Over the 11 years that I’ve been in business and the 6 years that Michelle Conley and I have been working together, we hear a few misconceptions more than once. They are not major issues, but I figured it’s worth correcting the record.

These misconceptions start with, “Oh, I thought you…”

So, just in case you were wondering, here we are to correct the record.

1. “Oh, I thought you only sell houses in… <insert one>, the historic neighborhoods, or downtown or in Central Phoenix.
   
   Fact: We work all over the valley, even though we specialize in historic.
   
   Further, we have relationships with quality agents all over the state. We are also building relationships with agents in other states, so we can get you the help you need.
   
2. “Oh, I thought you didn’t have time for real estate because of your political work.”
   
   Fact: I never stopped being a full-time professional realtor, all through my recent years in office. Thank goodness for Michelle Conley, who made certain the trains ran on time on those days when the legislature ran late.
   
   Regardless, I’m not in public office now. So, we are ready to help you!
   
3. “Oh, I thought I could sell that house for 1% commission, so I did not call you.”
   
   Fact: Most times, that “1% commission” turns into much higher costs to you. Plus you won’t have somebody to protect your interests. See my short video that details how those big wholesale buyers are taking advantage of sellers.
   
4. “Oh, I thought it would be easier to just purchase a home through the website because I don’t like dealing with people.“
   
   Fact: If you don’t have somebody to protect your interests, you are increasing the chances that the sellers will take advantage of you. You’ll definitely have to deal with people when you find out that there was major damage to the property, which was not repaired before they sold the house to you.
   
   Why pit yourself against people who have bought and sold hundreds of homes without protection?
   
5. “Oh, I thought realtors don’t do much work and just make tons of money. They sell a house and buy a new Mercedes.”
   
   Fact: Some are rolling dough, but very few. Realtor income looks much like the entire population: very few gobs of money, but most earn a modest living.
   
   Further, in order to be a quality agent we must invest years in to the trade and local knowledge. Further, typically, we sell homes that look like the community we live in.
   
   Regardless, there is a great deal more work that goes in to each transaction than most people know: needs analysis, market analysis, lending advice, neighborhood knowledge, smart home searching or listing marketing, negotiations, inspections, vendor coordination, closing preparation and post-closing availability.

So, we stand ready with decades of combined experience to help you meet your needs. Call us at 602-456-9388

“So, will there be a slow-down in the market over the summer,” people ask us almost every day.

You might think that it would, since it’s hotter than a snakes butt in a wagon rut. Who wants to look at homes?

Well, the answer is that the market in the summer typically looks much like it does the rest of the year.

If the market is hot coming in to summer, it will stay relatively hot. Sure, there are fewer people out there looking and typically fewer listings. But that does not mean that the number of sales changes much.

There seem to be fewer listings going in to this summer than there were last summer. That could be good for sellers and bad for buyers, but that also depends on the quality of the inventory, as we learned last year.

According to the Cromford Report, sales prices are continuing to climb slightly every month:

“Our mid-point forecast for the average monthly sales $/SF on June 15 is $173.61, which is 0.8% above the June 15 reading.

The average $/SF has been stronger than predicted over the last 5 months, and this has been largely due to the mix of homes that closed. High end homes were better represented than expected between January through May. The average $/SF for pending listings has risen again over the last month so we are expecting another gain in average $/SF over the next 30 days.”

Interest rates are also still floating just under 4%. So, there is no panic in that regard.

The tight inventory and low rates could be why the Cromford Index is going in to the summer looking like a rocket. Sellers don’t have as much competition and there are more buyers, attracted by low interest rates.

So, what does this market mean to you? If you are a seller, make your home look great and don’t be afraid to list during the summer. If you are a buyer, you might be able to take advantage of other buyers being away; this is a strategy that may work better in other parts of the valley than in others.

If you need help building a strategy, contact us at 602-456-9388.

We are a locally-owned business and we support locally-owned, independent businesses.

For every $100 spent at a locally-owned business, $43 stays in the local economy, versus only $13 for non-locally-owned businesses. That means more money for police, fire, schools and infrastructure.

Nobody expects you to purchase a car made in Arizona. But if you shift your spending by 20%, you can have a huge effect on our state.

So, Independents Week is a big deal for us. You can take this opportunity to shift your spending by 20% in support of our local economy.

Save 20% at your favorite local businesses during Independents Week!

Independents Week is Arizona’s week-long celebration of local businesses that lets you save money while shopping local. 

During June 29 – July 7, use your Golden Coupon to save 20% off at hundreds of participating businesses in every imaginable industry all across Arizona!

We can’t over-state the important of supporting local, independent businesses. Our legislature for years has been sending out tax dollars out of state in the form of tax credits to attract major corporations to Arizona –companies that employ far fewer people than locally-owned businesses.

As agents, we chose HomeSmart because it is locally-owned. We think that is important.

So, if you needed more data to show that the market and demand is strong now, as opposed to how it looked in late 2018, have a look at this quote and chart from the Cromford Report.

“Listings under contract is a great measure of demand.  We typically see a seasonal pattern to listings under contract and 2018 was no different – except it was.  2018 started off following 2017 demand pretty well but in August of last year demand started to fall.  We ended 2018 with 19.1% fewer deals in escrow as the previous year. That trend continued until the end of March when demand started to spike.  Buyers came back and we’re now 8.2% above last year and nearly tied with 2017.  Whew.”

According to Cromford, “The weaker demand that started in 3Q 2018 and ran through 1Q 2019 has caused a slightly slower rate of annual appreciation in recent months. However appreciation rates remain well above inflation and significantly above percentage rises in earnings.”

So, what does that mean for you? Well, if you are selling you can see that properties under contract tend to drop off after June of every year. So, you could really stand out.

If you are buying, then expect less inventory to choose from, but perhaps an opportunity to make a deal if the properties are not moving.

Just watch out for flipped properties. We know that those wholesale buyers often reduce prices of homes they purchase by presenting sellers with long lists of repairs needed, but we don’t know if they did all of those repairs.

Call us to navigate this world of wholesale scams and trickery. 602-456-9388.

You may have seen the videos and Marshall Shore and I did, along with our videographer Chris Allen of AllenCinema.

We toured the recycling facility in North Phoenix so we could give you a clear idea of the process.

This is huge, especially since we can no longer export our recyclable materials to China for processing. See that article here.

We broke our video in to three episodes, to highlight three major stages in the process.

Hey, it’s not Game of Thrones, but we are pretty proud of it. You can watch the videos here, here and here.

Here are the big take-aways:

1. For the love of all that his holy, please don’t put plastic bags or plastic wrap, aka “2D plastic” in the recycling bin. You will see in the video just how difficult it is to get out of the machinery.
   
2. The process for separating materials is actually quite effective. The part of the process that could use improvement is the human factor. What we put in affects what is separated and what the city can earn from recycling materials.
   
3. We should not stop recycling just because China is no longer processing the materials. There is a domestic industry starting up, so it makes no sense to stop when it will be needed here.

Here are some interesting tid-bits that I learned through this process.

• The Coca-Cola bottling company is trying to make their bottles 100% recycled, but they need more plastic material. In other words, they need more consumers to properly separate their trash. They are also investing in new domestic recycling capacity.

• The City of Phoenix has updated its guide to recycling. Get it at this link. This guide is much easier to follow than the last one. So, download it and share it in your household. Don’t just print the image here in this blog post. Follow the link. There are two pages.

• The rush to re-develop domestic capacity to recycle is not happening just in the US. In fact, we are behind other countries, such as Germany. According to RecyclingToday.com, “… a few years ago Germany was a net exporter of as much as 5 million metric tons per year of scrap paper, but now the nation’s mills need to import some 2 million tons of recovered fiber each year.”

• In the wake of China’s decision to stop imports of recyclable materials, many countries began shipping to Malaysia. Now Malaysia has declared that it will begin shipping materials right back where they came from. “Whoever sends their waste to Malaysia, we will send it back,” Environment Minister Yeo Bee Yin told reporters on Tuesday, declaring the foreign shipments to be “garbage … traded under the pretext of recycling.”
  
• A bill working through Congress will direct the EPA to build a national recycling plan, and increases funding for domestic recycling. “The bill provides a total of $9.52 billion for the EPA, 7.6 percent over the 2019 funding level. President Trump’s budget requested $6.1 billion for the agency.” Let’s see if recycling becomes a bi-partisan issue when millions of tons of unwanted recycling comes back to our shores. Wait! Isn’t this a domestic jobs bill?

I’m a full-on gardening nerd-ball. Who else does a video just about composting, not more than once, but three times? See that here and here.

And, as the summer begins to leach the life out of most plants, this article made me reflect on how much I will miss my garden over the summer.

Oliver Sacks was a brilliant neurologist, whom I learned to appreciate on the RadioLab podcast. He said this of gardens:

“As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and finding ourselves simultaneously calmed and reinvigorated, engaged in mind, refreshed in body and spirit. The importance of these physiological states on individual and community health is fundamental and wide-ranging. In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical “therapy” to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.”

I’m not a writer of any note. But I completely understand the need for a refuge. My garden is just that.

I pulled more kale, spinach and various other edible items out of my garden this year than ever before. I’m learning a little bit every year. Plus, the better I get at gardening, the more the garden is a truly relaxing place.

You may have had to suffer through my many Instagram posts about the height of my sunflowers. Those are about the only flowers that I intentionally grow. They are easy and dramatically large –my most recent pride reached over 9ft tall.

So, why is this worth a blog post? Well, because if you like to garden, especially in Arizona, you need two specialized things.

First, specialized knowledge about how to pick a house with a yard that will support three seasons worth of growth without succumbing to the brutal heat.

I can help you with that. I’ve failed a lot –meaning I’ve learned a lot. Most importantly, I have learned that the orientation of the house you choose will decide for you what you can plant.

You will also need to subscribe to Urban Farming U, a Phoenix-based website with an incredible amount of information, ranging from basic planting plans to fostering desert bees.

If you are in to gardening, or just want to create a desert oasis at your new home, then plan ahead and choose a home that works best for gardening.

Call us at 602-456-9388 for more.

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 what came before us. 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.

What can be as interesting as the architecture of a house? The people who lived there. This is one such story.

The Phoenix Country Club dates its early beginnings from late1899. After formational meetings, one member, Col. William Christy, offered the use of his property, Central Place, on the northeast corner of Central and Roosevelt for a course site. Work started immediately on the nine-hole course (dirt fairways) once considered “the best golf links west of the Mississippi River.”

An immediate success both socially and athletically, the original membership of the Phoenix Country Club grew from 75 to nearly 100 by the time of the first tournament held February 22, 1900 and forced the club to seek larger quarters.

Less than 10 years later, the Phoenix Country Club once again had outgrown its facility and purchased 80 acres along Center (Central) with forty acres north of the Arizona Canal and forty acres south for another nine-hole course. 

Financial constraints related to that canal property prohibited the expansion to 18-holes. Thus, the club decided to purchase the 160 acre Williams Ranch on the northeast corner of 7th Street and Thomas Road in early 1920.

The large residential lots in Country Club Place surrounding the new golf course went quickly with Dwight Heard Investment Company as the sales agent. The Ainsworth-McKesson House on East Country Club Drive was built circa 1928 (the value of the home had to be a minimum of $7500 according to the deed restrictions). They had a large two-story adobe erected which sits well back from the front property line to allow for a grand circular entry.

Charles and Eliza Ainsworth were long standing members of the community and country club (Charles was the first president). Their previous home is now the site of the Post Office on Central and Fillmore. Interestingly, Mrs. Ainsworth referred to her new home as Casa de Contenta.

In 1941, Mrs. Ainsworth sold the home to Theodore and Ruth McKesson who moved in with their two daughters. Nancy mentioned that she and her sister found the large upstairs room an ideal fun room for themselves and the neighbors’ kids. Both girls were married at home and held their receptions there too:  Mary Ann in 1947, and Nancy in 1957.

Along with ownership of the same house, the Ainsworths and the McKessons had other connections. All three McKesson women were members of the Maricopa Daughters of the American Revolution Chapter, the one founded by Eliza Ainsworth in 1901. Like Eliza Ainsworth, Ruth McKesson also served as Arizona State Regent of the DAR. Finally, Charles Ainsworth and Theodore McKesson were long time attorneys in Phoenix. What interesting history goes with your house?

In the last few months I’ve been on a tirade.

I’m very concerned about how wholesale buying companies are, in my opinion, creating consumer protection issues. You know the companies I’m talking about. Their ads are everywhere.

I’m not going to give them a free plug. But you know them. These are the guys who promise to buy your house quickly and you pay “only 1% commission,” or some such nonsense.

Watch this short video on how previous clients sold their home, thinking they would pay about 1% commission, but ended up giving up about 9.4% in order to sell.

So, I’m not letting it go here. I’ve published three more videos that go in to greater detail about how these companies are mis-leading consumers.

1. The first video goes in to the reasons these companies give for you to use them. Hint: they are bogus.
2. The second video takes a deeper look at what “fiduciary responsibility” is, why a realtor has that responsibility to you and how these companies get around it, all while giving the impression that they are looking out for you.
3. The third video explains how a “1% commission” can easily result in a 9% loss in your profit when you sell your home, if you are not represented.

“But,” I hear you say, “you’re just a realtor who’s afraid that your business is going away because there is a new business model, and you are not willing to adapt.”

Well, watch the videos and then call me at 602-456-9388. I don’t bite and I’d love to hear how this model in any way protects consumers.

These companies are literally having inspections and deducting repair costs off of the price of the home with little or no resistance from the seller.

They are locking sellers in to a process that goes against their interest after baiting them with the promise of low commissions.

That is about as close to a scam as I can imagine and I’m deeply disappointed that the Arizona Association of Realtors nor the National Association of Realtors (who’s job it is to protect consumers, they say) has not taken action to educate the public.

So, it’s left to me, my little camera phone and my little office.

Oh, and if you are a buyer and you don’t think this affects you, please consider that these houses are being sold with inspections that may not be honest and possibly repairs or renovations that have not been done.

Specifically, if the wholesale buyer does an inspection in order to force the price down, how do you know that they repaired all of those items? You don’t have access to the previous contract, do you? Plus, you will often see these properties sold “as-is.” If it was serious enough to warrant a price reduction, shouldn’t it be serious enough to repair for the next buyer?

If you need a real estate team that takes your interests seriously, please call us at 602-456-9388.

We are seeing upward pressure on prices, as the seller’s advantage strengthens again in the market.

The Cromford Index analysts think that the push upward will continue in to mid-June, although not drastically.

“For the monthly period ending May 15, we are currently recording a sales $/SF of $171.19 averaged for all areas and types across the ARMLS database.

Our mid-point forecast for the average monthly sales $/SF on June 15 is $171.96, which is 0.5% above the May 15 reading. We have a 90% confidence that it will fall within ± 2% of this mid point, i.e. in the range $168.52 to $175.40.

The average $/SF has been stronger than predicted over the last 4 months, and this has been largely due to the mix of homes that closed. High end homes were better represented than expected between January through April. The average $/SF for pending listings has risen again over the last month so we are expecting another gain in average $/SF over the next 31 days. The overall price trend continues to move higher, as is normal for the spring season, but we normally peak during the second quarter and then see some weakness for the following 3 months.”

So, in other words, the prices are on a solid incline. No spikes, from what we are seeing.

What does this market update mean for sellers? It means that your position is stronger than it was at the end of last year. The decision to wait is really a function of what your other opportunities are.

Will an increase of 1% on the sale of your home if you wait a month be a better outcome than if you sold now and did something else with your money? Your call.

Buyers, don’t fear a steep price jump, but don’t expect that you can wait forever. Remember, there is still a scarcity of new construction in Phoenix, especially central and downtown.

We are sharing with you the Cromford Report’s mid-May update, in its entirety because we simply can’t say it better.

Here’s the pull-quote take away: “Buyers waiting because they thought prices would fall have been left in the dust.”

We can bring this to you because we subscribe to their product. It is also what makes us better agents. Call us if you have questions about where the market is going at 602-456-9388.

Starting with the basic ARMLS numbers for May 1, 2019 and comparing them with May 1, 2018 for all areas & types:

• Active Listings (excluding UCB): 17,513 versus 16,329 last year – up 7.3% – but down 6.1% from 18,650 last month
• Active Listings (including UCB): 23,650 versus 21,440 last year – up 5.6% – but down 3.2% compared with 23,399 last month
• Pending Listings: 7,326 versus 7,393 last year – down 0.9% – but up 5.3% from 6,958 last month
• Under Contract Listings (including Pending, CCBS & UCB): 12,463 versus 12,504 last year – down 0.3% – but up 6.5% from 11,707 last month
• Monthly Sales: 9,676 versus 9,185 last year – up 5.3% – and up 13.9% from 8,496 last month
• Monthly Average Sales Price per Sq. Ft.: $171.80 versus $162.84 last year – up 5.5% – but down 0.1% from $172.04 last month
• Monthly Median Sales Price: $270,000 versus $255,000 last year – up 5.9% – and up 1.5% from $266,000 last month

Last month we saw strong growth in listings under contract. This month we see strong growth in closed listings. This is why listings under contract is such an important number – it gives us early warnings of a change in the market. On this occasion the change is strongly positive for sellers. Sales are not only recovering, they actually exceeded April 2018 by 5.3%. Now those in the know are aware that April 2019 had a 4.8% advantage over April 2018, because it contained 1 additional working day. Many people tend to forget how significant the number of working days can be in retarding or advancing sales counts. But even allowing for that unfair advantage, April returned higher sales per day than April 2018. In fact April 2019 was the strongest month since 2005 for unit sales.

Currently the listings under contract count is almost the same as last year, so we should expect closed sales in May 2019 to be similar to May 2018. Both have 22 working days so this will be a fair fight.

New listings have been flowing a little more freely since March – we know sellers get encouraged by lower interest rates as well as buyers. However the new higher level of demand is making short work of the extra supply and active listings without a contract dropped over 6% during April. Supply is higher than last year, but it is falling more quickly than it did in 2018.

As we predicted, prices are rising, but at a slower pace than in 2018. The median sales price was up 5.9% compared with a year ago, while the average $/SF was up 5.5%.

Buyers waiting because they thought prices would fall have been left in the dust. The market continues to strengthen and the likelihood of falling prices in the near term is minimal. We have extremely low levels of distress, chronic low supply and the best buyers can hope for is that the appreciation rate will trend lower. We think that is a reasonable expectation, but it it shows no sign of turning negative. It would take a very different set of numbers from the ones above for that to be a possibility.

All in all, the market is more vibrant now than almost anyone expected it to be. This is good news for sellers, agents, title companies, lenders and developers. If interest rates start to rise again then we may see another mild slowdown, like we experience from September 2018 to February 2019, but at the moment the market engine is firing on all cylinders once more.