Well, folks. We just completed our tenth year of Phoestivus. It was hard to believe we’ve been going so long!

Here are some of the highlights:

We counted about 12,000 attendees over two nights. That’s about a 20% increase over last year.

Early numbers from Phoestivus indicate that we raised over $17,000 for Community Food Connections, the organization that puts on the weekly farmer’s market, and which works so hard to provide fresh and local food and crafts to our community.

This is an all-time record!

Anecdotally, I heard many vendors say that they brought in significantly more than last year.

Our sponsors, as usual, are amazing. There seem to be more every year and we appreciate each and every one!

We were particularly thankful for our title sponsor, Hownd. They have a unique way to help locally-owned businesses compete in a saturated advertising market. So, we love where their heart is.

The mayor declared December 19th as “Phoestivus Day” in Phoenix. It was such an honor! Then she went over to say hello to Hipster Santa.

Y’all might not know this, but Mayor Gallego has been going to Phoestivus for years, long before she was mayor. So, she deserves the “hippest mayor” badge from us.

We created new relationships this year, too. Walter Productions, famous for their massive art cars, were kind enough to bring Big Red and Walter the Bus over to for people to explore.

Rent.Solar, a mobile solar energy start-up, helped power a bunch of tents and features, thus helping us cut down on noise and carbon emissions.

We introduced re-usable cups for Phoestivus Ale this year and cut down on our waste. We will be partnering with new friends in 2020 to do even better in our vision to reduce waste.

So, every year, we grow a little and improve a little. We love that you love Phoestivus and we look forward to 2020.

Remember, announcements for vendors will come in about September. If you have friends who might like to be vendors, please ask them to sign up for this newsletter on the side panel of the front page of GetYourPHX.com.

See you next year!

You asked for it and we will deliver: more local events and news. There are plenty of events around Phoenix to keep you busy. Here are some of the ones we noticed and we think you might like as well.

1) The fine folks at Local First Arizona are hosting another Good Business Summit on January 22nd and 23rd.

“The 2020 Arizona Good Business Summit will bring over 500 businesses and community leaders together in Downtown Phoenix to discuss the dynamics and complexity of doing business in today’s world. Over this two day conference, experience 35+ keynotes, workshops, business trainings, panel discussions, networking opportunities, and presentations featuring more than 50 local and national experts redefining what it means to do good business.”

2) Our friends at Urban Farm U host events all the time.

On January 16th – 18th and also January 23rd – 25th, they will be hosting pop-up nurseries where you can pick up deciduous trees, bushes and vines.

You could pick up trees anywhere. The difference with Urban Farm U is that they wrap you in a warm blanket of education through podcasts, seminars and library tools.

3) The City of Phoenix is considering rate changes to trash and recycling.

Remember how recycling nation-wide took a punch to the gut last year when China stopped taking our boat-loads of recyclable materials? And, since the US spent the last 40 years out-sourcing recycling to other countries rather than building our domestic recycling industry, we were left in a lurch.

Well, that has led to hard decisions in cities all over the country. Do we charge more to pick up your recycling? Do we stop collecting recyclable materials?

It’s a shame. We spent so many years correcting people when they said that cities don’t really recycle, and then it turns out we may not be able to recycle until the US re-builds its domestic industry. Then we have to start the education process all over again.

Anyway, my belly-aching aside, the City of Phoenix has some hard decisions to make and they need your help. Please see the website announcement here and look for the link for the survey. Please take 3 minutes to fill that out.

4) Americano!, at Phoenix Theater Main Stage. January 29th – Feb. 23.

Stories like these, which humanize the lives of refugees, are not told enough. See the Phoenix Theater site for ticket information.

“This true story world premiere musical follows Tony, the child of immigrants who discovers his undocumented status when he tries to enlist in the Marines. With his lifelong dream of serving in the military vanishing quickly, Tony must confront his family, his heritage, and a deeply divided country. With a sumptuous original score of new songs, Americano! casts a deeply human light on what it means to be a Dreamer.”

5) The Arizona Wine Festival, January 25th and 26th

Over the last 20 years, the wine industry has exploded. I remember hearing stories as a kid in Sierra Vista about mythical vineyards in Cochise County, but “you probably would not want to drink that stuff,” they said.

Well, the wine industry has attracted dollars, tourism and rural economic development, all with a crop that uses significantly less water than other imports such as cotton, alfalfa, almonds and pistachios.

So, tip a glass to that at the Arizona Wine Festival in downtown Phoenix.

“The Cochise Graham Wine Council, Inc partners will present the largest gathering of Arizona wineries. This festival will feature over 25 Arizona Wineries pouring over 200 different wines. The festival will have 5 to 7 food trucks, a vintage village and numerous other non-winery vendors. There will be live entertainment throughout the festival.”

We created the We the People Summit in 2017 to help folks who have never been politically active to learn the basics about how to get involved.

While I was there for the beginning and I’ve done fundraising over the years, there is an amazing core group of women who have organized the details for all of the conferences.

This is a non-partisan, left-leaning conference. But the organizers welcome anybody who wants to learn as they have a general belief that people should feel empowered to participate in their government.

Civic participation is the key for this group of do-gooders.

This will be the last conference of the series. It will happen at a Desert Vista high school in Awhatukee on January 11th. So, just around the corner.

Have a look at this website to learn how to register. General admission is $20 or $10 for students. And that gets you access to a whole host of panels throughout the day.

I’ll be leading a panel on redistricting, as well as a panel on voter suppression tactics and how to combat them.

There are some workshop descriptions that are still being written, but check in here if you want to see what is being offered.

When you are trying to figure out what your home is worth, who can you trust?

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I don’t trust the big national companies like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com.

These guys have skin in the game. They are in the business of buying and selling homes at the same time we are supposed to trust their “zestimates”?

Further, I regularly hear that people get estimates that end up being higher than the market, and they are disappointed later. Could this be that those companies are trying to entice you to sell by showing you a higher estimate?

You decide.

It was nice to see that AZCentral launched a home estimate tool, in collaboration with the Arizona Regional Multi Listing Service, called Street Scout.

See this article about it. It may be behind a paywall, FYI.

Now, to be sure, I still believe that the best way to get an estimate on the value of your home is to call me at 602-456-9388.

And here’s why: the automated services can’t really tell the difference between a home that has been recently updated, and one that never was –or was 10 years ago. I can look and see the difference.

And there is a price difference of easily $20/sqft, depending on the house.

Consumers are so used to these automated systems that we forget about the importance of talking with a real, live person. The sale of your home is worth the time.

Of course, if you don’t want to talk, you can just go to this web page and send me your address. I will personally do your comps.

Yep. Real live person!

But, let’s go back to Street Scout. The reason this is a game changer is because it uses the ARMLS system directly. Zillow and all those guys don’t have access to the same data as we agents get from ARMLS. They add all kinds of alchemy and conflict of interest.

So, you can get a better sense of what your house should be worth and know that the people behind the data are not also benefiting from the information. ARMLS is a company that we agents subscribe to. It is not run by the agents or firms that profit directly from the data.

This is the same data that I use to estimate the value of your home. The major difference is, of course, that Michelle and I have years of experience in a very specific market in Maricopa County and we will bring that knowledge to our estimate.

For this market update our friends at the Cromford Report are showing a continuation of what we have been seeing for much of 2019 — the number of active listings has been going down, prices are continuing to inch upwards, and the months’ supply has been decreasing.

By the way, when we talk about “months’ supply”, we are talking about how many months we could sell homes if no more homes came on the market today. So, we could continue selling homes for 2.4 months from today if no more homes were to come on to the market.

Notice on the graphic that it is down as compared to the last two months.

However, that can be misleading if you look at it out of context.

Have a look at this next graphic and compare 2019 to 2018. Sure, supply tends to go down at the end of each year. However 2019 has a significantly smaller number of properties on the market.

Were I to turn on 2016 and 2017 in this chart, it would be the same. 2019 has had the lowest supply since 2005.

So, as you might guess, this makes thing difficult for home buyers, especially in CenPho where there is hardly any new construction. We are seeing new construction in the suburban zones, for sure. But home builders are just not interested in the in-fill kind of projects that are needed in Central Phoenix.

Home builders would rather take huge tracks of land and put 200 homes on them, than find a couple acres in Central Phoenix where they may only be able to place 20 town homes.

Volume is the rule for these guys so that they can show a greater profit margin for their investors. So, whoever can figure out how to build in-fill at a profit will be king.

Or –and hear me out– maybe investors should not expect such high profit margins on in-fill constructions.

Boom! Mind blown!