Arizona Real Estate Specialists

It's the modern home buyer quandry:

Do I want to pay more for the home to live closer work/school?

or

Do I want to pay less to live further away?

Lately I'm performing the following searches:

• Homes close to work/school (usually re-sale)

• Homes further away at bargain value pricing (often new homes)

• We look at each and calculate cost and time savings vs. expenses and time lost.
  

Each buyer is different- some will want to buy as much house as possible while others want less time on the road.

Wouldn't it be great to see a visual representation of home affordability vs. transportation costs?

The Center for Neighborhood Technology thinks so.

They've developed the Housing + Transportation Affordability Index.

This allows you to see each component separately or together.

Give it a try. 

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Chuck Willman is a real estate agent and founder of USAvest... a nationwide network of investment mined individuals with and interest in real estate. 

Something is very wrong with this picture.

Countrywide loses over $700 million dollars in 2007.

The CEO, Angelo Mozilo , receives an 80% pay cut.

That makes *some* sense.

With that, he was only making close to a $1 million a month in base pay.

But hey- there's some stock options to cash in!

... another $10 million a month to ease the pain.

Ask a Countrywide employee how they feel about this.

Or don't.

It's really too cruel to bring up.

Let's see what the SEC thinks about it, though.

They're looking into the timing of his stock sales. 

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picture "Countrywide Enron" courtesy of The Consumerist 

When cities experience massive population growth, local authorities must be asking themselves, "can we handle this?"

Evidently Phoenix can.

Phoenix is listed, by Forbes Magazine, among the best cities for job growth. About the area, the article ascribed Phoenix's prospects as strong due to a diverse economy and fundamentally solid economics.

The remarkable element to this article is this: several of the strong job growth locations (Cape Coral metro, Naples, Port St. Lucie, Ocala, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Riverside) all were "ground zero" for housing boom and bust. Yet the cities have managed to maintain job growth.

My opinion is that population growth itself contains the tools for economic rebuilding. With strong growth there is competition. With competition there's a lowered pricing, speculation and a constant flow of money into the system. Thus you find a vibrant market... not stagnation.

Phoenix, once heavily dependant on tourism, has matured. No longer is it a sleepy winter destination. It's sprawling size has allowed it room to grow. The neighboring cities have their own personalities... in essence it's a metro area with something for everyone. Low prices and low taxes, excellent schools have each contributed to the valley's success.

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Chuck Willman is the founder of AZvest... a group of investment minded individuals with an interest in Arizona real estate... he can be visited at www.AZvest.com. 

How many of you have gone to Wikipedia for "the gist" of a topic?

Raise your hands, people... ok that makes close to 85,000 of you.

Well... the "next big thing" in the web info arena (according to me) is, ready for it?

Data - more accurately... Smart Data. Raw numbers with contextual meaning.

The web is the battle field ... a tug of war over content.

The combatants in this war are: Free vs. For Profit. 

This includes us...Bloggers love Free. Real Estate Agents require commission.

So... the Blogger/Agent Math Formula is this:

freely available information + experience + "know how" = commission

There have been a myriad of articles posted in this social network regarding free stuff...

...I've posted a few myself... they include the topics of:

• Free web hosting
• Free stock photography
• Free photo processing
• Free blogging platforms

But where are the free data sources?

One of the obvious ones is wikipedia. It shows up high in every web search.

I've posted before about free government sources for data... problem is, these sites tend to look like something reported by the government. They tend to be sleep aids.

That's changing.

A new crop of web-smarties are creating mashups. They take public information ... mix in some smart database magic... and create, in essence, a wikipedia for data.

Here are a few of them:

• Freebase : This is an open source (that means free) depository of public information. It's excellent.
  
• Numbrary : This is like a library for people who love numbers. And you know who you are. I'm one of you.
  
• Infochimps : I'm tempted to not describe it... it has "everything about something". It's awesome!

Each of these need to be visited to be appreciated.

I just want to leave you with one that I've been using lately: Wikinvest

Rather than send you to the front page, let's go to a link about the housing market.

Like Wikipedia, you'll be able to see a "neutral" explanation about a topic. It has the blogger math I spoke of earlier: With the application of know how and experience collaborators distill the vast amounts of information on the subject into something more easily digested. Contributors are also invited to take a "bearish" or "bullish" stand on the matter.

For the investment minded it's a real gem. 

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Chuck Willman is the founder of AZvest ... a network of investment minded individuals with an interest in real estate. He can be reached at www.AZvest.com

In April of 2005 Wired Magazine published one of *the* feel good stories of a lifetime.

It was called "La Vida Robot" ... It's the adventure of a group of inner city high school students from West Phoenix who dared to compete in a NASA sponsered science competition against the best and the brightest students from the more legendary colleges in the nation.

Their task was to build a remote controlled, military grade robot that could maneuver underwater and perform a series of complex repair oriented tasks.

All parts and materials were to be purchased with funds from doners. M.I.T. received $5,000 of their $11,000 budget from ExxonMobile.

The Carl Hayden High School team landed a total of $800 from local businesses. Their team members had little more than part time experience in construction and auto mechanics.

Their secret weapon? ...smarts, discipline and creative thinking.

While other teams assembled their robots out of advanced electronics and professional grade parts, the high school team found many of their components at Home Depot, salvage stores and... you'll have to read the story- the personal higene section of Ralph's Grocery Store.

So- how'd they do?

I don't want to give it away.

You have two choices:

Read the story ... or watch the movie- Salma Hayek will be producing it. If it weren't true you would never believe it.

I highly recommend reading the story in its entirety...

...then when you just have to know more about what happened to the kids involved, here's the update. 

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Chuck Willman is a real estate agent in the Phoenix metro area. He can be reached at www.AZvest.com 

The Fortune 500 List is out... let's see which home builders made the list.

This is interesting...

Rank	Company	Revenues $
177	Centex	14,293
235	D.R. Horton	11,297
256	Lennar	10,187
282	Pulte Homes	9,263
340	KB Home	7,328

How do they stack up to some of the famous companies?

Company	Fortune 1000 Rank
FedEx	68
American Express	75
Google	150
Nike	153
AFLAC	165
Texas Instruments	185
Marriott International	197
General Mills	214
Principal Financial	242
Starbucks	277
Nordstrom	299
eBay	326
Yahoo	353
Mattel	413

I always love to peruse this issue...
...it's always interesting to me to see that "troubled" companies and "media darlings" tend to show up in unpredictable places.

Do you see any surprises?

 

Would you sell your home for a dollar?

How about $100?

The pendulous real estate market is still swinging to the favor of the buyer...

...so sellers are becoming creative.

A Toronto man has decided to sell his home for $1.

Of course he's not going to accept offers in that price range... he's just hoping to receive as much word of mouth as possible.

He has created a buzz... here's his quote to CBC News, "basically to see whether or not we can get an offer and something reasonable, letting the market determine … what the value of this house is." 

A Maryland couple decided to raffle their home... each entry cost $100. The house sold... the winning ticket landed a home and extra cash for the buyer.

News items like these are fun... however, they are isolated. There are buyers trying these and other remedies. They tend not to work with this degree of success.

The best way to sell a home is to:

1. Have it priced correctly.
2. Make it presentable.
3. Market it well.
   

If you're looking for a real estate agent in the Phoenix Arizona metro area who knows how to accomplish this, visit me at www.AZvest.com. 

"Chuck- you live in Mesa; how are the schools?"

That's the question I was asked earlier today.

It's also a question I love to answer, "Mesa's Schools are excellent!"

Here's some of the latest news:

America's Promise Alliance recognized Mesa Public Schools as No. 1 for its graduation rate among the nation's 50 largest cities.

Two of USA Today's Best College Students 2008 are from Mesa's Mountain View High... the same High School that has produced 14 of the last 18 state championship teams in the "Academic Decathalon. Perhaps the tradition of excellence begins early... Students from Stapley Junior High (which feeds Mountain View) are in a showdown with Pennsylvania as finalists in next week's National Academic League Championship.

Moving to Mesa? Visit my website wwwAZvest.com to search listings or check Mesa School's Website.

The question I've heard most often in the last few months it this, "Have we reached the bottom yet?"

Let's give the short answer: "possibly"

I (and most of my fellow agents) have been keeping a finger on the pulse of the market with great regularity during recent years.

For those of us who chart such thing we produced very odd graphs. They looked like a jaggy red line climbing a steep hill that all of a sudden dropped off of a cliff.

Such has been the drop in housing prices and home sales over the past two years. 

This dramatic downward decline has slowed. The new charts look different... and with reason.

Tempe, home to Arizona State University has a department devoted to the scholarly study of real estate. Their "Repeat Index Sales Report, 2008" is available by download.

It's chock-full of information that industry watchers love. Let me give you some highlights:

• January 2008 sales show a leveling off of downward trends.

• Valley prices increased 76% from January 2004 to July 2006.

• Prices decreased 11% July 2006 - Jan 2008.

• For those who bough five years ago (and previously) the net gain is still sizable. With prices leveling off recently the net result for the decade will be significant.

While no one can predict the future... quantitative studies give us the empirical evidence we need to help answer market questions.

Most importantly: declines and rises are occurring in several areas of the valley. It's best to consult with an expert before jumping into the market.

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Chuck Willman is a real estate agent licensed in the state of Arizona. Contact him at www.AZvest.com. 

Downtown Gilbert Arizona could be a film set.

It reminded me of Mainstreet USA... the center street of the towns of my youth.

My family has been drawn to Joe's BBQ for the past decade.

It's one of those places where the food is only part of the experience... the farmtown ambiance does its part to help make this place a must-visit destination.

Well... Joe is at it again.

This time it's Joe's Farm Grill. What makes this place unique?

It's a part of a farm and housing community called Agritopia.

This restaurant grows many of its ingredients on site- with organic methods.

Its unique look is pure Americana.

...And it's not just a marketing ploy- the food is outstanding.

Here are pictures from a recent visit: