The home buying process seems complicated and confusing if you’ve never done it.

The first time I thought of buying a home, I procrastinated because –and get this– I didn’t trust realtors.

Now I am one. Go figure.

What we’ve found over the last couple decades in real estate is that it’s really important to preview the process before we get started.

Seems elementary. But we’ve talked to people whose agents might as well have thrown them out of an airplane with parts of a parachute and an Ikea assembly manual.

We do better.

Really. Not to sound superior, but we do.

When we first meet a new client (particularly new home buyers), we go through a little Powerpoint presentation on what to expect.

It puts their minds at ease and makes the process smoother.

We also encourage buyers to look over this buyer advisory or this list of tips.

This post is the beginning of an in-depth series of posts that give you a deep dive perspective of the process.

Sure, I could just publish a list of steps in the home buying process. But then I deprive myself a chance to practice my writing skills.

Okay, to start this series off, let’s put things in to context and explain your rights as a client.

Part 1: Fiduciary Responsibility

That is not just a pretty phrase. It means that we must put our interests above the client’s and we can be fined heavily, be sued or lose our licenses if we do not.

This is not nothing. When I bought my first house I had no idea that realtors could be held to such high levels of responsibility for what they do. No wonder I didn’t trust them.

We take on a lot of responsibility when we agree to represent your interests.

Here are the things that define fiduciary responsibility, in understandable language:

Confidentiality – Safeguard your secrets unless doing so would violate disclosure requirements. In short, we can’t tell the seller that you are willing to pay more than you offered.

However, if you are the seller and you ask us to hide the fact that there is a secret hive of little green aliens in the basement, we cannot. That’s material to the sale. Plus, I think hiding aliens from Mars is illegal. I’ll get back to you on that one.

Accounting – Account for all funds entrusted to us by you. To be fair, we don’t handle money much anymore. It used to be that the buyer would give an earnest money check to the realtor to hold during the transaction. I’m so glad it’s not like that anymore! Now, f you are a buyer and you deposit earnest money, it goes to the title company.

Reasonable Skill and Care – We must work within our knowledge and capacity. In other words, we can’t pretend that we know how to sell the Westward Ho or an empty shopping mall if we don’t have experience at that.

Loyalty – Act in your best interest. We have to help you meet your goals in a way that is not harmful to you. We can’t, for instance, help the other side of the transaction if we think it could help us personally. Seems simple, right? We must put your interests first. But, I guess we had to spell this one out, huh? There are some bad agents out there, and we’ve met a few of them.

Obedience – This means we need to follow the client’s lawful instructions. We can’t break the law. But, if you tell us you want to list your house 20% above market level, we have two choices: do it, or end our listing agreement.

Accountability — You can count on us to communicate to you in a timely manner and be respectful of your time. You’d think this one is easy, but really…

Disclosure – Disclose all material facts to you. If we find out, for instance, that there are cracks in the foundation of a home, we must tell you. It is material to the sale of the home. We are not inspectors. But if we see a “red flag”, we gotta tell you.

There are some things we are not required to tell you (especially if we don’t know), such as whether the home was the site of a felony, if somebody died in the home, or if the home is in the vicinity of a sex offender. We can’t tell you if somebody lived in the home who had HIV or AIDS. That is Arizona law. Otherwise, if it could affect your decision to purchase the home, we need to let you know about it if we know.

That’s it. Agents don’t just sell homes and buy big cars. There are actual repercussions if we don’t respect our fiduciary responsibilities.

You might notice, by the way, that those words spell C-A-R-L-O-A-D.

Gee, those realtors are clever.

Next installment: Buyer disclosures and buyer/broker agreements.

Who owns rentals may play a really big role in affordability for families across the country –and maybe even homelessness.

This article, while a little strident in it’s tone, points to a problem that I outlined in a previous post about the number of evictions we are seeing in America today.

Listen to this podcast from On the Media, which aired last year. It gives a very compelling picture of a rental market that is now dominated by large investment companies or even property management companies that are employed by individual property owners.

This automation of the rental process leads to less leniency for renters when they are late on their rent.

This is a problem in a country where lower income workers are having a harder time paying for everything from rent to medical bills on less livable wages.

That lack of leniency leads to situations where renters are tagged with what the On the Media reporter Brook Gladstone called the Scarlett E. That’s “E” for for “eviction”.

That tag follows the renter so that they are relegated to less and less desirable properties, thus destabilizing their lives even further.

The most compelling point in this ownership dynamic is the increase in the number of properties owned by individuals and families from 92% in 1991 to 74% in 2015.

With the rise of mega-buyers like Zillow and other investor groups, this number could be even lower.

I’ve spoken about the problem of these mega buyers. They take homes out of circulation so that they are not available for other buyers, thus creating scarcity and elevating the over-all price of homes. Thus making home ownership even harder.

As we see an increase in homelessness, we need to be aware of those living on the margins. They are the first ones (families and children) who drop from barely making it to living on the street.

The February Market Update is starting to get a little redundant, you know? It looks much like the January update.

We still have a shortage of inventory. Builders are still spending their time on multi-family (mostly rental), with over 11,000 units permitted in the last year. That is an all-time high.

We need builders building single family or condos, especially in CenPho.

“Well, Ken, you are a realtor, so of course you want people to buy properties.”

Yeah, but no. That’s not true. There should be a healthy mix. This is not healthy. When you focus too much on rental construction you do three things.

First, you deprive neighborhoods of people who feel long-term connection to their community. This means fewer people doing block watch, fewer people communicating with their city officials about neighborhood health.

Second, when those people decide they don’t want to rent anymore, there are fewer homes on the market for them to purchase. Thus pushing up prices.

Third, once the prices are higher, it deprives people of the opportunity of home ownership. Their savings goes to landlords, rather than to themselves.

Sorry for going all “broken record” on ya.

So, where does this shortage leave us as we go in to 2020? Well, absent some catastrophic market failure, the market should be strong for the rest of the year.

There are no zero-interest loans out there. But there are a ton of AirBnB homes and corporate-owned single family homes that are being used as rentals.

According to Tina Tamboer of the Cromford Report, if the over-all economy drops and people don’t stay in AirBnBs as much, many of those will be put on the market.

We have no idea how many and whether that is enough to force prices lower.

Regardless, due to the scarcity of new construction in CenPho and the saturation of apartments, home prices may stay high even if the economy slows.

So, if you are thinking of buying, don’t expect prices to drop any time soon.

If you are thinking of selling, consider doing it before the summer comes on. The prices won’t necessarily drop, but there will be fewer people to compete for your home.

Call us at 602-456-9388.

Donna Reiner, a local historian and a good friend of Get Your PHX, has written many articles over the years for the Arizona Republic and others about Phoenix history. We use her services when we list properties of historic significance to help us tell the stories behind the homes.

We are happy that Donna is allowing us to re-publish some of her articles on a monthly basis. If you or your business ever needs a historian, let Donna know at laydeescholar “at” hotmail.com.

We generally think of libraries as being in permanent buildings whether they be large, small, or tucked away in someone’s home. But fixed sites have never adequately served those who find it difficult to travel due to distance, disability, or lack of reliable transportation.

Over time, the creativity of librarians and libraries found solutions. If the reader could not come to the library, why not take the books to them? Those moveable libraries came by horse, cart, bicycle, and ultimately a full fledged bookmobile which was often a large bus filled with shelves and shelves of books.

Phoenix started using bookmobiles in the late 1940s to serve outlying readers of the rapidly growing city. Initially the head librarian started with two “retired” city buses and the Arizona Republic always posted where the buses would be.

If you are old enough, you may remember the bookmobile. It would be conveniently stationed at set places on a specific day of the week and with set hours. Young readers and old anxiously awaited that day and hour.

One enthusiast commented, “Before we had a library in our area, the bookmobile would come to Maryvale Mall every Saturday!!! Each week my friends and I would go to check out books.” Michael Ging recalled riding his bike to West Plaza at 35th Avenue and Bethany Home Road to get books in the summer from the bookmobile. Early versions of the bookmobile were probably not airconditioned, but by the 1980s they were. A welcome relief for youngsters coming in out of the heat during the summer.

Today there are 16 branches of the Phoenix Public Library plus Burton Barr Central Library. Not much need for a bookmobile.

Ten years ago, the Little Free Library movement began. And with that program, one can find various sized “stands” offering books (no check out or overdue fines). Some neighborhoods, like Coronado Historic District, sponsored such libraries for the benefit of anyone who happens to want a book. It’s all in the name of promoting literacy.

Bibliophile, book worm, lover of reading, bookish. Finding the best and/or appropriate word to describe one’s passion for reading is not that easy. All I can say is that I don’t leave home without one!