The same people who are making decisions today are some of the same people who fought against “The Man” in decades past. How do they feel about being the ones in power now? Are they happy with where we’ve come to?

I got to thinking about this when I went to the Cityscape topping off event downtown last month, which followed the news that Cityscape was going to have all locally owned establishments as tenants. This was great news for Arizona. Purchasing locally provides as much as 75% more tax revenue for our state.

It was a testament to the many people who communicated to the Cityscape planners to remind them that to support local businesses. I wonder if if Cityscape developers, Red Development, pushed for local tenants because their planned franchisees bailed on the project, or because they really wanted local ownership.

So, as I watched the proceedings and tried not to sweat too much, I got to thinking about all those folks who have been working at Phoenix redevelopment since the 1980s or before.

These folks got started in a time when politics in Phoenix was dominated by the mysterious “Phoenix 40,” only a few years after Don Boles was assassinated outside the Clarendon Hotel for exposing mob connections around town. (Read more about that group here.)

What was it like to “come up” in that time? What did they fight against? What are the parallels and lessons for today? Is the downtown they see today what they were hoping for almost 30 years ago?

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Sept. 2009

I want to tell you about my first client, Michelle Harrington, as we just passed the one-year anniversary of closing on her house, just around 15th Ave and Indian School.

This was Michelle’s first house and she did an incredible job sprucing up the property on a budget.

The property she bought was built in 1939. Back then, they had race restrictions on who could buy the house! I could actually see them in the title report. Yuck!

The home had been passed from a long-time owner to a person who just wanted to flip the house, but who got stuck in it when the market went “kerplunk.” They just slapped some paint on the walls and that was about it.

Here are the “before” pictures:
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Way back in March or April, I went to a seminar on how the city was going to use the $39 million in neighborhood stabilization grant money from the feds to help people purchase foreclosed property. One could get $15,000 toward a home.

The general feeling in the room was that the program was far too complicated for most people to take advantage.

That concern has been born out. See this post from the city. It has taken them since March to get one person through the process and another 60 qualified.

Don’t you get the sense that they could have done that a little differently?

If you are putting off  purchasing a home because you are afraid that there might be changes at your job (layoffs, relocation, etc.), there might be an answer in Nova Home Loan’s Safe House Mortgage Protection Plan.

I work with a lot of different brokers. Others may have this, as well. But this is good to know.

Here are the features:

• If you lose your job, they will cover as much as 24 months of your mortgage (up to $1,800 per month). 12 months if you purchase the plan if when you are just refinancing a loan.
• You start the plan when you close on the house or complete the refinance.
• Cost = $770 on a purchase and $595 on a refinance. (You can pay this at close of escrow and maybe work it in to the closing costs that the seller pays!)

Eligibility:

• Ages 18-66
• Must reside in the US.
• Cannot be self-employed.
• Must be employed a minimum of 30hrs per week at time of close.

There are more details here. So, have a look. It might be something that could give you the piece of mind to move ahead and get a house in phoenix now, while you can still get the $8,000 tax credit!

Here is a news article about it.

Or, call Jeannie Bolger at Nova Home Loans at jeannieb@novahomeloans.com.

The city of Phoenix is working on a new General Plan. They do a new plan every ten years. Their last one was adopted in 2001. See here for a little history.

City general plans were required under “Growing Smarter”. This was former Governor Hull’s very weak attempt in 1998 to pretend to think about actually preventing sprawl in Arizona.

Of course, she was forced in to this by all the pressure from the environmental community, which at the time had a public initiative that was going to limit sprawl. Growing Smarter was such a weak document, in large part, because of the strangle-hold that developers have on this state. But, I digress.

The City of Phoenix General Plan, while not preventing sprawl, is actually a good way for regular folk to have a say in the direction of our city over the next ten years.

The good folks at the Downtown Phoenix Journal and Radiate Phoenix put on an event this week at which the city’s planning office staff took thoughts and ideas about the General Plan, as they get ready for the process of passing the next plan. It was a really great event.

I want to share one suggestion and one challenge with you and I’m asking for your support on both.

1) Shade. The old City General Plan suggested that every new parking lot should have “at least 51% shade coverage at maturity of tree.” In other words, if you look at the parking lot from the air when the trees are fully grown, you should see a maximum of 49% of that space in asphalt. When I was on the Encanto Village Planning Committee, this was my constant mantra. It got quite repetitive. Ask Councilman Simplot. He was on that committee when I was.

However, the problem is that this is just a suggestion. There is no ordinance that requires this. So, here we sit with higher summer and overnight temperatures. People drive around longer, emitting carbon, so that they can find any little bit of shade outside the regional Wal-Mart Super-Country.

Nobody seemed to have the necessary intestinal fortitude to stand up to developers and tell them what they need to do to preserve some semblance of livability in the valley. That is why the suggestion never became an ordinance.

Before the next General Plan comes out, this needs to be an ordinance, not the city government equivalent of a courteous suggestion over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

2) Wiki General Plan. The General Plan is a huge document. It was over 200 pages, as I recall. I remember getting a massive binder and our Village Planning Committee broke it in to bits to read over.

Let’s update that process. Wikipedia mastered the use of “crowdsourcing” to allow millions of people to report, suggest and check each other’s work. Universities, private industry and the government all use wiki site, which are really inexpensive to build and maintain, to allow a crowd of thousands of people to build things that are greater than the sum of their parts.

The City of Phoenix should demonstrate just how advanced it can be in this process. I guarantee that the city will get a much broader participation than it did in 2000, when only city staff and village planning committee members had the time to work on this.

The General Plan is perfect for this type of project. We can break it down in to its sections and subsections for review, comment and writing. The city can recruit volunteers to monitor each section’s postings to prevent spamming, etc.

Hey, maybe out of all of this we will create even stronger and broader connections in our community.

What do you think?

Call your city Councilman.

Sunnyslope is a little north of CenPho, but they are doing a great job of community building.

My friend Chritina Plante with John C. Lincoln Hospital, who helps out with the Sunnyslope Art Walk wants you to know that there is a call for art for their October 10th Art Walk.

The application deadline has been extended to September 11th.

Have a look at the Sunnyslope website for submission details.

The Case-Shiller Index is going to come out tomorrow and tell us that home prices are on the rise.

See and article here.

Of course, I’ve been telling you about this since March of this year. We saw it coming because we see the numbers, direct from the multi-listing service (MLS). Here is an oft-repeated graph from the Cromford Report:

Here are some things to remember:

1) Reports like this are always 3-5 months behind because the people who report them want several months behind them before they feel comfortable making any statements, even if the triggering event happened 4 months ago!

2) Prices are not going to rocket up like they did from 2005-2007. The economy is just not that strong. So, today’s market is much like it was in 2001-2003.  It is still a great time to buy.

3) Stratify the market. Homes on the market sell faster the cheaper they are. A $100,000 home that is a foreclosure is going to sell in a matter of days or weeks. A $300,000 traditional sale may stay on for a few months. However, the over-all market is very close to equilibrium, which means homes sell in about 5 months. Homes over $1 million have an “absorption rate” of 848 days!

4) The Case-Shiller Index looks at the market nation-wide. Every market is different. Stay tuned for the best local information.

If you missed it on my F.B. Fan Page, please have a look at this invite for the League of Conservation Voters new office opening.

If you did not miss it, this is your reminder. I really hope you can make it!

The League has recently moved its offices from Tempe to downtown Phoenix; specifically to 3rd Ave and Roosevelt.

We are proud of our new office as it stands as a symbol to the importance of dense growth as a way to conserve that which we have for so long neglected.

So, I am hosting a reception on August 27th to welcome our new Executive Director, Steve Arnquist and officially open our new office.

We are going to have some help from a very special guest on that day. Phillip Allsopp, the immediate past President and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation will discuss the interplay between architecture, density, growth and society health, something he calls Transpolis.

Far from being an academic discussion alone, this is an event that I hope will stimulate discussion among those of us who are working so hard to define how Phoenix will look in the next 50 years.

I don’t know if there is anything you could do about this, but wouldn’t you hate be the person trying to sell the house at this address. When your buyers go to check out Google Street View to check out the neighborhood, this is what they see.

Tip of the Day. Google Street View is a great way to check out the neighborhood before you drive around.

Caution of the Day. Google Street View can be a couple years out of date. Things might have changed

The economy seems to be making those little signs that indicate some kind of recovery. Whether it will be like a man coming out of a coma or a volcano erupting is yet to be seen.

But, here are two stories that illustrate how recovery happens: when prices get so low that investors and consumers can’t help but get back in the market.

First, from the Arizona Republic, this article illustrates how developers have started building homes out in the burbs again. However, instead, this time they are doing it more cheaply because they are building homes where previous builders had to abandon ship.

Okay, set aside for a second what a bad idea it is to keep sprawling out in the desert. Also set aside just what a negative influence some developers are on the state. In my experience when I was in the Energy Office, they resisted all attempts to make more energy efficient homes and are currently going to far as to trying to undermine local ordinances that require more energy efficiency.

But, aside from that, this activity is a really good indicator of how the market is moving. First they make money on the cheapest property. Then they move on to scraping new land, etc.

Obviously these builders are watching the existing home market and are seeing that the current inventory will exhaust soon. We had an inventory of over 56,200 homes  last November. Now we are down to 31,400 homes, with a monthly sales rate of over 9,000 per month.  These guys know that it won’t be long before people are looking for new homes.

Obviously, I would like to see more incentives for smart in-fill. But I don’t expect to see that soon.

Second, the rage of multiple offers indicates where we are headed. Check out this article from Inman News.

Five months ago, you could low-ball an offer for a home. But not now. If the home is at all good looking and well-priced, you can expect to see multiple offers within 48 hours. I don’t know for certain, but I don’t think as many of those are full-cash offers because prices have gone up. But, they are definitely more aggressive.

So, this is a turning  point. A few months ago I told you how the prices started going up (the second week of April) for homes under $200,000. Now, you are seeing multiple offers on those lower-priced homes. Next you will see quicker sales on homes over $200,000.

It begs the question of whether we need another $8,000 tax credit package next year.

If one is to believe that there are a whole bunch more foreclosures coming down the pipe, then we might need that. However, I think talk of a second wave are over-rated. There certainly are more short sales on the market, but only proportionally. They are not moving and the banks don’t seem to be interested in moving them all in to foreclosure all at once.