SUMMER, Lately

Every month I find myself coming back here, opening this space and settling into the story I’ve been Living, Lately.

There's a table at Mudhouse I keep coming back to.

It's become part of the routine. The walk in, the same order, a few minutes before the day asks anything of me. And in the summer, downtown Springfield gives you something extra for showing up. People move slower. They linger outside. There's a livelihood to these streets in July that you come to miss in January, when everyone's rushing to get out of the cold and into the nearest doorway.

Although I'll say this. The heat and humidity this year have people moving just as fast. Same sprint, opposite reason.

Summer got away from me a little. The days filled up, the months ran together, and the writing waited. So this one covers the whole stretch: June, July, and the first weeks of August all at once.

Which feels about right. Summer in the Ozarks doesn't keep to a calendar anyway.

Reflection, Lately.

I turned 27 in July.

Birthdays usually come with a little pressure attached. Expectations. Timelines. The quiet math of where you thought you'd be by now. That's typically what I brace for.

This one didn't do that.

What happened instead is that the noise settled. It didn't go away, the world is as loud as it's ever been, but it moved to the background, and what's actually in front of me moved forward. The day I'm in. The people who are here. The work on the desk instead of the version of it I'm worried about six months out.

The good things have been easier to find this year. I don't think there are more of them. I think I've stopped looking past them.

Mostly, 27 has taught me to be present enough to notice what I already have to work with.

Lawrence County

Real Estate, Lately.

Here's the conversation I've had more than any other this summer, and it's a hard one.

There are buyers in Springfield who have done everything right. Good credit, steady income, pre-approved and patient. They aren't asking for much. A solid home in a price range that works on a normal paycheck. And the market keeps handing them a shorter list than they deserve.

The squeeze is sharpest for buyers using USDA and FHA financing, which are the two programs that make a first home possible for a lot of people around here. Both come with rules about where and what you can buy. USDA financing requires the home to sit inside an eligible area, which pushes you toward the edges of the metro and out of the city itself.

FHA runs into something more specific to us. It meets property condition standards at appraisal, and Springfield's housing stock is old. Civil War era in places, and a great deal more from the decades that followed. Those homes have real character and real history, and a good number of them can't clear the bar government financing sets without work a seller isn't always willing to take on.

So you end up with the hardest version of the problem. The homes at the most accessible price point are frequently the same homes that can't be financed by the buyers who need that price point.

The buyer I spent most of this summer with ended up in Lawrence County. West of town, past the county line, in a place that qualified when Springfield didn't. That's not a consolation prize. It's just what the map allows right now, and there's good ground out that direction.

What I keep telling buyers in this position is that the answer isn't lowering your standards. It's being ready. In a market this tight the homes that work do exist, there are just fewer of them, and they don't wait. Pre-approval in hand, a clear picture of what you actually need, and the willingness to move the same week you see it.

On the seller side, the lesson this summer has been the same one all year. Price it right, and it moves. Price it hopefully, and it sits, and then it sells for less than it would have. The Springfield market has gotten more precise, not softer.

Community, Lately.

Most of my summer outside of real estate has gone into Isabel's House, and specifically into the Summer Party on September 18th.

We've been rebuilding this event. New life, old story. These things can drift into being just another evening on the calendar, and what we wanted was to return it to what it actually is. A celebration of another successful trip around the sun for an organization that has spent every one of those years doing hard, quiet, necessary work.

This year makes 19.

Nineteen years of a mission carried forward. That's what September 18th is for. It's a birthday for something worth keeping alive.

It's right around the corner now, and the work is in full swing.

Local, lately.

The centennial year finally landed.

The Birthplace of Route 66 Festival came downtown August 7th and 8th. The car show, the music, the crowds filling Park Central and spilling down the side streets. Springfield has been building toward this all year, and standing in the middle of it you could feel the city collect around the fact that the Mother Road got its name right here.

Before that, the Ozark Empire Fair took over the fairgrounds on North Grant at the end of July and ran into the first week of August. Silver Dollar City's Summer Celebration carried the stretch from early June to the second. And June brought Taste of SOMO, which always reminds me how much good food this town quietly produces.

Downtown also picked up new art installations this year, and they're worth walking to see. But the part that's stayed with me is smaller than that. There are a few people I've started passing regularly. Someone playing music on a corner. Someone drawing downtown live, the buildings going down on paper while you stand there watching.

Spend a summer downtown, and you can't miss how deep art runs in this city. Springfield didn't add it recently. The roots go a long way down.

The thing I look forward to most, though, is smaller than any of it.

Saturday mornings at the Farmers Market of the Ozarks. Sixty-six degrees and misting one week, ninety and still the next. Hoodies or short sleeves, coffee either way. Fresh produce, local honey, handmade pottery, people who are in no particular hurry to be anywhere else.

That's the part of summer here that isn't on a poster. People show up every Saturday, regardless. It's just part of living in the Ozarks.

Farmers Market of the Ozarks

Next, Lately.

September is when the Ozarks start to turn, and the calendar gets good again.

Isabel's House Summer Party on the 18th is the one I'm counting down to. After that, Fall arrives in full. PBR Thunder Days, the Japanese Fall Festival, Cider Days, and the run of weekends that make autumn here worth waiting through August for.

The market shifts too. Fewer listings, fewer buyers, but the buyers still out in October and November are serious. Nobody tours houses in the cold for entertainment. For sellers whose homes are genuinely ready, that's often a better trade than a crowded spring.

I'm heading into the back half of this year the way 27 has taught me to head into most things lately. Paying attention to what's here. Doing the work in front of me. Letting the rest settle where it belongs.

The days are still long enough. There's plenty of season left.