Elizabeth Newlin – Arizona Real Estate Agent

Houses Shown: 9
How Glad I Was The Power Was Off In House #1 On a Scale of 1 to 10: 10
How Successful I Was At Suppressing My Shock And Remaining Professional At House #2: 4

I have a new buyer I’ve been working with the last couple of weeks. He’s a very nice guy and an engineer, which is always entertaining. Engineer’s do funny super analytical things like record the noise in the backyard of a house that backs to a major road on their Iphones to get a decibel reading of just how disturbing the traffic would be. I’m looking forward to meeting his girlfriend, the doctor, who just got back into town. We’ve had a couple of conversations about what he thinks she will and will not like and it’s always fun to see how those things actually line up (OK, maybe I’m easily entertained).

We saw nine houses this weekend and two were of note.

The first house is in a great Chandler neighborhood and probably would have been a really nice house if it hadn’t been abandoned and we hadn’t had that massive rainstorm a few weeks back which allowed several defects to surface:

Well that's not pretty, is it?

Ah yes, water leaking in through the electrical socket... that looks safe!

I'm just not understanding the concept behind this cesspool of rotting fruit and bacteria at all.

Well, and then there’s this:

Yes, that's the 202. What does your Iphone have to say about this one?

That house wasn’t going to win any beauty contests. The final house we saw, however, did have some former beauty contest winners displayed within it.

I was utterly fascinated by this last house of the day, I have to admit. I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m intrigued by people, their lives and especially their eccentricities. Really, a big part of why I love my job is that I get to learn all about people and what they do and what they’re into, etc. I feel a little bit like a therapist sometimes. We get into the car and I ask them questions and eventually their life story comes out. And yes, I love to hear it.

So the point is, this house was like a candy store and I’m the kid. I think I would literally pay money to meet the man who owns and resides in this house in person.

No, I don’t have any photos of the inside of this house. Basically, I couldn’t post them even if I had taken any unless I want to end up on a list with XXX after my name (REALTORS GONE WILD). The house was meticulous, the backyard was stunning, the layout was great, but the interior walls were covered in large framed posters (some photographs, some paintings) of naked women. We are talking roughly 30 images of women in wet t-shirts, posed as nude mermaids, standing nude in a dark hazy background that if you stood far enough away looked like a portrait of Abraham Lincoln; you get the idea.

And then there was the huge painting over the fireplace of a grey-bearded man steering a viking ship, who I’m assuming (due to the fact that most of the small framed photos in the house contained a grey-bearded man and the display of a vanity license plate that said ‘Da Viking’) is the home-owner. I’m not even sure how to process that.

Almost the weirdest thing about this house was just how deliberate, unabashed and organized the house was. There was not a hint of self-consciousness in the display of any of these pictures. They weren’t hidden away in the bedroom or office. Sure, they were there too, but they were also in the kitchen and the entry way and along the stair walls. He had 5 collections of magazines neatly lined up on a table in the family room. They were (in order): Popular Science, Playboy, Esquire, Maxim, and National Geographic.

OK, and I just Googled the Abraham Lincoln painting and it’s actually a famous Salvadore Dali painting called, Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters becomes a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln:

And it was alongside a framed and signed nude poster of Traci Lords. Mr. Viking? You are a dichotomy. I’m officially fascinated.

Metaphors Necessary To This Post: 1
Metaphors I Actually Used In This Post: 8 or 9
Ulcers I’ve Developed Since I Became a Realtor: 5 (Self-Diagnosed)
How Sure I Am We’ll All Get Through This Eventually: 97%

So you may not have heard, but Arizona’s going through a pretty significant cave-in of our housing market. (I just tried three times to write a sentence jokingly comparing it to that mine collapse tragedy a few years ago and realized it was in really poor taste and deleted it. Housing values have tanked. It hasn’t actually killed anyone. Except that one guy who totally ended up in a standoff with the police over the foreclosure of his house. And now we’re back in poor-taste-joke territory.)

OK, you probably know something about the current state of the housing market here. You’d really have to live under a rock not to. You probably also have an opinion about who is at fault in this situation. It’s human nature to find a scapegoat. If something bad has happened (a fender-bender on the freeway, a ball dropped at the office, that time I ate so much steak and Gruyere mashed potatoes I almost threw up), it was someone else’s fault (the other driver, a coworker, my husband for making such a delicious, large meal knowing full well that I am like a goldfish and if you feed me too much I will keep eating until I die).

Part of my own personal nature is that my default setting is ‘Guilt’. If something bad or disastrous has happened that is in any way related to me, I automatically assume that I’ve done something incorrectly that has caused this problem. I’m a master of self-flagellation. It’s actually probably insanely arrogant to think that I had anything to do with the crashing down of the entire national housing market, but I would be lying if I said every time a client who bought in the last five years with me has called and asked me about the value of his or her property I don’t feel at fault for the fact the property is now worth less than he or she paid for it. OMG, if only I was a better Realtor, I would be able to see the future and would have told all of my clients, family and friends to sell all of their properties in mid-2005 and then rent until now when they could buy again. Also I should have been a good enough Realtor to see the future and tell myself this.

I even have a couple of friends/potential clients who didn’t use me to buy their first property, but when they call me to ask about the value of their houses, I still feel somehow responsible for the deficit. So I’ve decided I need to just rip the band-aid off and just get it all over with at once. So here we go:

ATTENTION PROPERTY OWNERS OF ARIZONA….

Your house isn’t worth what you paid for it, or what you owe on it. It also isn’t worth what you hope it is (which is less than you paid for it, but still more than you could actually sell it for right now). Even if you bought in 1995 you most likely refinanced and pulled some or all of your equity out to remodel your kitchen or buy a boat in 2005 (I remember when we did that [kitchen, not boat] and the day they told me I could get a check for $20,000 and my mortgage payment WOULD GO DOWN because my interest rate was lower and I was so blissfully amazed with how awesome the world of home ownership was… ah, yes, the happy days before I realized I was the cause of all economic downturn). Even if I’m wrong, and your house IS worth more than you paid for it because you bought in 1972 and paid off your mortgage and own it outright, you still think it’s worth way more than it is because you remember hearing what your neighbors sold for in 2005 and that’s the number you are convinced you can get now. But you won’t.

I know, I sound harsh. But like I said, I’m ripping the band-aid off. I’m like the lady with the waxing strips; she does it fast and all at once (or the nurses at the pediatrician with the four shots, they get two nurses and stab those chubby little thighs two at a time real quick, I could go on and on with these metaphors). The point is, knowledge is power. No, it’s not what you want or hope for, but it is what it is, and you should know.

Here’s a graphical illustration that will maybe help:

Graph is from The Cromford Report.

So this is just Gilbert, but bear in mind that most metro-Phoenix cities are very similar. Take a look at that light green line that represents average sales price in 2005. See how it looks like the hill that Jack and Jill went up? And 2006 (in red) is still going that direction? And then 2007 (blue) is levelish until it hits 2008 (muddy green) and Jack falls down the hill (Jill comes tumbling after in the brown 2009). Take note of where that tiny little 2010 teal colored line sits. It’s down below 2005. I know, Dear, go ahead and poor yourself a glass of wine and take a seat. It’s not pretty, but it’s the truth.

Days Spent Home Searching: 3
Emergency Stops to Feed the Gestating Baby: 2
Inappropriate Comments Made By Mr. Cowan Involving the Inordinately Large Shower in the Master Bath of the House They Bought: Only 1 (He was on his best behavior, I was so proud of him!)

My clients from the new build stalker chicken incident, The Cowans, closed on their new house last week!

Some clients I’ve had have been anxious to see every available property that would potentially meet their needs before they make a choice to put an offer on a house. In fact, I would say this mentality is the norm, rather than the occasion. And this makes sense. You generally want to feel like you’ve covered all of your options before making your largest purchase in approximately five years.

The Cowans are a different breed. We spent one long weekend checking out a handful of resales and stopped off at one new build community before they were ready to pull the trigger. I think what it came down to is that Amanda was really, a lot, a whole bunch, ready to move out of their itty bitty, ludicrously expensive apartment in California and back to Arizona near her kids’ cousins; and she wanted to do it before Baby #3 makes her glorious appearance. Chris, on the other hand, is just kind of a guy who knows what he wants (and isn’t real interested in shopping unless it involves electronics or biking gear). Together they created the perfect storm of decisive, motivated buyers. I actually had a couple more new build communities lined up for us to see and Chris said to me, “Uh, no. We’re done. We’re going to think about the houses we saw in this community tonight and make our decision.” I was fairly flabbergasted at this statement. Usually it’s the agent who’s ready to make a choice before the buyer is.

Regardless of how quickly they made their decision, I think the Cowans made the right pick. I know that I really shouldn’t have an opinion about whether a house is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for my clients (it’s my job to merely facilitate what my client wants), but it’s really tough for me to abstain. I was born opinionated and I’ll hopefully die a wrinkly, old, bossy, opinionated (yet still fashionable) lady. Plus, it’s even tougher to remove my allegiance from the situation when the people I’m representing are good friends.

The point is, I think the Cowans are going to love their house that could fit the apartment they were living in, in California, three times over. I think their girls will adore their bedrooms and the giant play loft upstairs. I think they will right at home in Gilbert and so close to their cousins. And I think we will get to hang out with them lots more often.

And yes, they do have a view of the San Tans from the laundry room!