Hello world, welcome to WFHR's rapid support for this Tuesday, November 11, 2025.
Big thank you to Crockettceptic Sponsor in this half an hour and giving us a chance
to talk with our good friend, David Farmbrill, and it's Reality Radio.
David, how have you been?
I've been well, thank you very much, James, it's wonderful to be back with you.
Good to see you as always, looking good, sir, thank you as always, we appreciate the time
and I know that you and I today is a very special day to us and our community.
It is, yes, it is veterans day to day and we thank all those who have served and it's been
my honor to help a few veterans, including this last week, you know, a lot of people are
very modest about their service, but thank you very much if you're a person who served
because it's something that I know I couldn't do.
I would greatly appreciate you out there and we're thinking of you, thank you so much
for that.
David, appreciate it.
I know the subject today that we're going to get into is pretty big, but it's awesome,
it's a great topic.
You and I have talked long enough, you know, I love history, I know you're a history fan
yourself.
And one of the things that I find interesting about history and I learned this, you know,
not late in life, but how much real estate plays into our history.
There's so many different moments in just American history, even if you look at, and
look at these significant moments and then you look at the real estate industry and how
it was almost a bell weather of what was going on.
It's, there's not a lot of businesses or a lot of industries like that, but it tends
to be that for a lot of the world and the events going on and then there's just the
interesting history in general of how housing and these certain areas are, we're affected.
I think that's right and one thing that I've found is that all history is local.
So we, in a first, the first time we read about history, we read about kings and queens
and battles and revolutions and things like that, but after a little while we start to
learn about things like local history and family history.
And what you find is that ordinary people's lives are shaped very much by these national
and global events.
So for example, if you look at the house building that was going on in Wisconsin Rapids,
you'll see that there was a big dip during the Second World War or during the time that
the US was involved in the Second World War and there was a big boom afterwards.
You can also look at differences in the style of homes that were built during those periods.
And you can also look at the local industry.
So one of the houses that I've lived in was built in 1898 in Wisconsin Rapids and you
can look at where it was built on the west side and its proximity to the mill.
And then you have to think, ah, 1898 was actually before we had a paper mill in Wisconsin
Rapids.
So those houses of that era were built for the lumber mill, not the paper mill.
And during that time we had seven lumber mills around here.
Port Edwards was a little bit earlier than us.
So if you have a 1898 home built in Port Edwards, that could have been built for their new
paper mill.
We look at homes that were built in the mid-century, say from about 1940 up to about 1960.
And this was when the paper mill in Rapids consolidated was really booming.
And I don't know if you've seen, but there's one of those big metal brown signs down by
the river that says that in 1955, consolidated was the largest producer of coated paper in
the world, not just in America, not just in Wood County, but in the world.
And they needed places to live.
So you can see this when you go through the houses.
If you have a house that was built in around that time, you often find that there's a little
extra shower in the basement, or sometimes an extra toilet in the basement.
But these are usually very rough.
These were just intended for the mill workers coming home so that they could clean up before
they went into the nice part of the house.
But what it gives us now, looking at contemporary real estate, is potential to add a lot of value
to a home.
So, when you see one of those houses, you can usually see it in one of two conditions.
Either there's still the old concrete shower, which is basically like a waterproof box made
of concrete, with a thing that water comes out of in the ceiling, or somebody has taken
the initiative and they've modernised it, and it can be really nice.
And then you've got your two full bathrooms in the house.
If of course they've also updated the toilet and the sink.
One of the things that often thinks funny is when you go around and see these houses
from this time period, and you see the toilet right in the middle of the floor in the basement
with no walls or door or anything.
And you sometimes wonder how that was when it was originally built.
So obviously that's not going to be so appealing now, but with a little bit of work, that could
be a half bathroom.
Yeah, once you don't see necessarily that plumbing that's there, that could be an expensive
project.
Have that already installed.
You could really work around that and do something kind of a unique and fun, I think,
with it.
That's right.
Because when you want to put a new bathroom in somewhere, the presence of the plumbing
is always the thing that tells you how easy it's going to be.
The home improvement jobs I've done, it's the first thing that comes up is, hey, where's
the plumbing?
How is the plumbing, things like that?
And if we've, I've installed plumbing in a bathroom before, whole bathroom, and we
are fortunate to be using like the PCP paper, what have you and everything, and that was
made a little simpler, but it was a gigantic project, and this was just like the upstairs
of a bar that we were doing, something like that, especially in a basement to have that
already put there that's kind of nice to work with.
I'm curious, David, when it comes to, because I had two different thoughts on this when it
comes to the history of these houses in this area and everything, you bring up, I think,
a really important part of this of the economics in this area.
And one of the biggest topics we have is, well, we need more houses.
We need more properties.
Rapids are already having a good portion of houses for its population at the time.
I gave it a little bit of almost, for lack of a better way to put it, a head start on
this topic in some ways.
Not just Rapids, but areas like that that had a bigger amount of people had more houses.
Right.
And I think when we look at the new house building that's going on in the moment, most of
it is not in Wisconsin Rapids, the city, but in places like Grand Rapids, where there's
a little bit more available land.
And I've seen some very nice new build homes in Grand Rapids over the last couple of weeks.
There are builders who are building with good quality.
They have a little more land, so they're not building in a city lot, like the type of
house I was talking about.
Usually they do have a full basement, but they make sure that most of that is finished,
and you can end up with some very high square footage houses built to a very good standard.
What we don't see very much of here, which is particularly in demand, is houses for people
who are just getting on the into the property market.
So if you're looking for your first home, the chances are you might have to look for
an older home or something that's a little bit smaller, because we're not building so
many of the small houses anymore.
David, one other part of this that I thought was pretty interesting is the style of home,
the types of homes.
And this isn't the subject I know a lot about, but I love looking at.
My whole life, I've loved looking at unique houses in the way that they have built.
This stems from really being a big, big, big fan of architecture, and just loving the
way that my uncle Ralph would talk about, he was an architect and he would talk about
some of the buildings and the way they were put together.
And that was just skyscrapers and things.
When it came to houses, it just got even more fascinating to me.
I find this area, you and I have lived in a lot of different places.
Yeah, I find this area to be really unique when it comes to the style of homes.
I don't feel like you see just the same home everywhere, back to back to back.
Point is a lot like this too, but just in rapids here, it's really unique to me.
I don't know if it's just me and the way I'm seeing it or it actually is that way,
but I think it is like that.
I was actually helping some buyers recently looking to buy something in red in
road, and I don't know if you know red in road, but it's over on the west side and it's
by the VFW building, and it's interesting because it's sort of out in the country,
and the far end of it actually is in the village of Rudolph, but most of it's in the city.
So what you get is you get more wide open spaces, you get larger lots, so instead of getting
like maybe in the city you get point two of an acre, in that area you probably get point four or
thereabouts. So it feels like you're in the country, but you're in the city, so you have city
water and city sewer, and that makes a big difference to home ownership.
It means you get a water bill, which most of us don't like, but it also means you don't have to
maintain a well and a septic system. Anyway, so I was looking into the history of some of these
houses, and what I was interested to find is that, and I was doing this partly outside of my job,
but also partly as my due diligence for this client, you know, I do tend to get curious about
things. I was looking to see that there was a man who was called Tom Redden, and I suppose it's
him or his family after whom the road is named, and it looked like he was not building
like a whole row of houses at once, a whole street. He was building a house, and then a couple of
years later he'd build another one, and a couple of years later he'd build another one. And when
you look at the houses in this road, they're all slightly different. So some of them have an upstairs
attic. In some of the houses, those upstairs attics are actually finished and made into bedrooms.
I think that probably was done more recently. But, you know, they're all slightly different
square footages or different patterns. So that's just one road with one individual building.
When you look all over the town, you see many different styles from each era. So I was helping
somebody sell a house in Vespa a couple of years ago, and it was really interesting to me because
of how the roof was. The roof had four eaves. So it was a square type of house, but it had four eaves,
and usually you don't see that. You usually only see two eaves. And so I went to the registrar of
deeds. I inquired of the tax assessor, and nobody could confirm when this house was built.
So what I did in order to get an estimate was I looked around a lot of houses in the Wisconsin
Rapids and Vespa area with known ages, and found that most of those with that type of roof were built
between about 1913 and 1918. So that was a fashion that was only there for a small time.
And so I was able to give an approximate date of construction. I would disclose that this was
an approximate, you know, we didn't have a sure. But, yeah, those things make a difference to
houses. And, you know, if you live in a house like that, then anything on the upper floor,
you're going to have some sloped rooms or some cut-ins to the rooms. One and a half stories are
actually pretty popular here on the west side. You know, just as a side question, David,
I know when we were kids, it seemed like it was more of a thing. I don't know if it is anymore,
but I know there were individuals. When I was a kid, it seemed like I want this style of house,
and they would only look at a Victorian or something along those lines. Do you run into that as much?
Yes, I do. And what I have to tell myself is that this isn't a house for me. This is somebody's
personal preference. And I'm going to do my best to help that person get the type of home they want.
So if they tell me all they want is a new house. I'm not going to say, I'm not going to lecture
them and say, actually, this house built in 1961 is better construction because it might not be.
And it doesn't matter if it is. They just don't want that. They want everything's been new.
So I do find people who have a style of house in mind, sometimes an era. I did have one client
who gave me specific dates. He said, nothing before 1941 and nothing after 1970.
And that's okay. But ultimately, we did find some that he was interested in that were actually a
little bit later than 1970 that he thought were worth looking at. So sometimes you find that people
come in with their preconceived ideas, but then they make a different decision based on some other
factor. Like sometimes it's just a question of walking into a house and it feels like home.
And you might not have originally thought you wanted a, I don't know, a four bedroom. You might
have thought you just wanted a three bedroom. And you see a four bedroom, maybe a little bit larger
and you think, right, actually, this is something that I could use. It's a bit bigger than what I
expected. But yes, I do feel at home here. You're listening to Reality Radio with David Farnborough.
And David, I know you had some statistics update on how house prices are doing in various municipalities.
Did you wanted to touch on? Yes, I've actually done a little round up just so that we can look at
our local area of only really talked about rapids and points or underground rapids. But the way that
these figures work is they work by zip code. And so they can be a little bit inaccurate
to get fine detail on this. You need to talk to your realtor because they'll be able to tell you
that although homes in Nikusa 54457 have gone up approximately 7% in the last year,
that's not going to be exactly the same for the city of Nikusa and the surrounding area
compared to Rome and the surrounding area there. And this is particularly local. So you'll often
find in places like that that there's the area which you might look at as the key recreational
area near the golf courses and diaracuse and and those other facilities. Those already went up
quite a bit in the past probably seven years. And so you may not see such a huge increase in those
this year. They're certainly not going down. But you might find that some of the outlying areas
places that are a little bit more rural like Arctale might be going up a bit because they were
they're a little bit undervalued and people are saying well actually this is pretty close to
where I want to be and the price is much lower. I think I'm going to go after this property.
So yeah it is nuanced but what I'm going to do is just give you a few postal areas
of review zip codes. So we do have two for for rapids. We have the 5444 and 54495. And actually
it's not just that those are the one municipality either because you've got places like Beren
that can be in the 54494 and you've also got Grand Rapids which is in 54494.
So in that zip code we saw an increase of 8% in the last year. So still doing well. But in
the 54495 that's the west side we saw an increase of 10 and a half percent. And my feeling is
that the west side was a bit undervalued and that people were saying well actually the median
house price for this for the east side is about 233,000 but the median house price over here
is about 177,000. It's really important that I get that extra bedroom and I'm happy to live on
the west side rather than the east side. So there has been a bit of a boom on the west side.
Rudolf also is doing pretty well going up 9% in the last year and then Steven's point also doing
reasonably well at 7%. And then we also have Marshfield going up about 6%. Marshfield typically has
a higher median house price. It's about the same as Steven's point around 250,000
and PortEd was going up 9%. So there's nowhere really that's doing badly here. The only one which
went up I think lower than 5% was Pitzville and even that went up by 3% which was about the rate
of inflation. And what I'm thinking about that is that the figures are probably skewed because
Pitzville is very sparsely populated with houses. So at any given time they're usually only
a couple of houses for sale in Pitzville. So well when I've looked for clients that tends to be the
case and also they tend to be a very specific type. So usually rural often their farm houses.
Sometimes you get a little bit of land with them. Sometimes you get the situation that we see
around here a lot. And again it's due to history. You get the old farmhouse which has built a
hundred years ago and it used to be the farmhouse for these whole AT acres. But at some point
the farmer sold 75 of those AT acres to his neighbour who wanted to have a bigger farm and he just
kept five acres with the farmhouse. So you see that a lot. You see just small bits of rural land.
And sometimes as well as getting the farmhouse you'll get a barn on there or something. So
people can still have a hobby farm. But yeah it is part of our history that you see these lands
getting split up. It's great. There's a lot of encouragement I think to anybody listening that
whether you're buying or selling a home certainly but even to people like myself that maybe not
or in those categories but I hear those numbers and I know our economy enough to know that there's
a lot of good signs there with that. And it does just again as a layman David it seems to me
hearing those numbers some of the conversations we've had today and in the past. This seems like a
pretty good time to be buying or selling a home. It seems like to me.
Well yes it is and I think the thing is what we want as home buyers is the most important thing
is we want to get somewhere where we can live for a good number of years that will be comfortable
and affordable. Sometimes people do look at it in terms of a financial investment and yes it is
that it is an important financial decision you're committing a lot of money as well as committing
as committing where you're going to be living for perhaps the next five years. I would say that
the thing that you can look at is that in the past say four years since the pandemic really
things have kept fairly steady so we tend to see about a 7% increase year on year and although
things change in the economy the reason that that doesn't really change that much is we still have
more demand than supply so this is going to drive the increase in house prices until there's a
substantial building program. The few that we're having built here I think they're probably about
I know fewer than 20 homes being built in rapids this year that's not enough to address
the problem with lack of housing and also it doesn't really address the bottom end of the market
so we're still going to have more demand than supply and until that changes then we're going to
see those increases. Now of course what could happen is you could suddenly have an economy crash
you never know what's around the corner and that's when you have to think my home is a long term
investment you know I'm paying good money you know a good amount of money to be living where I
like to live and in the home I enjoy I'm not going to worry that my house's value on paper has
gone down because I'm not prepared to sell it at the moment I know that it's a good long term
investment and the house prices will rebound. Always good conversation with David this was a real
fun one I appreciate the time as always if people have filed questions they'd like to know more
how can they get in touch with you. The best way is to just send me a text message 715-323-8594
I am very responsive on text because I can respond quickly when I'm not when I'm driving
but when I'm doing something else you know so it's that's probably the easiest way to get me
and I always say people can text me anytime day or night but you can also find me on Facebook
I am there as David Famba Realtor or you can look at my website at rapidshomes.com
Be sure to reach out to David with all your needs and questions everybody David thank you so
much again for the time it's pleasure thank you everybody for joining us for another edition of
WFHR's Rapids Report
