Real Estate Tangent

The highs and lows of parenting and real estate.

Category Archives for ‘Advice’

Entertaining Your Kids When It’s 118

After the thermometers first hit 115 degrees in the summer every blogger in Phoenix breaks out a list of Things To Do When It’s Really Hot Out. So I thought I’d contribute my thoughts to the blogosphere about potential activities you can do with your kids when it’s so warm out you start to feel like your own brain is cooking inside your skull:

1. Become nocturnal. Only let your kids sleep during the hottest part of the day (9am to 6 or 7pm, depending on the age of the child) and then wake them up and go on about your business like normal. It will take a few weeks for them to adjust, but it will be worth it. It will still be 90 degrees at 3am, but the monkey bars won’t hibachi grill their skin.

2. Take your kids to Super Walmart for the day and tell them it’s an amusement park. You can start in the Wacky-Tacky Clothing Land and play games like, “Find the pants that don’t have an elastic waistband” and “What celebrity tween with access to a sweatshop designed this shirt?” Next head to Electronics Alley where the teenagers can ‘test-out’ video games and the little ones can watch movies. Then it’s onto Crafter’s Paradise where you can play a rowdy round of “Dodge the cranky old lady”, which is kind of like Frogger, but there are more nude colored pantyhose and dentures involved. Last, but definitely not least you can spend a few hours in the Toyventures area and let the kids play with all the toys there until they are bored with them or have broken a piece off so they don’t work anyway. It’s all of the fun and none of the cost of actually buying toys for your kids.

3. At 1pm fill up your biggest bathtub completely with ice. Tell your kids to have a bike race around the block. As soon as they leave, start filling the tub with water from the ‘cold’ tap (which will still come out scalding at first). When they return, 1.8 minutes later with fuschia cheeks, tell them to get undressed and get directly into the bath. The combination of the warm tap water and their body heat will melt the ice almost immediately and it will be a refreshing experience for 3 minutes until the water heats back up to room temperature.

4. Serve all of your meals frozen and pureed. It’s the same principle as is frozen bananas. Just cut up all of your meals and freeze them for a few hours, then put them in the food processor until they are a cold paste-like substance. Meats will end up like cold pate’ sort of foods and anything dairy-based can be like a savory ice cream. You can develop your children’s palette’s for disgusting food while keeping cool.

5. Drop your kids off in the nearby desert (there’s space right next to where we live in NE Mesa if you’re looking for one) with nothing but a video camera for one afternoon. Tell them to keep it rolling and you’ll be back in four hours. Then you can send the video in to that “I Survived…” show and the kids can become famous.

6. Set a slip n slide up in your backyard. Tell your kids to each get out two swimsuits. Soak the suits in water and put them in the freezer. Once they have frozen, take the first set out and have the kids put them on and go outside and slip n slide until the swimsuit melts and then come in and switch them out so one will always be in the freezer. This should help to counteract the molten lava-like temperature of the vinyl.

7. Whenever your kids whine, “It’s too hot out,” tell them, “Don’t be so selfish. There are kids living on the surface of the sun who would be thrilled to live in Arizona in the summer. You are so lucky and you don’t even know it.”

The Truth About How To Score a Rental

*PSSST*

Hey.

Hey you!

Yeah, you. Come ‘ere.

You lookin’ to score a rental? Yeah? I could tell by the crazed look in your eye. It’s been awhile since you’ve slept, hasn’t it? And you’re twitching like you’ve spent 36 straight hours staring at your computer screen. Don’t worry, it’s not obvious to everyone; I just know the signs.

I can help you out. Don’t worry, it’s free… this time. You’ll come back when you’re ready to buy and I’ll get mine then. You’ll see I’ve got the good stuff: The Truth. You won’t want to live without me.

Step into my ‘office’ right here around the corner and take a load off. I’ve got some advice for you. That’s right, my dear. Mama’s gonna make everything alright. Here’s what I’ve got for you:

1. The rental market does not revolve around the MLS.

I know this goes against everything I’ve been preaching to my buyers (The MLS has better information than Realtor.com, I swear!), but the rental market is just not the same game. Not nearly all of the properties available are listed on the MLS. In fact, if you really want me to make up a statistic, I would say not even 50% of them are. Many are being rented by private owners with no agent involved. Others are being managed by property management companies who have a large enough client base they can usually find tenants on their own without getting involved with an agent who represents tenants.

You need to cover all your bases. Have an agent set you up with an MLS rental search for your criteria, but don’t stop there. You’re going to need to keep an eye on Craig’s List and Hot Pads and all those other sites, too. I know it sounds like a lot, but that brings us to number 2…

2. Finding a rental is your full time job for a week or two.

Here’s the thing, in case you haven’t heard, the rental market in Metro-Phoenix is on fire. There was this thing awhile back called the housing market crash. You know, where all these people lost their houses to short sale or foreclosure? You know what I’m talking about? All those people they keep talking about on the news? And your work colleagues who told you about their foreclosures? And your neighbors who abandoned their houses and left you to live next door to their weeds? Those hoards of people are your competition.

If you find a house brand new to the market and it looks like it fits your needs (right area, right size, right price, accepts pets, etc), you need to drop everything and be the first one in the door. Don’t wait until it’s convenient for you. Don’t wait until after work tomorrow because you’ll be in the area. Get your butt in that house however you have to. This is where you’re going to live; make it a priority.

3. You have no allegiances.

Agents who specialize in this one aren’t going to like it, but it has to be said. Like I said in number 2, the rental market is a battlefield. You’re not going to get that house that is right for you and your family if you aren’t prepared to fight for it. If you have an agent (who likely specializes in sales and is just doing the rental to help you out or because the market dictates that all agents have to get involved with rentals in some capacity right now) that you’re relying on to get you into rental properties you’re going to run into one of two problems:

1. A house will come on the market that’s perfect, but the agent already has showings or appointments or something else to do at that minute and you’ll lose out on the house just because of timing.

2. You’ll find a house that looks perfect on another website and it turns out that property manager doesn’t offer a cobroke for a tenant’s agent, so you’ll end up having to see the house without that agent anyway.

The system is broken. Agents who represent tenants only make a small amount of money for each tenant they place, but it often requires quite a bit of time an energy to get the tenant into the right house. The only way for the agent to make a living wage is to offer to show you 5 houses when he is available and you must pick one. Does this sound like how you want to find the house you’ll spend the next year or so living with your family?

I’m not saying you should find an agent and be prepared to lie and take advantage of him. Here’s what I’m proposing: Find an agent you trust. Make a deal with her. Ask her to set you up with an auto-search on the MLS for your rental criteria. Then when a house comes up on your search that you really need to see, email her and ask her to send you the listing agent’s contact info. Then you can contact the agent directly to get in ASAP. The listing agent or property manager has more financial incentive to get you in quick and get the property rented. If your agent has time or it’s convenient for her, she can show you a property here and there, but then you’re not dependent on her availability. Explain to her that you’ll compensate her by referring her to all of your buying and selling friends and family and that when you’re finally ready to buy again in a few years, you’ll go back to being her loyal client. And maybe if she does show you a few houses, but not the one you end up renting, offer her a couple of hundred dollars for her time. She likely wouldn’t have made much more than that in commission on your rental anyway.

4. Be prepared.

You’ve got to be ready to strike when the iron is hot, but you don’t want to waste your time on properties that don’t work for you either. When you call a property manager to ask if you can view a house, be ready with your list of questions:

1. Do you have any applications you are already reviewing for this property (if they do, it’s likely a waste of your time)?

2. Do you allow pets?

3. Do you require a credit check?

4. Will you take a personal check for your credit check or do you need certified funds?

5. Can you email me an application or point me to the website where I can download it (if the house looks really perfect and well priced you might want to fill it out ahead of time and pick up your certified funds for the credit check)?

6. What kind of appliances are included in the rent?

7. Does the rent include HOA fees and/or any utilities? Will I pay taxes on top of my rent?

8. What deposits do your require and which are refundable?

Etc.

5. Be decisive.

Make a decision quickly. If the house seems like what you want be ready to hand over your payment for the credit check and application immediately. You don’t need overnight to think about it. You need a place to live. They’re going quick. Remember you’re not living here forever. You can move in a year if you realize you hate it. And if the pipe under the kitchen sink springs a leak, you can call the landlord.

6. Keep a list of your arsenal of websites.

If you find a property management website that has a house you might like listed on it, bookmark it in case that house isn’t right, but they have another that is. Here’s a list of local sites compiled by one of my super organized and lovely friends/clients when she was looking for a rental in the last few months:

Action Property Management

Bennett Property Management

PRS Property Management

Marsh Management

Golba Group Property Management

My New Place

Desert Wind Property Management

Brewer Caldwell Property Management

Mesa Verde Property Management

Barrett-Eastman Property Management

Ashford Management Services

 

See there, aren’t you feeling better? Now you’re armed and ready to take on the rental market. You know how the system works. Tell your friends. I’ve got The Truth and it’s priced well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday Mantras

It’s a new week. It’s my birthday week. There is much to do and little patience with which to accomplish it. Who wants to show property and negotiate contracts when I have Trapezery to do with my family tonight? Yes, I’m having my birthday party at the Trapeze class. It’s possible I’m an 11 year old girl.

OK, OK, I recognize just because it’s my birthday week doesn’t mean I have the right to get nothing done (I recognize it, but I don’t like it. If it had a Facebook fan page and sent me an email asking me to ‘like’ it, I would totally hit ‘ignore’).

Thus, in an effort to get through this week NOT by daydrinking and shopping for new awesome nail stickers, I’m going to make myself a list of things to repeat that I’ve needed help with lately:

1. The fact that I’ve been working so much lately (especially on the weekends) has probably taxed Jason’s patience with the kids as much as mine is taxed during the evil summer break. I vow to give him some time off instead of informing him, “If you bellow at the children one more time in the next 3 minutes I’m going to hire a hit man to kill you in your sleep.” If I have him killed then there will be no one to watch the kids on the weekends.

2. I still have to get through a 30+ day escrow with that one listing agent. If I tell her that I think she’s a lazy cow with a room temperature IQ right now, it’s going to make things super awkward and difficult for the next month. I vow to hold my tongue. Until after Close of Escrow.

3. If I plan out my healthy lunch and think of it in an excited manner (even if it’s a put-on to fool my stomach) before I’m starving to death, I’m significantly less likely to drive through Jack in the Box and order a sourdough jack with extra bacon and a large side of stuffed jalapenos and then want to drive into oncoming traffic half an hour later when my low blood sugar panic has passed and the guilt has set in. I vow to plan my meals and enjoy my healthy lunches.

4. If I drink more than 2 glasses of wine a night I will sleep like a hobo and feel like lukewarm diet coke the next day (kinda grody). It’s hard to remember this a glass and a half in when I’m cheerful and carefree; but it’s an important lesson. I vow to restrain myself. A little bit. It is my birthday week, remember?

5. If I go to the gym  and walk on the treadmill and do my crunches and pushups, I perform much better at ballet class on the weekend. It’s not fun to work out, but it’s fun to kick leotard-clad ass in class. I vow to work hard so I can be good at the fun stuff.

6. If I keep up on turning my paperwork in to my broker regularly, then I don’t have to spend 2 hours after the transaction is closed compiling and uploading forms. I also won’t have to feel like a jackass when I need a favor getting my check cut out quickly. I vow to try harder to be a good employee to my awesome broker (well, and more so, his wife, Queen Francy).

Those are my mantras for the week. I’m on a quest for perfection (shut up about what a long journey it’s going to be, OK?).

How To Make a Garden: Part II

I totally have a garden! I’m practically a farmer. It’s true. I might even be wearing overalls and just in from milking the goats at dawn. OK, not so much the last part. Or the overalls. But I do have a garden. And I have learned so much about gardening it would be practically criminal of me not to share my new found knowledge with my readers, right?

Things I’ve Learned Concerning Gardening:

1. My friend who said it took them one hour from start to finish to get their garden going is a goddamn liar. No, I was not able to successfully talk Jason into going the Home Depot kit route. He had to buy his own wood and notch out hinges and whatnot. The thing is, though, EACH STEP of the process took one hour plus infinity hours to complete. So I can come to no conclusion other than she is a goddamn liar. It’s a fact. Take it to the bank.

2. Digging willy-nilly in your pre-landscaped yard without knowing exactly where the drip system lines run will result in a generally nuclear situation:

When this happens, it’s best to stay outside the red box, AKA: the angry zone, for at least 24 hours.

3. The dirt-selling guys will take advantage of your lack of understanding of the system of measurement involving dirt (dirt is sold in yards? That seems strangely one or at the most two dimensional for dirt) and sell you exactly twice as much as you need for your garden. But your friends will be happy to have it for their gardens; so there’s that. Your neighbors will only hate you for about a week as the stinking, bug-ridden pile of compost and manure sits out in front of your house. They’ll get over it.

4. People who garden don’t call it ‘dirt’. They call it ‘soil’. I keep forgetting that one.

5. Putting on a cute ‘gardening outfit’ before planting all of your plants is kind of pointless because it just gets really dirty (I maybe should have said ‘soily’, I’m not really sure), really fast. I learned this one the hard way.

6. I have no idea how to tell if my plants are getting enough, too little or too much water. This is keeping me up at night. Gardening is stressful.

7. This whole we need the bees to survive on this planet! if the bees all die out we won’t have any plants or food! is kind of a hoax, I have to tell you. I got really nervous about not having any bees to pollinate my tomato flowers so they would become tomatoes because I haven’t seen any out there so I did some research. I thought there was like a special sign I could make and put out in my yard so they would know I need their services or something. I also thought pollinating was something only bees could do. So it turns out that all the bees do is beat their wings really fast near the flowers and the (Warning: x-rated plant talk to follow) pollen from the boy flower parts falls down into the girl parts of the flower. That’s all the bees do for the tomatoes! (Honestly they might do lots of other things for other plants. I don’t know. I didn’t research any other pollination. Don’t write me hate mail.) I also learned in my research that you can replicate this action by the bees with an electric toothbrush. So you can bet I was out there electric toothbrushing my tomato flowers, yessireebob. Bees aren’t that special. I’m just saying.

8. I still have no idea which part of that little eggplant plant we got will grow an eggplant.

Maybe it stresses him out too much to have his little plastic marker with a recipe for how to stir fry eggplant staring him in the face everyday to even produce an eggplant. I should probably remove that. It would be more humane.

9. It’s all worth it when you see that very first tomato of the season:

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!!

 

Awesomely Raddest New Blog Announcement

Me: Hi.

You: Hey, Lady.

Me: How’s it going today?

You: Not bad, not bad. Whatta ya got for me today?

Me: Did you come here today just cause I told you I have a fun and exciting announcement about another project I’m working on?

You: Ah … what project? Oh that thing you tacked on to the end of your Friday post? Something about a new blog? Right, right.

Me: Seriously? You totally forgot all about that?

You: Well honestly, what do you need a new blog for? You don’t get enough chance to air your thoughts here? Is there something you’ve been holding back? Because we kinda feel like we get a lot of you as it is…

Me: OK, now I’m just going to pretend that didn’t pinch a little bit. In my chest. You know, on the left side, sort of Southwest of my shoulder. Ow. Well you’re in luck, because I’m totally not the star of my new bloggy project. There’s other bloggers involved. And it’s about food.

You: Huh. Now I’m potentially interested. I was wondering what happened to Food Wednesdays. Didn’t you promise us that once?

Me: I promise a lot of things. Only about 65% actually come through. Don’t you remember when I promised like every day for a month that Real Estate Tangent would have a redesign?

You: Yeah, that got lame really fast.

Me: Humiliating. Anyway, I decided I needed a new venue for my thoughts on food. I also decided it would be super fun to invite some cool kids I know and love to write it with me. (I’m talking like I was in charge, but that lasted about 10 minutes and then everyone dove in and took over the parts they were best at. It was really kind beautiful in a collaborative, peace on Earth kinda way.)

You: So who is it?

Me: Well, one of my best buds for most of my life, Amanda, spearheaded the project with me and did all the techie, code-ish, smartie stuff. Then we brought in my dad, JT, from whom I inherited my strongly dominant sarcastic gene (you can trace the line of sarcasm straight through my family to way back. It’s like a widow’s peak. You can almost guess which of the kids are illegitimate by who doesn’t have one.). Next we added my smart and lovely sister-in-law, Jen (twin of my husband). She hails from the Pacific Northwest, but we try not to hold it against her. Jen did all of the pretty-making design stuff on the site. We kinda lucked into her in that manner. Last, but not least, we’ve got a teacher friend of my sister’s, Manda. I don’t know Manda as well as I do the rest, but I can tell I’m going to love her. She’s one funny bitch. And she provides grammatical correction when we need it (she teaches English).

You: That sounds like a fun bunch.

Me: It totally is.

You: OK, OK, I’m moderately intrigued. Where do I go?

Me: Dude, I seriously thought you were never going to ask. Gawd. www.WineandaSpoon.com

You: There’s nothing about real estate on there, is there?

Me: Nah. Just food. And stories. It’s possible I talk about how my kids make me insane, like I do on here. But there’s always a recipe. Check it out. You’ll dig it.

You: Alright. I’m out. See ya Wednesday. You better have a real post then.

Me: I will. So bossy. Geez. I spent all day yesterday writing effing content for the new site. What happened to ‘we already get a lot of you…’ Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. Sheesh…

Super Couponing – Unmasked

Did you watch that new show, Extreme Couponers on TLC last week? The one that should be subtitled: Slightly More Functional Hoarders Whose Families Have Yet to Stage an Intervention? I watched it. I mostly felt compelled to tune in because my husband has apparently been telling his coworkers, “My wife totally does that.” I think it’s cute that he pays enough attention to notice that we have coupons in the house, but not enough to realize we don’t have 1/3 of our living space devoted to a stockpile of free or nearly free items.

So just to set the record straight (especially if you’re one of Jason’s coworkers); extreme couponer, I am not. I do, however, have a small collection of things we use regularly like toothpaste, broth, tuna fish, hair dye, etc. Yes, that’s right, I have 15 boxes of dark brown hair dye of various brands upstairs in my master linen closet. I know what you’re thinking: She dyes her hair? But it looks so natural. I would never imagine that someone would make their hair look like that on purpose. I always just assumed she was born folicularly challenged… Hey. That’s not nice. And all over brown is better than, Hey, do you have dandruff? Oh, no wait, that’s just your embarrassing premature grey problem.

Now that we’re on the same page about my hair color, you’re thinking she’s a wack-a-do who has a two year stash of hair dye squirreled away so when the apocalypse occurs she’ll still have nice brown roots in her fallout shelter underground, aren’t you?

Let me break it down for you:

At the salon I get my hair cut from, a dye job plus a tip = $65. So 15 dye jobs over two years = $975

If I purchased the dye every six weeks or so when I need it (when it’s not likely on sale) = $10/box = $150

Purchased in bulk when hair dye is on special and I have coupons for it = $2.50/box = $37.50 for two years of lovely brown roots.

See there, now you get it. Now you don’t think I’m a wacko; you understand that my hair dye squirreling away leaves me with tons of extra cash for boxed wine and fancy gardening gloves. I’m not going to detail out my home bikini waxing system, but suffice it to say it’s also a financial boon for our family.

I do have a bone to pick with that couponing show (besides the fact that it feeds the OCD nature of people who should really be institutionalized for their own health and safety). It completely over-simplifies the coupon shopping process. It makes it all seem so easy you start to wonder why you’re the only sucker who pays $213 for $213 worth of groceries.

Take for instance, a typical shopping trip as evidenced on the show:

  • Crazy woman in her mid-30s with nothing to live for but her children and family obsessively checks the internet for things she can get for free.
  • Crazy woman dumpster dives and miraculously comes up with unused coupon inserts that are not smeared with moldy Chinese takeout.
  • CW uses a paper cutter and gigantic binder system to catalog her billions of coupons.
  • CW goes to ONE unnamed grocery store with her henpecked and/or inebriated husband in tow.
  • CW dumps fully stocked shelves of mustard and pasta into her cart.
  • CW carefully organizes her purchases on the conveyor belt at the checkout line into several different transactions in order to circumvent the store policy of a maximum number of items purchased at the sale price.
  • Entire store cheers as CW’s total drops from $1273 to 37 cents.
  • Friendly store employees help CW and henpecked husband out to their car with their purchases (AKA: practically stolen merchandise).
  • CW lines up all of her practically free things with labels facing the same direction and lays down to cuddle with the love of her life, The Stockpile.

Now compare it to a typical shopping day at my house:

  • I make a list of all of the meals we will eat for the next week.
  • I make a list of all of the ingredients we will need to purchase to make all of these meals.
  • I ask Jason if there’s anything he needs me to add to the shopping lists. He responds with, “We’re low on toilet paper and paper towels. But I swear to Allah if you buy that cheap single-ply crap again I’m going to go to the grocery store and pick out the most expensive toilet paper I can find and pay retail! Don’t tempt me, Woman!”
  • I add ‘high quality toilet paper’ to my list.
  • I use an online database to cross-reference the stuff we need with what’s on sale and what I have coupons for. I discover the only things super on sale this week are laundry detergent, Rice a Roni (which we already have 43 boxes of) and processed cheese slices (which none of us will eat).
  • I clip my coupons and organize them by the 6 different stores I’ll have to go to get the best prices on everything.
  • I start at Walgreens.
  • As I’m pushing my cart into the door I plan my attack. I need Revlon hair dye, Aussie shampoo and conditioner, Swanson chicken broth and Purex laundry detergent. The Walgreens circular says there is a limit of 3 for the hair dye and detergent, and 4 for the broth (I can apparently buy as much shampoo and condition as I damn well please). I have enough coupons for 6 of the detergent and they’re super cheap, so I really want to maximize my savings there. I also need to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy, so I could possibly buy one set at the pharmacy and then the second at the front checkout to avoid having to ask if I can do separate transactions. But then I’ll still look like a weirdo. Is the risk of humiliation worth the potential savings? Um… $1 X 6 + $2.50 X 5… and subtract the… carry the 4… Maybe?
  • I decide to attempt the double set and start off in the food section looking for chicken broth. There are only 5 cans, instead of the 8 I need. Stupid. Moving on to the hair dye and shampoo and condition. Plenty there. Finally over to the laundry detergent aisle where I find an empty shelf. The cheap detergent’s been totally raided already. The humiliation risk has now officially outweighed the savings potential. I remove the extra can of chicken broth and the 3 extra hair dyes and place them on the empty detergent shelf, because the idea of tramping back around the store replacing them correctly when I still have 5 stores to go of this nonsense makes me want to drink the bleach conveniently located next to the detergent.
  • I check out with my meager savings.
  • I decide the cheap laundry detergent is worth a trip to a second Walgreens. Five miles away I find another Walgreens and hit pay dirt in the detergent aisle. I take my 6 detergents to the front checkout lady and ask her if I can do two transactions. She responds, “No, I really can’t do that. I’ll get in big trouble.” I say, “OK, well I’ll put them back and come right back…” and she takes them out of my hands and says (to me and the 3 other women waiting in line behind me), “No, it’s OK, I’ll do it for you. Hey listen, do you watch the news? My son was killed in an altercation at a bar two weeks ago. I found out when I was watching Young and the Restless and I saw him on the news…” I say, “I’m so sorry,” and sneak out awkwardly while the women behind me hug her.
  • Next stop is CVS. At CVS I’m only getting contact solution. The awesome deal here involves ‘extra bucks’, which are coupons for money that can be used toward anything in the store on your next trip. With my coupon and the extra bucks on this item, it will be totally free. But that’s only if I remember to come back in the next two weeks and spend my extra bucks. Chances of this occurring: 45%
  • In the car after CVS I reevaluate my list. I have four stores left and 1 hour until I need to be home to start making dinner. The deal at Safeway was only bacon for $3.99 and Diet Coke for $3, neither of which are screaming deals. At Bashas I’m only getting milk (which is also cheap at Fry’s) and Albertsons just has yogurt and chicken, neither of which I desperately need. I decide to scrap it all and buy everything else at Fry’s.
  • At Fry’s I’m so exhausted and frustrated I just throw shit into the cart without really checking prices. I buy 6 bell peppers for $12 and hate myself a little bit. My total before savings is $338. After coupons and store savings it’s $212. Not bad, but no one from Extreme Couponing will be calling me anytime soon.

So I’m calling foul on the show. If it really goes like that, I need someone to come teach me how to make it work. Clearly I’m failing.

A Lesson in Non-Shady Behavior

I recognize that it’s totally passive-aggressive of me to bitch on my blog about the failings of my fellow real estate agents. It would be way more mature to just call them and say, ‘Yo. That was scummy. If you do it again I’m going to report you.’ I also realize it’s against my National Association of Realtor’s ‘code of ethics’ to out another Realtor for acting in a non-ethical manner (hmm… Alanis Morrissette comes to mind. Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?).

But what good is having a blog unless you can passive-aggressively bitch in a non-specific and totally hypothetical manner? Plus, I like to think it can be a teaching moment for all of us. Let’s all come together and learn how to be a real estate agent who’s totally going to get sued if they keep this shit up:

Case Lesson 1 – How Not to do BPOs

Broker Price Opinions are decent money these days. Agents who do BPOs are hired as an objective third party by the bank that owns the note of a house attempting to be short sold. They get $50 or $100 to go out to a house that’s listed as a short sale and give the bank an opinion of value on the property. I knew a guy who used to do 8 of these a day, five days a week a few years back. He was saving up for his sexual reassignment surgery. True story (5 of the people reading this just went, ‘Oh yeah… I remember him.’).

The proper way to do a BPO is:

1.       Call and schedule the appointment to see the house.

2.       Show up at the appointed time to photograph and take notes about the house.

3.       Go home and fill out the valuation form using current comps and your newly garnered knowledge about the property.

The improper way to do a BPO:

1.       Call to set up an appointment to see the house.

2.       Half an hour before the appointed time send your husband and small child to the house with a camera. When the homeowner asks for his credentials because she was expecting a female half an hour later, tell him to huffily walk out to his car, and come back saying he doesn’t have his wife’s card with him.

3.       Fill out the valuation form without ever having viewed the property using only the information provided by your unlicensed husband and four year old daughter. Resist the urge to include your daughter’s opinion that the house was boring because it didn’t have any American Girl Dolls for her to play with.

Case Lesson 2 – The Wrong Time to Release Keys to the Buyer

I know in some states (and in most theatrical representations of real estate purchases) the buyer, seller, agents, title officers and roughly 11 attorneys all sit down together at a big mahogany table to sign documents and exchange keys and large amounts of money at the close of escrow. In Arizona this is not how it works.

Here, the sellers sign the paperwork to sell.

Then the lender sends the paperwork the buyers need to sign to the title company.

Then the buyers sign the paperwork to buy.

Then the lender reviews the paperwork and sends the wire with the large amounts of money.

Then, when the title company has received the wire, they release the file to record with the County Recorder’s Office.

FINALLY AT THIS POINT AND NOT BEFORE the property will be legally owned by the new buyer and keys can be released.

I know this is annoying and completely anticlimactic. I know all of my buyers want their keys right after they sign and think I’m a just trying to torture them by withholding their keys until the title company calls me to say we’re completely official. It’s not true, I swear. I’m not trying to be the annoying bad guy. The fact is; you don’t own the property until the money comes through and the deed is recorded. There are way too many cases where things have gone wrong in those few hours/days it takes for all of this red tape to be cleared away. They scare us with those cases when we get our license. And then our brokers hammer it home on a regular basis.

So just to be clear, if you’re the buyer’s agent and the buyer signs at 3PM on a Monday, and the listing agent shows up at the property on a Tuesday morning at 9AM to check the final condition of the property BEFORE escrow closes, BEFORE the wire has been sent from the lender to the title company, BEFORE the title company has received the wire and BEFORE the title company has released the file for recordation, and the following things have occurred:

1.       The key has been removed from the lockbox and given to the new buyers

2.       The locks on the property have been changed by the new buyers

3.       The new buyers have had a brand new washer and dryer and fridge delivered and installed

4.       The new buyers have either had a party or treated the appliance install man to about 40 beers as evidenced by the full recycling container in the kitchen

Then YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. Also, I may not be able to prove it, but I think all circumstantial evidence points to the fact that you didn’t give the buyers the keys after they signed at 3PM Monday, but likely the Friday before. I know you probably know the buyers and that they’re really nice people and maybe it’s even your sister and her husband or something, but DUDE. Just no. So much legally not at all ok. You’re lucky nothing wacky happened this time and it all closed escrow. Please don’t do it again.

I hope we all can take away something from this lesson. Even if it’s just ‘Don’t act shady when you’re doing a deal with Elizabeth Newlin because she’ll totally call you out on her blog and it will be kind of humiliating.’

My Camelback Hike – Being Honest, For Your Safety

I hiked Camelback Mountain yesterday morning. I’m typing this, so you can rest assured I survived it and am still alive (because ghosts can’t depress the keys on the keyboard, their fingers would just go right through, obviously. Basic Physics). I am heavily medicated, though. It was touch and go there for awhile.

Have you ever hiked Camelback? It’s one of those quintessential Metro-Phoenix experiences it seems like almost everyone who lives here has had. I’ve talked to enough people who did not look to be in peak physical condition who’ve said they just hiked it last weekend I started to think I was just having a wussy day when I did it last (10 years ago). If that girl with the bigger muffin top than my own, taking the cigarette break outside of the title company can hike Camelback the morning after she did Irish carbombs at RulaBula, I should probably be able to skip up the side of the mountain and jog back down it, right?

I actually think this mentality is pretty dangerous. I don’t know why it always sounds like everyone has done this hike, but I don’t see how that can possibly be true. I think at least 60% who claim to, have to be lying. And this lying is causing some of us to have false illusions that we can accomplish it. Lying kills, is what I’m trying to tell you. Or at least lying makes people do things that cause them to be excessively tired and sore afterward. It’s not good, People.

Rather than porta-potties and water jugs at the base of the mountain, I think there should be some kind of athletic aptitude/physical well-being test you have to pass to attempt the 1.2 mile ascent. I’m also not sure it’s a test I should have been capable of passing. Maybe it just needs to be a questionnaire:

1.       Are you 17 years old and in training to be an Olympic swimmer?

2.       Does heading out to run 6 miles at 5AM on a Saturday sound like a leisurely weekend activity to you?

3.       Do you own a hands-free hydration device that doesn’t accommodate aluminum cans attached to a batters helmet?

4.       Do you take pride in anything concerning your ‘resting heart rate’?

5.       If you were to get stranded halfway up the mountain with what you thought was impending cardiac arrest but turned out to be the breakfast burrito you ate 10 minutes before attempting to climb rebelling against the physical exertion, do you have the cash to pay for the helicopter ride to the hospital and various medical attention/emergency services you would require?

6.       Are you proud of yourself after walking 2 miles at a 15% incline on the treadmill?

7.       Did you just get winded from the mile long walk from the car to the trailhead?

8.       Are you wearing an outfit you usually wear to bed with an additional sports bra and calling it ‘exercise wear’?

9.       Did you just giggle like a five year old at the people stretching over there under the Ramada?

10.   Were you thinking this would be a quick morning activity and then you could go to brunch and have mimosas after?

After you answer the questions you’d flip the paper over and it would read, “If you answered yes to any of the first 5 questions you have been approved to attempt this hike. Please proceed to the trail to begin your morning of torture. If you have to vomit, please try to keep it to the side of the trail, as it tends to make the rocks even more slippery and difficult to maneuver than they already are. If, however, you answered yes to any of the final 5 questions, just turn around and ‘hike’ back to your car and go directly to brunch and your mimosas. Don’t feel bad. Trust me; you’re actually the winner in this scenario.”

I jest, slightly. It was worth the trip. We went early enough it wasn’t hot and the view from the top was spectacular. I’m glad I have the memory of the view. I’m pretty sure I won’t be experiencing it again very soon. I’m also pretty sure I won’t be doing a ton of walking or unnecessary moving for the next several days either.

Tax Credit – How Not to Fix the Housing Crisis

Can we discuss the homebuyer tax credit for a second? You know which one I’m talking about. The one where you just had to buy a house and not have the income of a bank CEO and the government would send you a check for like eight grand. That one. Can we talk about it real quick?

Here’s the thing, when it was introduced, of course all of us Realtor-types were like, RAD. The market is exceedingly craptastic. This will make people want to buy houses! We might actually be able to scrape together a living wage this year! I might be able to quit my night job waitressing at Denny’s!

And my buyers (many of whom were already planning to buy) were like, Shut up! That is so great! Now I can buy a house that needs carpet and paint replacing and actually have money to do it. Or, Lookee here! Now I can pay down some of my debt after I buy the house and it will be easier to make my monthly mortgage payment, whee!

There was a lot of general celebrating over this idea; is the point. I think we all felt like the only downside would be the debt the government would incur over the whole thing (which, granted, was a LOT. Like in the bajizillions, I’m pretty sure). But hey, better them than us, right? Sure, the government is swimming in a sea of metaphorical debt, but hello, we, the Tom, Dick and Harry’s of the US are drowning in actual debt. I have this feeling creditors don’t track down the cell number of the US government and call it every evening at the dinner hour from different phones until it is tricked into picking up and then berate the government for being a deadbeat.

I’m pretty sure the government had its heart in the right place about this one, too. I think the idea was: Hey, the housing market has collapsed and left all these poor souls (real estate professionals and homeowners alike) in the burning wreckage. We should probably try to put out the fire. This tax credit thing looks like water. It’s clear and fluid-looking. It will give people a financial incentive to buy again, which will stimulate the market and will cause prices to stop free-falling. It can’t really lose, right? It totally looks like water. And we’ve got to do something. Anything is better than nothing.

Unfortunately, that tax credit totally wasn’t water. It was vodka with a twist of lemon and we all got high on the fumes as the wreckage we were standing in burst back into flames.

Here’s what happened:

1.       People got excited and bought houses! They wanted to ‘take advantage’ of the credit, so some of them did it before they were really ready. They didn’t think it through as clearly as they might have otherwise.

2.       The market free-fall slowed and seemed to finally come to a stop. Everyone talked about a ‘leveling-out’ of prices. We all started to take a deep breath in relief that the worst was over.

3.       The tax credit expired and was finally not renewed again. Then things got really, really quiet. If you ask just about any agent in the Metro-Phoenix area about the summer of 2010 they get a crazed look in their eye. It was the summer we learned you actually can live on ramen noodles and spam. It was the summer I panicked and began interviewing for jobs outside of real estate (it was also the summer I learned I’m no longer qualified for anything that pays upwards of $7.50/hour).

4.       Houses had to sell, though, and to make it happen, prices had to drop again. And they continue to drop to this day.

Here’s what’s just starting to happen now:

People who bought in 2009 and got the tax credit had things happen in their lives. They’ve gotten divorced or had a job transfer out of state. Now they need to get out of their homes. But prices have dropped, so they have negative equity in addition to emotional trauma from their divorce or moving expenses. Plus, they have a nice little additional present from the government: they have to pay that tax credit back. The tax credit stipulated that the buyer must own and live in the house at least three years to keep the money. They’re lucky they didn’t get pantsed on the way out the door.

That tax credit was a Trojan horse filled with tiny little IRS agents armed with samurai swords and bows and arrows. We thought it was a present and wheeled it into our homes only to have it explode in a flurry of violence and pain (some of the tiny IRS also had lemons they juiced over our cuts from the itty bitty weapons).

My point in all of this (beyond endless metaphors about the tax credit being a wolf in sheep’s clothing, I could go on all day) is not that I knew this was going to happen. I think I’ve clearly established that I am not a soothsayer in any way. No, my point is only that we all need to recognize this for what it was: A total failure of an attempt to help a situation that probably can only be solved by time.

Let’s not do this again, ok, People? Let’s not throw good money after bad. Let’s stop artificially inflating things. It only ends up popping again in a giant mess we have to clean up. It’s not pretty. (Starlets could probably learn this lesson too.)

Buying After Bailing (Not to be confused with: Buying and Bailing)

I talked with some past clients/friends this weekend and they asked me the real estate question that makes even Google say, “uh… yeah, I’m gonna have to get back to you on that one,”: If I short sale or foreclose on my house, how long will it be until I can buy another house?

It seems like there should be a fairly clear-cut answer to this question, but despite the fact that I’ve heard it debated by dozens of agents and gotten information from several lenders on the topic, what it always comes back to is:

A. It depends.

B. I’m not sure.

C. As soon as you teach your baby to sing and learn choreography and she becomes a breakout Disney star and has the cash to buy you a house, but before she falls victim to the Disney child star curse and wastes all of her money on drugs, rehab and wigs to cover her freshly shaved head.

Assuming you love your offspring too much to put them through C and that you’d like a touch more information than B, let’s focus on the factors of A.

There are basically three issues with getting a loan after you’ve relinquished your house, whether it be through short sale or foreclosure.

Issue 1 – Your credit score. Lenders have guidelines about what range your credit score must fall into in order for them to loan money to you. Every time you miss a payment your credit score takes a hit. It’s impossible to know where your credit score will land after the process is complete. First there is the fact that the credit score algorithm is more inexplicable and unknowable than even the essence of life and soul and how they are tied together, more closely guarded and mythical even than the secrets of how Facebook decides which status updates go into your Top News stream. Next, we have to take into account what your credit score begins at, and then how long the process of short sale or foreclosure takes. Are you still paying your mortgage, or do you stop paying month 1 and then rack up 18 months of non-payment dings? Lastly, they say (and no, I don’t know who ‘they’ is. And yes, I’m suspicious ‘they’ is a palm-reader someone’s Aunt Millie consulted) a short sale will ding your credit less than a foreclosure will.

Issue 2 – The wait period in the lending guidelines by the Federal Housing Administration. These are actual timelines lenders have to adhere to in addition to an acceptable credit score. I have an email from back in July from a lender who listed the wait times for each of the different types of loans. She said if you had an FHA loan that you did a short sale on, you could potentially have no wait period (but only if you have no late payments and are left handed and were born with your second toe longer than your first toe but only on your right foot) and if you foreclose on an FHA loan, you will have a wait of 3-3.5 years. If you have a conventional loan and you do a short sale, the wait period is 2 years. For a conventional loan foreclosed on, she claims the wait is 7 years. I know I’m using a bunch of disclaimers here about this lender and what she ‘claims’, but that is just because of…

Issue 3 – All of the regulations and guidelines to this are constantly changing. Each lender also uses the guidelines slightly differently. As of the time I’m writing this, the most current information I was able to find about these guidelines is from last July. I’m not actually certain any of these time frames haven’t changed and I have absolutely no idea if they will be radically different or even just done away with by the time my clients are ready to buy. Maybe in 6 months the government will decide the only way to allow the housing market to recover will be to gift everyone over the age of 23.5 but under the age of 47.1 a yellow unicorn and abolish the system of FICO credit scores altogether. Or maybe the government will decide the only way to keep this disaster from happening again will be to punish people who foreclose by never allowing them to obtain a mortgage in any state but Ohio and only on houses with polkadots and stand-up showers but no bathtubs. These are things I just don’t know (though it’s possible Aunt Millie’s palm reader does… we should probably ask her).

The point of all of this is there are roughly 3.78 billion factors that come together to determine how long it will be until you are able to buy again after you foreclose or short sale your house. Many, if not most of the people who go down this road have no other choices. They must jettison the property (and likely more importantly, the payment) one way or another. The homeowner who is considering a short sale or foreclosure as part of a larger strategy for whatever reason just needs to be aware of the risks and potential pitfalls and ultimately, he needs to decide if it’s worth that leap into the unknown.