Real Estate Tangent

The highs and lows of parenting and real estate.

Monthly Archives for
September 2005

Sewing Update

I’ve been steadily working on my backtack project for the last week. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but this is my very first time ever working with a pattern, so I’ve been struggling a bit. In the last week I’ve called my grandma four times to ask for definitions of terms in the directions I’m not familiar with, called my mom five times to read her passages in the directions for help with deciphering and gotten Jason involved at least twice.

For me, the hardest part of this whole sewing-with-a-pattern process is that sometimes it doesn’t matter how many times I read a step, or who I get to read it with me, I cannot for the life of me make heads or tails of what it wants me to do. And even if I do exactly what it seems like it’s directing me to do, it seems like it will end up looking completely wrong (raw ends showing and whatnot). My solution to this, this week, has been, to veer off in another direction from the pattern and just do what I think makes sense.

Anyway, last night I got to yet another one of these points that haven’t been making any sense to me, and I had an epiphany. All of the sudden I understood what they had been meaning all along. I was elated and frustrated with myself all at the same time. Looking back at what I had already done I could see where doing what they were recommending would have made my work less complex and more straight and flawless. But, I thought to myself, this is what the prototype version is for, I will learn from my error and move forward, making sure to do it right the next time.

Unfortunately, in the wee hours of this morning my perfectionist side dug in and made an executive decision to take it apart and do it correctly. And looking at it now, I’m glad I did it, it’s SO much better. Still not perfect, but I’m happy with my progress.

Thursday Sales Meeting

I just got back from my weekly sales meeting at my office and I wanted to share some information about the current real estate market here:

1. The interest rates for 30-year fixed mortgage are still down just below 6%. Not bad at all (and as my mortgage guy, Matt says, “Money’s still cheap, get it while you can!”).

2. In May, there were approximately 9,400 properties available for sale in the Arizona Multiple Listing Service. In August, there were 15,000. This is fabulous news for buyers. Lots more properties are available and bidding wars are being kept down to a minimum. This news coupled with the still low interest rates means that if you are renting, you should at least think about buying. Don’t forget that the interest you pay on your mortgage is all tax-deductible, while your apartment rent is not.

3. The average property days on market is at 24-25 days. This is still very low and indicates a still healthy sellers market.

So the news is good! Our market is thriving!

You’ve gotta love it!

OK, I admit it, I’m a TV-lover and I’m not ashamed to say it. I will never be one of those people who tries to see how long they can go without TV or gives it up for lent. I have never felt like my life would be richer if I watched less TV. My philosophy has always been that I need a certain amount of relaxation/downtime during the day and if I didn’t watch TV, I would find something else mindless to occupy myself. Maybe I would sleep more. Most likely, I’d spend more time surfing the Internet.

Anyway, I also feel like there’s lots of really interesting stuff out there on TV, especially right now. I feel like the general makeup and hierarchy of TV is changing dramatically. Cable networks are experimenting with original programming that is different and provocative. Reality TV has firmly taken root and proved itself to be more than just a fad. Actors, writers and producers are taking more risks. And we can’t forget the DVR, which has totally changed my relationship with TV.

If you don’t have one, a DVR is a digital video recorder. Ours is hooked up through our satellite and allows us to record shows and to pause live TV. I don’t think I could go back to watching TV without ours. I never watch commercials anymore and never just watch whatever is on. TV doesn’t run our lives (I know you’re thinking that it would be ridiculous for us to ever have let TV run our lives, but how many of you have never stayed home or made plans around a TV show you really wanted to watch? How many of you refuse to answer the phone when your favorite show is on?). Instead, now we figure out when the shows we want to watch are on and set them to record. Then we can eat dinner, answer the phone, shower the kids, do dishes, whatever we need to, and still get to see all of the show we are interested in (and skip the commercials).

I also love Reality TV. I know I’ve said it before, but I’m a nosy, people person. I love to hear the details of other peoples’ lives. It’s part of what I love about real estate. It’s part of why I was such a voracious reader as a child and it’s definitely why I love reality TV.

Did you see that show Project Runway, last season? It was the one about the wanna-be fashion designers hosted by Heidi Klume. LOVED that show. We watched it from start to finish because my dad actually worked with the aunt of one of the contestants (Nora!), but seriously, I think we would have watched it eventually anyway. GREAT show.

I also got completely sucked into that show The Deadliest Catch, I think it was last Thanksgiving when they had a marathon. It’s about crab fishermen in Alaska and is on the Discovery Channel. It was completely amazing. In one of the episodes a boat went under and many of the crew died. I cried and cried.

Another of my current favorites is on the SciFi Channel. I stumbled upon it accidentally. Jason had it on to catch a bit of a show his company might be designing a website for, and I was doing something else and the TV was just left on. After a few minutes I realized I was completely sucked in. The show is called The Ghost Hunters and is about this company in the Northeast called TAPS (yeah, we haven’t figured out what that stands for). The company uses technology to investigate houses people think are haunted to either debunk or have solid evidence to support the ‘paranormal activity’. Now I’m not saying I believe in the hauntings, but I find the whole thing totally fascinating. The guys who lead the investigations are these totally down-to-earth plumber-by-day types who genuinely believe that hauntings do exist, but also think that 80% of the homes people think are haunted aren’t. So lots of episodes come down to “Yeah, well, we didn’t find anything. We’re pretty sure your house isn’t haunted.” But there have been a few I’ve seen where they determine that a house IS haunted. And this is why I kind of have a love/hate relationship with this show. It’s usually on right before I go to bed, and if they find something scary, I totally don’t sleep.

The reason I started this post was to recommend a brand new show we watched tonight that I think is hilarious and totally interesting: Made in the USA. It’s on USA (clever, no?) and is a contest for inventors. They started out with 50 teams of inventors and their invention, interviewed them all and narrowed the field down to 12. Some of the inventions are brilliant and some are ridiculous, but they are all entertaining. We seriously paused the show to laugh out loud several times. I’m sure they will rerun the pilot over the weekend and I highly recommend catching it.

With a view…

I’ve been visiting these gorgeous water-front homes lately for a client. I previewed one for him this weekend with this amazing view from the master balcony:

It was breathtaking to stand out on the balcony and look out at the water and the windy palm trees. The backyard also had (beyond the large pool you can see the edge of in the picture) a 12-person spa and a lagoon with a waterfall down to the lake. And it had a large enough patio to sit a good sized dinner party. It was an unparalleled backyard.

The downfall to that house for me, is that the inside is not ideally decorated. It’s very nicely done, but not really my taste (and I’m fearing not really my client’s). The floors are not what I would choose to do, and the expensive kitchen cabinets and subzero fridge would bother me to no end. Now I have no problem with home renovations (obviously), but the problem I would have with a house like this is that because everything that was done to the inside is fairly new and definitely pricey, it would be hard to justify ripping it out and redoing to my own taste. You would kind of just be stuck with things the way they were for at least a few years, I think. And it would be a bummer to spend a lot of money on a house and hate the way it’s decorated.

So if I had that kind of money and was looking for that type of house, I think this house would require quite a bit of mulling. Yes, the backyard is beyond stunning, and will definitely allow the house to retain it’s value long-term… but does that make it worth living with floors, counter tops and cabinets I hate? I guess it all comes down to: what is a view worth to you?

Learning to Sew (Part I)

Welcome to the chaos of my latest endeavor:

Yep, I’m taking up a new hobby: sewing! My good friend, Kelli, participated in this thing called Backtack a couple of months ago. She’s a big ‘crafter’ and found this activity on-line through one of her crafting websites. Basically she was paired up with another crafter and had to make her a project and send it to her anonymously. She, in turn, also received an anonymous project. Anyway, she had been talking about how fun it was, and I’ve always wanted to learn to sew, so I decided to join in for Backtack II. This time, the project is to make a bag any way that you like (sew it, knit it, macrame it out of bubblegum wrappers, if you choose) and fill this bag with crafting items you think your recipient might enjoy. So it does entail a bit of sleuthing. I was given the name and blog address of a gal in California. I signed up for a fake email address and sent her a list of questions about what she likes and doesn’t like, and now my task is to create a bag. It all seemed very simple in theory.

I started out at the fabric store around the corner on Friday. I picked out a pattern of a bag I liked (while Ben, the boy-genius, chatted the ladies who worked there up about King Tutankhamen and how he was king at nine years old, etc.) and got the sales lady to help me get everything I needed to make it. I’m starting out with super-cheap fabric from the half-off room so that I can make a prototype of the bag just to make sure I can actually do it. So that little hour long trip to the store started to make me think about how little I know about sewing. Sure, I have a sewing machine, but I’m not totally sure what all those settings do…

Yesterday, I sat down with the pattern and the fabric and spent most of the day cutting. I think there were three reasons, OK, no FOUR reasons why it was so difficult and time consuming:

1. I can’t actually work on the bag unless little Mr. Gray is sleeping. The Living Tornado has a radar for what he could ruin that would really upset me and also what might injure him. So I basically had to spread it all out on the floor in the living room and work for a bit and then clean it all back up three times yesterday.

2. I’m an exceptionally slow cutter. The biggest problems are my left-handedness (I cut right-handed, but it still throws me off) and the fact that my hands naturally shake like I’m a meth-addict. It’s a problem I just have to learn to live with (the shaking hands, not the meth-addiction, I swear, I don’t have one).

3. I spent the first half of the day using the little scissors I’ve had in the junk drawer for the last three years and have used to cut everything from packing tape, to wrapping paper, to stubborn food wrappers. They were a little dull. Jason showed up from a trip to Home Depot with a nice long, sharp pair of new ones about mid-day. They helped SO much.

4. Um, I picked a really complicated pattern. My grandma (master seamstress that she is) showed up this morning to check out my progress and help me a bit. She gasped a tad at the bag I’d chosen to do. “You’ve picked a really tough one, Dear. You could have started with something a little easier, you know.”

Yeah, I guess I could have, but that’s just not me. When I learned to cook, I started with homemade lasagna. It took me four hours, but it tasted pretty good! So hopefully this will be OK too. I’m hoping to finish the prototype this week and start the real one next weekend… I’ll let you know how that goes.

Thoughts on Gilbert

I was interviewed the other day for a magazine called Gilbert Good Living. It was an email interview and I thought the questions were interesting, so with the permission of the author-to-be, Kelli Donley, read away (the article will come out next month or so and I will of course I will link to it!):

1. Tell me how you became interested in real estate.

That’s kind of a silly story. I was watching some reality show when I was home on maternity leave with my son. It was about attempting to make someone over into a career that’s totally different from their own. The one I was watching was about a lady who was a ski instructor/outdoor enthusiast who they were trying to teach to be a real estate agent for million dollar homes. While I was watching it I kept thinking to myself, “Now I could do that, and it would be so much more fun and challenging than my current job.” I had been searching for a different direction to go in my professional life, one with more flexibility and human contact. Real estate suddenly seemed like the perfect fit. I love houses, I love dealing with people and I’m great with paperwork. It’s the ideal career for me. Of course there’s more to it than that, but so far I’m really enjoying myself.

2. Why is the market so hot right now? Is the Gilbert market specifically a “hotter” market than other areas of the Valley?

The market is hot in general because interest rates are so low and have been low for so long. In the Phoenix metro area, this is intensified by the fact that housing has been relatively inexpensive for a large city (this has changed somewhat in the last year with the 47% rise in home prices). People were moving here in droves and the investors caught on quickly and began buying up properties to ‘flip’ (quickly resell for a profit). This has really begun to taper off in the last couple of months. As far as Gilbert goes, according to the latest Government census, Gilbert was the fastest growing city in the US (Chandler was number seven). Gilbert is the place families want to live in the East Valley. Homes are automatically worth more, just because they are located in Gilbert.

3. If you are looking for a home in the Gilbert area, what is the easiest way to find a trust worthy Realtor? What qualities should you look for?

Well, of course, if you’re looking for a Gilbert Realtor, I think you should call me, but in general, if I was shopping for an agent, the things that would be most important to me would be: 1. Honesty – does your Realtor seem like he or she is giving you the straight line, or spinning the truth to make a sale? 2. Reliability – In the fast pace of real estate right now, you need an agent who will jump when you need him or her. You want to make sure your phone calls are returned regularly and promptly. You could easily miss out on a great house because of a slow to the punch agent. 3. Detail oriented – Getting into the right house and/or finding a buyer for your previous house is, of course, the ultimate goal in the real estate game, but there are a zillion details that can trip you up along the way. You need an agent who’s got in all under control and has anticipated all possible problems and made you aware of the in advance.

4. What should you avoid when buying a home? (No inspection, buyer/seller agents, interest variable loans…)

It’s hard to make generalizations about what is and what is not a good idea when buying a home. Every situation is different. Interest-only loans can be useful for some people when fully understood and applied correctly (both the mortgage representatives at my office have interest-only mortgages on their homes right now). Sometimes you get a better deal when using the selling agent to buy a home (though not often). I think the most important thing about buying a home is to fully understand what you are getting into. Know your loan and all of the contingencies that go with it. Understand the contract you are signing and what it entails (it is not that complicated if you read through it). Be comfortable with your rights and obligations. The right real estate agent will help you with all of this. If you don’t understand something, or need more time to think things over, make sure you tell your Realtor. It’s his or her job to amend the situation.

5. In your opinion, will the bubble pop? Should people still consider buying a home now?

I do not think the ‘bubble’ will pop here in Arizona. In order for home prices to actually decrease here, we would have to be in a position with more supply than demand and we are just not anywhere close to that. Right now there are more properties on the market than there were just three months ago, but the average days on market have not increased, which means that buyers are snapping well-priced homes up just as quickly as before. People want to live in Phoenix. We have lots to offer with our weather, jobs and big city amenities. Plus we have skiing and the beach within driving distance. Home prices, in my opinion, will continue to rise, but at a much slower rate, which is a positive for everyone. Very soon, buyers will have much more of an upper hand than they have in the last year, and the market will even out.

6. What are some of the more attractive features of buying a home in Gilbert? Why would you want to live in this area?

There are lots of reasons that Gilbert is such a popular city. To begin with, it’s known for good school and families dedicated to keeping them that way. It is also home to two of the most popular, well-kept and beautiful subdivisions in the East Valley: The Islands and Val Vista Lakes. Gilbert has the advantage of being a suburb, but still fairly centrally located and close enough to major freeways that commutes in and out of Phoenix aren’t too bad.

It’s giving me gas…

OK, I filled up today and it cost me $32.73. Thirty-two dollars and seventy-three cents for my little bitty, energy efficient Corolla?!!! I am sure you all feel my pain. Remember back when if you looked around a bit you could find gas for 99 cents a gallon? It really wasn’t that long ago. I have a vivid memory of buying gas for 99 cents a gallon in Tucson when I was in college, only six years ago, and now you have to work to find it for three times that.

The recent rise in gas prices set my mind to something: my next car will be a hybrid. I have always wanted a hybrid, but this decided it for me. Hybrids are environmentally and economically smart. You can’t beat that. I’m thinking the Hybrid Highlander is where I’m headed.

I think this is a sign of the times changing. It’s unfortunate that the rapid intensification of smog in most urban areas in the United States wasn’t enough of a catalyst for the general population to make more intelligent decisions about transportation, but at least the insane gas prices will have a positive effect on one aspect our country.

Hybrid vehicles are a part of the transformation, but not the whole. In the last week I’ve had several friends mention their employers’ offering telecommuting as an option to combat gas expenses. I have also heard murmurings of people thinking about moving closer to their work places and others making choices to stay in on the weekends rather than drive around wasting gas. All in all, I think the bigger picture will eventually be prettier because of it.

Anyway, until you’ve figured out which gas saving option works best for you, try this site out.

What’s gone unsaid…

I have avoided writing a post about the tragedy that has been unfolding in the south. Basically, I just have felt like I have little to say that hasn’t already been said, and more eloquently that I could manage, at that. I think I’m feeling what everyone else is, horrified, impotent, and unclear about what is even happening. I remember when the Tsunami happened and I just couldn’t understand how so many people were killed until I saw these photos (click on the ones that show January 2003 and December 2004). After I viewed the satellite photos I had a much clearer understanding of the devastation. The realization of the horror these people had gone through and were continuing to experience was so chilling that it was knowledge I was almost sorry to have. Almost, but not quite. I wish I could have that same greater clarity about what is going on in New Orleans.

I have heard them talk on NPR about the cultural loss we will experience as a nation due to the practical destruction of a city so rich in unique music, food and architecture. This baffles me. Is New Orleans gone for good? I heard an opinion piece this morning on CBS about the viewpoint that the reason it has taken to long to get help to the people who need it, is because they are predominantly black, and that if this tragedy had occurred in an area more populated with whites, things would have been different. This left me in a state of shock. Could that possibly be true in the United States in the year 2005?

Anyway, what it comes down to, is that though I have nothing original or earth shattering to contribute, I’ve decided that maybe it is worth something to add my voice to the chorus. I am so sad for those who have lost their homes and all their earthly possessions. I am sadder still for those who did not survive. I mourn the permanent cultural loss this means for us as a people and I mourn for the continuing loss of innocence those of us who grew up thinking we were living in an invincible country have been experiencing in the last decade. People who are affected by Hurricane Katrina, know that you are in my thoughts too.

Oh What a Lovely Morning

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but my life is feeling much more balanced lately. Eleven months ago, when I began this whole crazy process of getting my real estate sales license, my life was pretty much utter chaos. I had a three month old son who I had just weaned, a four year old who had just started preschool, a full-time job with a 60 mile round-trip commute and was going to school four and a half hours a night, three times a week. It almost killed me. I was pretty much delirious from lack of sleep. I pushed through and completed the journey that has gotten me to where I am on the motivation that if I quit, I just had to go back to the way things were: hour commute each way to work, eight hours at an unstimulating career (nice people, though), little time to see my children and no time at all for cleaning my house, much less a hobby or exercise.

I have to tell you, I’m so glad I stuck my nose to that grindstone and kept going. I’ve gone from that, to this, in eleven months:

This morning, I got up at 6:15 (I used to get up at 4:45 AM every day), a bit sore from my great yoga class last night. I threw on clothes and rode with Jason and Gray up to North Scottsdale to drop Jason at work (his car is in the shop). After dropping him off, Gray and I stopped at Paradise Bakery and bought a yogurt and a zucchini walnut muffin to share. We had a little breakfast and people watched for a bit. Then we got back in the car and took a little tour around the neighborhood that sits at the base of Mummy Mountain. The sun was still ascending and everything looked gorgeous, deserty and peaceful.

We saw this enormous house being built:

We also saw no less than five jackrabbits and a dozen quail. Too fun.

On the schedule for the rest of the day today, I have some cleaning, some emailing, some prospecting, some grocery shopping and some baby playing. I’m really starting to get into this flexible lifestyle. I’m quite aware that real estate has its extremely stressful moments, but from where I’m sitting right now, it’s feeling pretty worth it. I’m so glad I stuck with the plan.