We’ve known it intuitively and anecdotally for a long time, but here is some great news that proves it: home values next to light rail are stronger.

In a recent blog by Michael Melaniphy (President and CEO, American Public Transportation Association (APTA)) he said:  “Average sales prices for residences in close proximity to high-frequency public transit were more stable during the recession”. This is not a guestimate, but backed up by strong data drawn from a nationwide report commissioned by APTA and the American Association of Realtors®.

The five cities upon which the study was based are a representative sample of the types of high-frequency public transit systems throughout the U.S. The five cities were Minneapolis-St. Paul, San Francisco, Chicago, Phoenix and Boston.

“During the last recession, residential property values performed 42 percent better on average if they were located near public transportation with high-frequency service.” ~ APTA and the American Association of Realtors®

Enter Phoenix’s $2.9 million Sustainable Communities grant (2011, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development) for Reinvent PHX —  a way to produce sustainability action plans for the five districts along the existing light rail line and establish a new transit-oriented model for urban development along the city’s light rail corridors.

As the nation continues to assign us with the unofficial title “World’s Least Sustainable City”, we’re still a “Bird on Fire” worth writing books about and paying attention to.  You may recall that in November last year, I wrote about Phoenix leading the Nation in Innovation and Efficiency.

A year ago, January, Native American Connections built a community for our growing, city-dwelling Native American populations in the mixed-use, mixed-income apartments of  the Divine Legacy, just across from the Campbell & Central light rail station.

In my post last September, I mentioned a great story on KJZZ’s Changing America series where the reporter talked about how retirees are moving into downtown areas and urban cores along the Valley Metro light-rail line.

And as The Atlantic noted in a post a couple days ago, it looks like Phoenix’s walkability gamble just might pay off.  Light rail homes gives people quicker access to alternate ways to get around town, access to jobs, and lower transportation costs in walkable areas.

All of this is particularly important if you are thinking to list your home. If you bought before about 2004 or between about 2009-2011, you are probably in a really good position to sell.

In the immortal words of one Hannibal Smith, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

If you want to buy or sell the right property near public transit, please give me a call at 602-456-9388 or email me at ken@getyourphx.com.

[metro image: King Chung Huang]

Join us at the April Get Your PHX for a tour of new and soon-to-be-opened hotspots on Grand Ave. You will get to be in the know before your friends!

 Our friend Laura Dragon of {9}TheGallery will serve as our host for a tour of new features on Grand. Laura will start the show at her gallery and coffee shop with some food and beverages. From there we will get a chance to see the new sights.

 Here’s the line-up so far:

 {9}TheGallery will have an exhibit called Darkness and Light, a View of Abstract Expressionism featuring Kurt Von Behrmann and James Winfield Hack.

 The new Bragg’s Pie Factory Diner will open for special hours, just for you. Owners Liam and Emily Murtag (of Jobot Fame) are offering $5 coffee and pie or $5 sliders and chips just for Get Your PHX-ers.

There will be an exclusive glass blowing demonstration by Glass Lab/Metal Lab’s Chris Duran. 

Beatrice Moore, the Grande Dame of Grand Ave, has divided the formerly open Bragg’s Pie Factory in to 4 galleries and she is eager to show you what is coming soon.

Beatrice’s new Frontal Lobe Community Art Space will open with an exhibit by Jen Urso of various artists called Comfort Zones. 

We will also have our free Raffle Prizes and a chance to meet the movers and shakers who are making downtown better every day.

Of course, you know us. We’ll be adding new exciting features over the next two weeks.

April 2013 Get Your PHX
April 18th, 5:30 to 7:30
Raffle Drawing at 6:30
1229 W Grand Avenue, Phoenix Map It 

With ASU’s 2^nd annual Phoenix Urban Design Week just three weeks away (April 4^th and 5^th), the Feast on the Street Saturday, April 13^th, bringing together people around a half-mile long dining table in downtown Phoenix, historic preservation a constant need (last year’s coffee-table book showcases the importance of preserving Midcentury modern buildings), and the need for more sustainable green practices, I got to thinking:

What are some of the most important steps a person should take if they’re thinking of buying a home in the urban revitalization we’re witnessing in downtown Phoenix?

Step 1:   Get involved with groups like Local First AZ, Roosevelt Row, Get Your PHX, and Phoenix Spokes People (urban bicycle action group with 450+ members, intent on making our streets safer for bicyclists).

Step 2:  Condo or House? I wrote about this in August last year and it’s just as relevant today.

Step 3:  Take a walk, ride, or bike through our Historic Districts.

Step 4:  Familiarize yourself with the schools. This handy link lets you search by closest intersection.

Step 5:  Where are the best coffee houses? Which ones have wi-fi? Arizona Coffee has a great city-wide list with links, reviews, interviews, etc. My office is conveniently located in monOrchid, right next to Songbird café, which I highly recommend.

When you stop by, poke your head into my office not 10 feet away and say hello! I’d love to share some more urban tips with you about finding a home in downtown or central Phoenix.

Ken Clark, Realtor
602-456-9388

The 2013 McDowell Mountain Music Festival (MMMF) is coming up Friday, 22 March – Sunday, 24 March and this year, not 10 days away, it’s goin’ down in downtown Phoenix! If past events serve as an indicator, crowds are expected to be in the thousands! The festival grounds are at Margaret T. Hance park (at the east side of the park, off 3rd Street, just north of Moreland) at 200 E Moreland St, Phoenix.

This is a super-duper, like, really big deal my friends. If you’ve been in downtown for more than about 5 years, you should know automatically why. If you have not, read on. Well, even if you do know why, please read on. No use just stopping here.

Prior headliners include The Flaming Lips, The Black Crowes, Ratdog, Gov’t Mule and The John Butler Trio. By 2011, MMMF had raised over $500,000 for local charities. Fully 100% of proceeds this year will benefit Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Ear Candy Charity, and uMom New Day Centers. The event started at West World in 2004, moved to The Compound in 2011 and in 2013 digs its roots into downtown Phoenix.

The MMMF is a big deal. There will be thousands of people, camping, eating, and drinking. This is a huge influx of cash to downtown businesses. But I don’t think people get it.” Downtown advocate and Arizona Preservation Foundation president, Jim McPherson.

Well, we get it, Jim. And I’m here to tell all my friends about it, too. They’ll get it. And they have friends who’ll get it, too, you see, so they’ll share it and… so on, and so on! You’ll all want tickets, of course, and a peak at this year’s band line-up. (You will notice the link in the last sentence is for the new local venue called Last Exit Live. See below. Buying your tickets through there will help a new local venue establish itself.)

The 2013 McDowell Mountain Music Festival line-up:

Balkan Beat Box        JGB Band        Deer Tick             Les Claypool’s Duo de Twang             Dr. Dog              The Roots             Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
The Shins            Heartless Bastards                 Umphrey’s McGee                  Iration              Yonder Mountain String Band  

And while you’re thinking about downtown Phoenix, here’s an excerpt from our next Get Your PHX event invite.

For our March 21 Get Your PHX, I’m very excited to announce that we are going to get an honest to goodness preview of a new downtown venue, Last Exit Live—the local stage which will feature the  McDowell Mountain Music Festival—before they open!

Last Exit Live is the Official Sponsor and organizer for the Local Stage at McDowell Mountain Music Festival this year. They’re coordinating with the Get Your PHX Team to bring you a Local Stage Pre-party and the soft opening of Last Exit Live.

So I’d love to hear what you think about the Festival: Is there any real value to downtown Phoenix to having the music festival here this year? Do you think it will make any lasting impact for our rising city?

Thanks again to our Get Your PHX February host,  Tertio Wine Bar and the folks from Empty Glass Wine Company, for an incredible presentation. I expected a much lower turn-out because we were asking folks to pay ahead for the four-course meal. Yet we had a very strong showing and we all walked out of there with a new appreciation of what Virginia Senior and her crew are capable of.

For March, I’m very excited to announce that we are going to get an honest to goodness preview of a new downtown venue before they open (its been a while, huh?). When you come to the next Get Your PHX on March 21st, you will not only get a glimpse of the new Last Exit Live before its official opening, but you’ll also help kick off the local stage feature of the McDowell Mountain Music Festival.

Here’s the skinny: The McDowell Mountain Music Festival (MMMF), in a belated recognition that downtown is the place to be these days, will move its line-up of shows to Margaret T. Hance Park, starting March 22nd and ending March 24th. Last Exit Live, as the newest official Local Stage for the event is coordinating with the Get Your PHX Team to bring you a Local Stage Pre-party and the soft opening of Last Exit Live.

Here is what we have lined up for you already:

1) Our friends at Blue Sky Airport Parking are hosting this event. They are a locally-owned, Local First Arizona member company. They are generously helping arrange specials from one of our local food truck friends, to be announced. Their active participation in improving their neighborhood downtown has brought them much acclaim and a number one rating on Yelp.
2) Last Exit Live’s owner Brannon Kleinlein is offering an incredible special on drinks: $2 domestic beers and $3 imports from 5:30 to 7:30, just for Get Your PHX attendees. After 7:30 the drinks will still be only $3 for domestics and $4 for imports.
3) Brannon is booking two local Phoenix bands, to start at 8:30, to help kick off this MMMF Local Stage for a weekend of incredible new music. Please stay tuned, as we will announce this over the course of the next couple weeks.
4) We already have raffle items for you from AccountingPros and Local First Arizona for our monthly FREE raffle. You know how this goes. I expect to find more goodies for the raffle before the big event.

I also really want you to meet Brannon in person. Our goal with the Get Your PHX events is to celebrate the people who make downtown better every day. You will hear more from Brannon. For now, here’s the basics: Last Exit Live used to be in Tempe from 2003 to 2009. Brannon sold it in 2009, it closed under the new owners and he has re-started the venue in downtown. As Brannon reported to the Downtown Devil, he wanted to be part of the growing scene downtown and felt certain that this size venue (prevalent in Tempe) would fill a niche downtown. 

As I think we all do, Brannon believes that we need to be re-building inward rather than sprawling outward. He is putting his money where his mouth is. We want to support that. So, please come by. Also, if you want to get tickets to the McDowell Mountain Music Festival, please order them through the Last Exit Live website. This will help Brannon’s business and ensure he can give us a great bands and experiences downtown.

More on Last Exit Live:
New Times
College Times 
Java Magazine 
More New Times
 
March Get Your PHX:
The Local Stage Kickoff at Last Exit Live, Sponsored by Blue Sky Parking
Thursday, March 21st, 5:30 to close
717 South Central Ave  Map It
Phoenix, AZ 85004

Thanks again to all of you who attended our 4th year anniversary with the risk takers at “The My Florist Plaza.” And of course, thanks to our risk takers Boutique Solie, Community Florist, Olivastro Oils, NYPD Pizza, Salon D’ Shayn, Strut Bridal Salon. Special thanks to NYPD Pizza for sponsoring the event and to all of the businesses to contributing a record 20 prizes, which were raffled off to over 100 attendees.

We are bringing down the mood lighting a little bit in February, as we celebrate Tertio Wine Bar at 7th St and Osborn. Disguised as the mild-mannered “Urban Beans” during the day, Tertio comes out at night to delight with an impressive menu.

Tertio has put together a four-course meal and wine pairing, lead by Empty Glass Wine Company, a cutting edge wine rep that specializes in organic and “biodynamic” wines from Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Hungary. Each course will be accompanied by wine selected to complement that course and comments from the wine specialists and chef.

You might recall that we did a wine and cheese pairing at Urban Beans a couple years ago. We are stepping it up a notch and revisiting for two reasons. First, obviously, Tertio is a great experiment in the European-style cafe model. Second, we know that 7th St and Osborn is about to be populated with more restaurants –a couple may possibly be chains. We want to support our friend Virginia Senior as she launches this new phase in the growth of her business.

This event is a pre-paid affair because the menu will be created specifically for this event. Each of Virginia’s exclusive four-course meals are thought out weeks in advance. If you have special dietary needs, please let us know when you purchase your reservation.

Virginia usually charges $55 per person for these meals and wine pairings. She is charging only $48 for Get Your PHX friends, exclusively. She is asking you to reserve in advance by emailing Tertio at tertiowinebar@gmail.com. Ask for Virginia and remind them that you are purchasing the Get Your PHX engagement price.

We have more to announce, so stay tuned. There will be a raffle and hopefully a special surprise.

We were not certain that The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 was going to survive into 2013, regardless of the much ballyhooed fiscal cliff. The Debt Relief Act simply says that you will not pay taxes on the amount of debt you are forgiven if you short sell or foreclose on a home. 

The 11th hour congressional extension means homeowners will not have to pay taxes on forgiven mortgage debt from short sales or loan modifications until 2014. The Relief Act was set to expire December 31, 2012.

Without the tax break, a homeowners forgiven debt could be considered taxable income.

“Housing advocates and lawmakers [were] worried that the exemption [would] disappear just as thousands of homeowners [were] receiving large amounts of mortgage debt relief from the nation’s five largest banks as part of a national settlement of foreclosure abuse investigations.” ~ Jim Puzzanghera, Chicago Tribune

The five big banks the reporter for the Tribune is referring to are Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. As of September 20 last year, the article goes on to say, “Nearly 140,000 homeowners received some type of relief under the settlement, averaging about $76,615 each.”

As we are all well aware, homes today are worth much less than what they were purchased for in the housing bubble. By reducing the value of a troubled mortgage to the current value of a house, banks are frequently able to save themselves money. If the tax break had not been extended, any mortgage debts a bank forgave would then be counted as taxable income. In other words, if a $350,000 mortgage were reduced by the bank to a then current value of $250,000, the happy homeowner would suddenly become the proud owner of a $100,000 income tax bill.

“As a result, a homeowner struggling to pay the bills would be faced with tens of thousands of dollars in taxes. That would destroy any hope of establishing future mortgage debt relief for troubled homeowners, as any bank leniency would result in heavy tax trauma for borrowers.” ~ Zach Carter, The Huggington Post

According to CNN/Money, over 50,000 families lose their homes to foreclosure every month.

A sigh of relief is in order. Whew.

Here is the important take-away: Take advantage of this fiscal-cliff debt relief tax extension…now…while the next 12 months are still in play. Give me a call or drop me an email. I will absolutely sell your home, even if it is short sale.

Choosing an agent is a very personal decision. 

Let’s grab a cup-o-coffee, I’ll explain the Get Your PHX Method and you can see if I’m the right agent for you. Try before you buy!

Let me start out by saying that this investigation into credit unions may not take as long as I originally thought in part 1.  Just doing Internet searches, I found 10 in Phoenix metro. My criterion to narrow it down from there was simple geography: the proximity to Central Phoenix and the number of their locations. I did this via the most important investigative step: I found them all on the Local First Arizona website.  Reviewing those I narrowed them down from five to settle on three (the links that follow are to their reviews on Local First): Arizona Central Credit Union, Desert Schools Federal Credit Union, and Marisol Federal Credit Union.

I did all of this before I contacted any of the Credit Unions in person.

I then narrowed it down from three, to two, because Marisol Federal Credit Union wouldn’t pick up their phone. That’s a big deal when it comes to a bank. Before I called, I looked at their website and saw that in order to avoid fees on their accounts, the minimum balance was pretty high. I wouldn’t really save anything compared to my existing account at JPWellsComeriBank in that area. Conclusion: Marisol was out of the running.

I didn’t just pick up the phone, though, and start calling the three before I narrowed it down to two. I started with an Excel spreadsheet, naturally, where I prepared to rate each credit union according to the following categories:

• Number of ATM locations?
• Online system usability?”The online stuff is important because I don’t want to be forced to go into the bank. Who does? Small business owners want to be able to just get it done on their computers.” ~ Me
• What did their bill pay system look like (and did it cost anything)?
• Their security system (if credit card is stolen? How secure is their internal information?)
• Customer service?
• Fee structure (personal and business checking, personal and health savings?)
• Reinvest locally?
• Member of Local First Arizona?

That left two Credit Union’s worth more serious consideration: An actual physical trip to the branch.

I started with Desert Schools Federal Credit Union, before I went to Arizona Central Credit Union. In part 3 of my investigation, I’ll share those two experiences, what I decided and why. (I may even include another humorous link as a bonus. What? You didn’t see it? I’ll give you one guess which link it is…)

To see the next installment, please click here.

Thank you again to Amber Harrold of Camelbackpackers Hostel. Amber and her family put out an incredible spread for us, including local craft beer, wine and even camel-shaped cookies. If she went to those lengths for us, you can feel good recommending your friends to say at CamelbackPackers Hostel when they come through town.

As we roll in to the cooler weather we start to think about family and all of the holidays centered on spending time together.

This month, please join us for our first annual Get Your PHX Family Thanksgiving. You’ve all been so supportive of Get Your PHX and Cenpho businesses for so long that you really are part of the family. So, before you head off for your “other” family dinners in late November, please join your Get Your PHX family for one special thanksgiving meal.

Hob Nobs owners Bob and Sharilyn are preparing a very warm reception for us. In addition to their regular, vast menu of goodies, Hob Nobs is offering a Thanksgiving Sandwich special for just $10 -that’s a turkey and cranberry sandwich and a drink. In addition, they are offering a $1.99 craft bottle of beer, to be announced.

Hob Nobs is also organizing for their most popular musical act, DirtMusic, to entertain us for Get Your PHX. This band has travelled around the world to play its mix of alternative blues and bluegrass. You don’t want to miss this.

And, of course, I will be hosting the monthly raffle. Don’t miss out. Your PHX family misses you!

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A TWO-NIGHT EVENT. DEC. 5TH AND 12.

Friends, it is official. Phoestivus is on and bigger than ever. Not only will we have over 50 vendors. Not only will we have at least 6 food trucks. Not only will we have feats of strength, an airing of grievances and the worlds largest Phoestivus pole (as far as you know).

Not only that, friends. But this: