind of defend people in that regard and hopes to educate others because one person makes a post, 20,000 read it. You know, the idea is to educate those 20,000 and we and then they fall into some stereotype about Alabama or about our area and everybody gets afraid. Yep. And it causes a lot of apprehension where there shouldn't be. Yep. Yeah. Because this is actually a great place to live. It is. Um what kind of untruths have you—So when people talk a lot about the weather on there. Um what where have you had to redirect—Yeah. on this topic? Absolutely. Storm anxiety is a real thing and some of uh some people in my household suffer from it as well. Having grown up and lived in Alabama over 30 years off and on and even where else I lived had tornadoes. Pretty well versed in the subject. And so when people first move here or they're considering a move here, one of the hottest topics for them is tornadoes and severe weather. Yeah. And when they watch the news, it looks like the entirety of North Alabama gets eviscerated every single year by these tornadoes. And we're all lucky to be survivors. When in truth, having lived in Alabama for over 30 years in tornado prone areas for the entirety of my life, I've never seen a tornado. Yeah. And until a couple of years ago, I only knew one person that ever had damage and he had lost one board on his fence. So now that I've been here and I've met so many people in such a broad area, I do know other people that have had damage like losing trees and things like that. But you know, I did an episode about a year ago with the chief meteorologist here or the meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service and we did an entire episode on severe weather and tornadoes. And what you'll find is that preparation goes a long way towards helping like getting your turning your trampoline upside down saves you a lot of heartache because those things fly away. Making sure you don't have loose lumber or anything in the yard like in tornado season. Um day of making sure you're not out and about when the forecast has said from 3:00 to 7:00 this is when the bad weather's going to come through. Planning your day around it just like somebody up north would do it around like a blizzard or a snowstorm only we have a much more narrow window. It's actually more convenient for us. Yeah. And then understanding where you need to be to be safe. If you're in a mobile home or you're out in a vehicle, those are horrible places to be when severe weather rolls through. You need to be in somewhere much more secure, either a shelter or a stronger, you know, stick-built home. If you're in a stick-built home, either being in a shelter within that home or central room. But again, like the odds of you, I took on way more risk driving here to shoot this podcast than I've ever taken on in the entirety of my life regarding tornadoes and living in Alabama. And I do that multiple times a day, right? So, I'm at far more risk driving anywhere than I will ever be of being hit by a tornado. But if you watch it on the news, um it seems so much more aggressive. So you get on Reddit, but the news does that with like every subject. That's sort of the world we're in right now is one horrible thing happens to someone and we're all scared of it forever. Absolutely. Of the way media works. For sure. And so you'll get on Reddit and you'll have people that are Chicken Little. They're scared because the sky is falling. And then you have other people that are feeding that beast. And so that's somewhere where I get frustrated too is, you know, regardless of whether you lived here for 30 years or not, you can still have storm anxiety. But misinformation is always a bad thing regardless. And you're feeding into somebody else's anxiety. Yeah. And then you may have people that are considering a move here. Everything else lines up. They have the storm anxiety and you're feeding worse into that. And you're dissuading people from moving here for what I'm not going to say is a non-issue, but is an extremely low likelihood. You know, the people are in a popularity contest on all the social media platforms and these comments get ranked up if they, if it bleeds, it leads. It's just like the old adage. And so if you're writing on there, it's horrible and you all have to be afraid. Everyone's looking at that and you're feeling this rush of popularity and adrenalin, you're like, "Yay me," and you just continue. Meanwhile, the more down votes I have, the stronger I feel that I probably said the right thing. Yes. Um, and then another topic that a lot of people get involved in on there is got to be our buyer beware situation. And I'm sure that you're in there explaining this on the regular. Absolutely. So, there's a lot of misinformation around buyer beware and inspections and there's a lot of questions about which inspector to use and I had this experience with this inspector or this builder or buying my home. And again, a lot of it's anecdotal and a lot of it's misinformed and unfortunately a lot of people got a lot of bad direction or they're misinterpreting the direction they did get. So, they're regurgitating it online and misleading the next person. So, I go to Reddit all the time to get additional information about things. I think it's a great resource to find educated, knowledgeable people that are willing to help. Unfortunately, um it can be difficult to wade through who knows what they're talking about, who's just blowing smoke. And so, a lot of times when you see these threads about um specific builders or problems, I'll give you a great example is builder warranties. Um, no matter where you go, uh, Yelp, Google reviews, Reddit, Facebook, you're going to see numerous complaints about builder warranties. And in many cases, they are accurate. There is a problem there. But in many more cases, it's that people don't understand what's covered under their warranty. And so, if your kid flushes their army figures down the toilet, that's not a builder problem. That's a you and your kid problem and needing to get a plumber out. But they'll say, "Oh, but this happened in the first year." Yeah, but it's not a default in the workmanship or craftsmanship. Now, I know that from working with clients and having worked for a builder for five years, but you get on Reddit, that's not how the story is portrayed. It's just that the builder wouldn't honor the warranty. Don't work with this builder. And in many cases, I've had a lot of experiences with these builders. In some cases, like I'll give an example. Won't go into too much detail. You had a client last year pick their own lot. Once construction started, they realized there was problems with the front yard, right? And the builder offered to allow them to change to another lot. Now, I see that builder get dogged all the time online, and it's like, well, in our experience, they've done right by the client, right? So, I want to offer a counterbalance. Now, there are builders that I absolutely would never work with again, and I've got to offer that perspective, too. And a lot of times, it's about expectations. And when you're looking at a comment online, you have no idea what these expectations were or who presented them or why. I mean, you know, they may have built an entirely custom home at some point in the past and then they come here and they work with a production builder and no one's really explained to them the difference and then they get upset halfway through the process because they're not getting the kind of service that they got with the custom home that they purchased. I mean, you don't know what their expectations are because you haven't talked to that person and you're just seeing this little snippet. So, it's important to not base all your views on something on somebody you've never met and don't know and don't know why they're saying that. Absolutely 100% agree. Right. There's always two sides to every story and neither one of them is probably 100% accurate. Yeah. And you don't see a lot of people coming in there to defend builders. They don't all have a great reputation and in some cases for very good reason, right? Um, but then we've had clients build with virtually every builder and in many cases a builder that may not have the best reputation so long as the process is followed with inspections, expectation settings, site visits, clarification of questions on the frontend rather than on the back end when it becomes a problem. Yeah. So, a client who's well informed makes the decision about buying that home or not, the better informed they are, the more likely they are to make the right decision. So, we don't run into these challenges a week before closing or a month after closing because we made sure our client was well informed. You can go into Reddit and see that that is not always the case and frequently not the case. Yeah. You have expectations and they don't get met and then you're upset with everyone because it's a really emotional process. Absolutely. Um, and the other thing that I always notice is the more a builder builds, the smaller the builder, the less likely they are to have a bunch of bad reviews online because they just are dealing with less people. The bigger you get, the more people you deal with, the more you know, Yeah. the chances are for something to go wrong. Yeah. And Yeah. And that's just really part of the game. It is. And there's pros and cons on both of those, right? So larger builder is going to be around. They're going to finish out their communities. They're going to honor their warranties. A smaller builder, if there's a dip in the economy, they may be gone, right? Because And you won't even know the complaints because it'll be like this thing happened and it's just poof. Yep. or they sell into another builder. There's a builder I actually interviewed with when I first moved down here. I chose not to go forward with them. They've been sold three times since I've been here and I've only lived here seven years. So, to give you an idea, like that can happen pretty quickly, too. And then your contract and your warranty with the original builder is what carries forward for you because it goes on to those signs. Um, but future people buying in your neighborhood may not get what you got, good or bad, right? And so that could be in the quality of the home, it could be in the pricing, could be in the warranty, it could be in design styles. So that's something to keep in mind, too. A smaller builder may or may not sell out to a larger builder, and then your community may see a different face by the end of it. Yeah, that can absolutely happen. Um, what are there any other major themes that you see people complaining about online of this area that we haven't really touched on? There's some social themes that as realtors we can't really touch on too heavily. Yeah. So what I do is direct people towards resources. So for if you don't know like I know you know but uh as realtors we can't steer people towards buying in a particular area or particular home or not buying based on some factors like I'm going to list out a few race, religion, ethnic background, sexuality, familial status, veteran status. And so you will have people that ask questions and they're well-meaning questions. They're not there to discriminate against anybody. They just want more information and it's like that's not the information that I can provide you. And twofold. One, it may be illegal for me to provide it because it might be a fair housing violation. And two, I may just not have experience with it. And so what I want to do is direct you towards the right resource so that that way you're actually getting the factual answer. You're not getting my interpretation of misinformation that I might have gotten off of Reddit or elsewhere. Right? I do think in some cases that is a good place to go to Reddit because you may find people of a similar or like community that can give you more information about what you're looking to know. What I always tell people though is and it's true. I just say it kind of jokingly to kind of diffuse the situation is I've worked with people from all six habitable continents and as soon as there's somebody born in Antarctica I'm going to work with them too. Um, yeah, I think that there's a tremendous amount of misinformation around schools and you know, and that's because it's such a sensitive issue and you read one story where somebody had a bad experience and you think of your own child and it becomes very sensitive to you and you're scared. Yeah. And it's really important to take a step back and look at these independent resources, look at the reviews, maybe tour the school. Know that your realtor can't tell you like, I love the school, I hate that school. That's not what we're here for and it's illegal for us to do that. But we can point you in the direction of some actual real resources and there's no organization that takes care of thousands of people that doesn't have a few of them that are unhappy. Sure. That's how that works. Absolutely. And yeah, that's a great point. You'll see people online dogging one school or another and um or hyping one school or another. And I'm very much about trying to get objective resources, right? Because what is school, right? Is it band? Is it football? Is it chess club? Is it robotics club? Is it just a kid that wants to go through do C average and go be something else after school? Like, you know, is it college prep? Is it ROC? Like, there's so many different things that go into a school. And they're not all encapsulated in an eight out of 10 on great schools or an A minus on Niche. Like, you need to dig into what those specific programs are that you and your child are interested in and find out more information about that. And to your point about touring the schools and meeting with them, those schools are happy to do it. I've had several clients in just the past month that have been here touring schools, talking to principles, learning more about, you know, what programs are on offer there. And I think PTAs are a great place to get additional information, too. And they all have Facebook pages or some kind of group page. You can go in and see like what the parental involvement's been, what kind of programs they support, where's the money from the community going into the school. And social media for all the schools is great, too. like it really does showcase like how involved that school is in the kids' lives and how much the outside community is involved too because that makes a huge difference on the experience students have at that school. It really does. And you know that as a parent like we can't tell you. Your realtor can't really tell you. And then but you can actually talk to people who can and everyone is so individual. Like if your child's really good at art and you connect with that art teacher and you know this person is going to be great for your kid, then that's a good school for you. Absolutely. Um, and it might not have the best ratings on great schools, but it might you know, and those ratings it's important to point out are very very test-driven. Yeah. So, there's a lot of reasons that a school might not be scoring great on tests, but it still might be based in a really caring community and have some really great teachers and you can find that stuff out for yourself. Absolutely. And conversely, you may have great test scores and great college readiness, but something else drags it down. So if that's important to you, need to look at that, too. So look a little closer. Yeah. We can't tell you. Yep. So one other thing I want to dive into before we wrap up, and this is like something I will argue to the end of days, is Madison traffic. Oh, you see anytime anybody talks about moving to Madison, the people from Huntsville come out of the woodwork to tell you how bad Madison traffic is. Now, these are people that have never lived in Madison. They might as well be talking to you about traffic on the moon, but they've heard from so many people that traffic in Madison is so bad, it's become a truth to them. Now, this morning is a great example. I live in Madison. I live as far away in Madison as you can from Huntsville. Literally, until recently, two more communities were built further west than my community. For 12 years, we were the outpost, right? So, as far away from Huntsville and still be within the city limits of Madison as you can be. And we are shooting this podcast downtown. The courthouse is behind me of the courthouse square. We couldn't be any more downtown if we tried. It took me less than 25 minutes door to door to the parking lot of where I parked just across the street. And that is in morning rush hour traffic and I passed an accident on the way. Like traffic in Madison is not that bad. Traffic sensitivity is an extremely subjective issue. Yes, it is extremely subjective because there are people who will swear up and down that this is the torture, the bane of their existence and then there's other people who will be like what are these people talking about? And so you just you need to decide for yourself and you know maybe you are maybe three people tell you and then that becomes horrifying for you and then what you know that's the truth that is your truth. Everyone has their own truth when it comes to traffic. Absolutely. Now I will say like in defense of those people there are places where you can have really bad traffic and if you work on the arsenal you have to go through the gates. My wife has to go through two gates to get to the FBI location and it takes her 25 minutes in the morning and on a bad afternoon it can take her 35 minutes to get home. So that's your traffic right there. But that's different. It's closer geographically, but it can be longer in a time horizon, but you're going through two gates. I mean, I don't really enjoy what Yeah. But if let's say you live on the north side of Madison, you know, you might be taking Highway 72 for a good bit of the distance. And that is going to be more bumper-to-bumper, red light to red light type traffic than if you're on 565 where it's an interstate and you're not running into those traffic lights. True. Okay. Well, I'm glad you're defending Huntsville on Reddit, Cameron, so I don't have to. I'm on the computer enough. Yeah. Well, you know, I got to do something at 2 am, right? Yeah. Um, so yeah, um, Cameron's on there and he's truth telling on the daily if you need if you want another resource that you can look at and see some stuff about the area, Reddit actually is a really good resource and um, Cameron's on there keeping it real. Yeah, by and large the information on there is great. So like we're talking about the one-offs and the kind of recurring issues, but yeah, 90 plus % of that info is great. Yeah. Well, I think that we've um kind of been through it with this and I want to thank everybody for joining us and thank you Cameron for your steady defense of our area. Thanks. Thanks for watching or listening. You can always catch us on audio wherever you get your podcast be Spotify, Apple, or you can watch our video on YouTube. Really appreciate you guys being here. Ask that you subscribe so we can keep you informed of everything going on here in Huntsville.