Elizabeth Newlin – Arizona Real Estate Agent

Miles Driven: 52.5

People Actually Fooled by Exterior-Only Shots Taken By Listing Agent: 1, Oh wait, that guy was just kidding, he wasn’t fooled either: 0

How Glad I Was On A Scale of 1-10 The Sellers Weren’t Home When I Was Videoing Their House: 12

An out-of-state buyer I’ve been working with for a couple of years emailed me yesterday with a new property that had popped up on her search she wanted me to preview. She lives in Albuquerque, but has adult children here in the Phoenix area. She and her husband are looking in the Tempe/Chandler area for a house on a little bit more land with a huge garage. Because it isn’t really the normal property we see out here, we’ve just been watching and waiting for the right house to come on the market.

The house that appeared on the auto-search I have this client set up on seemed almost perfect on paper. It’s in a great South Tempe neighborhood, on a third of an acre of land, with a nice big four car garage and enough interior square footage that it should be a comfortable size for my clients. It just had one big glaring red flag flying from the rooftop: it is only listed with two photos (both front exterior shots taken from different angles).

In this digital day and age, where it takes more effort to play Wii Tennis than it does to slap eight photos up on the MLS showcasing all of the features of a house, what this says to me (and everyone with half a brain and an Internet connection) is that something is so horribly, hideously, mind-scaringly wrong with the rest of the house (infestation of giant hairy desert scorpions? quicksand in the kitchen? rare, toxic, red mold climbing the walls of the master bedroom? meth lab in the bottom of the empty swimming pool in back?) that it’s actually BETTER for the potential buyer just to imagine the potential horror that awaits than to capture it on film and release it to the general public.

So this morning I headed over to the house, with long pants and bug-squashing tennis shoes on, and my trusty video camera in hand to record all of the possible mayhem that I’m going to encounter, and of course, the house is a lot less disgusting, scary and horrible, and a lot more, messy, outdated and generally cluttered (with a bit of ‘poorly designed and constructed additions’ thrown in). My point here, to the listing agent is: DUDE. Suck it up and post some pictures. No, it’s not the most photogenic house I’ve ever seen, but you might have a chance of getting a buyer in the door who could potentially want to purchase the house, if you did.

Regardless of all of the lack-of-photos drama, I did learn an important lesson at this house today. Houses built in the 1980s tend to have tile step-ups and step-downs in weird place you (ok, I guess I should say ‘I’ here) don’t expect; which can cause incidents like the following when you (and by you, again, I mean ‘I’) are attempting to video, walk AND talk:

It’s a good thing I wasn’t attempting to chew gum also. Sigh.

Miles Driven: 122
Houses Shown: 9
Doors-to-Nowhere From Which (Presumably) Previous Owners Flung Themselves to the Hard Ground Below Only to Haunt the Property for the Rest of Eternity Viewed: 1

I showed a bucket of houses today. One of the properties was a house my client emailed over a couple of hours before we were going to meet to see another house, so I didn’t have the opportunity to print out the MLS plano. I just pulled it up on my blackberry and met him over there.

It was not the usual house I show, to say the least:

And then there’s the fact that I get a little chicken occasionally. Sometimes I’m stupidly brave. I often show houses to men I’ve never met before and regularly invite strangers into open houses when I’m alone. But when I step into a vacant house with an odd vibe alone, I start to get a bit skittish. I’m a touch paranoid about squatters (and, you know, monsters and ghosts, but that’s a given):

I’m going for the world record in number of times I can say ’super weird’ and/or ’super creepy’ in a video here:

Once I get that scary, creeped out feeling, it sticks with me. After wandering in this house alone for about 10 minutes, I walked out to my car and accidently hit the panic button, causing the GOV to freakout and honk and flash lights, and me to scream bloody murder like a little girl. I’m so professional, I know, you’re jealous.

Last week’s co-op produce was almost completely consumed (we have some romaine, a tomato or two and 3 carrots left, I think), so this week, when I was ordering, I decided to throw in a couple of extras. They were offering an Italian Ingredient Pack that I had seen the week before and it looked pretty good, and a Guacamole Pack. I am a sucker for all things Italian and even more so for The Most Perfect Food: Guac. So I ordered both. In addition to the regular basket. It was $30 and this is what we got:

Yes, that’s:

6 ears of corn
6 potatoes
1 bunch of bananas
15 small apples
4 tomatoes
1 butternut squash
5 pears
8 peaches
1 bunch of black grapes
1 HUGE eggplant
1 head of romaine
5 jalapenos
1 bunch of green onions
10 avocados
1 box of mushrooms
1 bag of Italian herbs (rosemary, basil, etc)
2 zucchinis
1 huge red onion
1 lemon
5 limes
4 yellow onions
2 heads of garlic
1 bunch of cilantro
1 bunch of Italian parsley

um…. holy cow what are we going to do with all this food? I need to rework my weekly menu. Anyone want to come over for dinner?

Of late I’ve become a huge proponent of date night. Until recently, I leaned toward the parenting contingent that believes the kids are the main priority and getting a sitter so Mom and Dad can go out on a Saturday night is shirking your responsibilities and a waste of money in addition.

I’ve done some relationship thinking, reading and reevaluating lately and the conclusions I’ve come to are these:

1. Marriage is work, like a garden. Regardless of the viability of the seed you’ve planted and the proposed beauty of the flower, if you don’t water it and give it sun, it will die.

2. Children benefit from having a cohesive parenting system. If it is possible to have the family intact and parenting from the same place, this is the ideal situation.

3. Therefore it’s important to make my marriage a priority. It’s not selfish to spend time alone with my husband, it’s imperative. Like on the airplane, when the cabin loses pressure, the adult needs to secure his breathing mask first, and then the child flying with him. If he can’t breathe and loses consciousness, neither will get oxygen. So in order to give my children the true family support system they need, I must take time alone with my husband to connect and enjoy each other.

So my husband and I have had several (maybe even many!) date nights this summer. We’ve done random and exciting things and reconnected with who we are as a couple minus the kiddos. And let me tell you, I love a good date night.

Here are some of the itineraries we’ve followed. I’m always looking for a fun date please leave suggestions in the comments!

1. Take your husband to work – Dinner at The Barrio Cafe in downtown Phoenix and then I took Jason to see a condo that is listed in a high rise in Phoenix. We took in the nighttime view from the rooftop patio.

2. Almost free art in Scottsdale – Sketching at Free Thursdays at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art for an hour and then we headed to the Sauce Restaurant on the waterfront near Fashion Square and took advantage of their summer special ($20 – pizza, salad, 2 glasses of wine).

3. ASU movie + sushi – Jason being the design/art/tech geek he is took me to see Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight at ASU in the Life Sciences building (it’s a bio-pic about the designer who, among many other things, created the I Heart NY logo) and then dinner at our favorite sushi joint, Blue Wasabi.

4. Bowling with buddies – Date night doesn’t always have to be just the two of us, in our opinion. The latest venture was as Bruswick XL in Gilbert for bowling and bar food. The food was actually edible and I hate bowling, but we made it fun with an extra game where everyone had to use the super light kiddie ball. It made for surprising results (including the time when one guy threw it so hard the ball bounced into and out of the gutter to take the spare). Jason said it felt like high school again.

A facebook friend posted a link this week to a produce co-op site that she was thinking of trying out. Because I’ve been working hard lately at cooking for the family (versus eating takeout) and cutting grocery costs, I found the concept interesting.

Apparently the basic idea behind this particular co-op (and I understand that there are other interpretations of this general concept) is that produce is purchased in bulk by what’s currently in season and if you choose to purchase, you have to follow the rule my five year old has so much trouble with at kindergarten: That’s what you get and you don’t throw a fit.

It was $18 to purchase one ‘basket’ of produce and it had to be ordered and paid for online between Tuesday at noon and Wednesday at 10pm. My kids eat a ton of bananas, apples, grapes, melon and the like, and that is the sort of stuff I could vaguely make out in the picture of the basket on the website. I figured for $18 it couldn’t be a total disaster even if it was mostly radishes and rainbow chard.

This morning at 7:05 (the website said we had to be there at 7:15 AM, but I just tend to generally run a little early) we pulled into the parking lot of the Gene Autry Sports center, about 4 miles from our house to pick up our food. The operation consisted of about 10 ladies and 6 rows with blue and white baskets filled with produce. We got in line and showed our printed off receipt to a woman with a clipboard, who pointed us over to one of the rows.

We were then instructed to empty two baskets of food (one filled with fruit, one with veggies) into the box we brought from home (a medium-sized storage container). Here’s what we went home with:

6 peaches
6 apples (fuji)
5 tomatoes
2 butternut squashes
1.5 bunches of bananas
1 large bag of green grapes
1 cantaloupe
1 lb of strawberries
1 cauliflower
1 large bunch of romaine lettuce
1 small bag of carrots
3 small bok choy

I was a little weirded out by the bok choy, just because I’ve never used it, but once I voiced this on twitter, I was immediately pointed to three recipes that contain bok choy that all look excellent. Other than that, I was thrilled with the amount and quality of food we received for $18. We went right home and cut up the melon and some of the peaches and strawberries for breakfast and washed and froze the grapes for snacks. I’m going to make roasted butternut squash with flank steak and bok choy for dinner this week.

Besides the money we saved on the produce, I also like that it is seasonal, and that it forces me to try things I might not otherwise. Cooking for a family of five on a regular basis can get a little monotonous and this is a fun way to mix it up a little.

I will do it again. Maybe this isn’t something that would work for a single person or a very small family, but I think it’s just the right amount for my boys.

Now that buyers have started to get the message that now really is a fabulous time to buy (tax credits, low prices and low interest rates, oh my!), we’ve begun to encounter a new problem with getting people into homes.

There is still so much inventory out there (about 10 times as many houses on the market in metro-Phoenix right now as when I started in the business four years ago) that buyers are a little overwhelmed about how to start.

With so many houses on the market to choose from, and new houses coming on the market that fit the criteria they are looking for every day, buyers have gotten a little paralyzed by the idea that the ‘perfect’ house is out there.

I’m here to tell you now: No house is perfect. It’s the honest truth. Every house will have a flaw, whether it is a little bit farther than you want to drive, a tad more expensive than you wanted to spend, with an outrageous HOA, or without that fifth bedroom you always wanted, something about it will be less than ideal, I promise.

Case in point:

I have a client who I’ve been showing property to for about 6 months. We’d seen probably 250 houses. We’d made offers on 10ish that had not worked out for various reasons. We finally found THE HOUSE. A house in the neighborhood they really wanted to be in. A house priced how they needed it to be priced. A house with the same layout as one we had previously made an offer on (and not gotten) but in better condition, with new paint and carpet and on a cul-de-sac. It was plumbed for a gas stove like the husband wanted, and backed to a golf course. It was PERFECT.

We made a decent offer on this house and actually had our offer accepted. The home inspector pronounced it in nearly perfect condition and the termite inspector left me a voicemail that if I ran across another like it, he might be interested personally. Everything was going as smooth as ice.

Then the week before we were set to close escrow, the husband drove by the house and stopped to talk to one of the neighbors…. who mentioned the ’scorpion problem’ in the neighborhood. And, you know, that’s when all hell broke loose.

The husband (on my suggestion) took a black light over to the house that night after dark to the back yard to attempt to dispel this rumor about scorpions that the neighbor was peddling. Instead, he found 12 (that’s right, TWELVE) scorpions on the walls of the block fence and sides of the house.

SIGH.

(Sorry, just needed a moment.)

Don’t worry, folks, we went back the next night and I let him in to the house with the black light. We didn’t find any scorpions inside the house. So the buyers are still buying (set to close tomorrow) and are going to have the house professionally sealed the day after close of escrow (the husband has been out to the house every night since killing every scorpion he finds in the back yard).

But the point is: No house is perfect. Each house is beautifully different and flawed, just like people.

Speaking of which, no scorpions in our new, fabulous, newly build house (WITH a fifth bedroom), but it IS a bit on the far side AND we found a field mouse in the garage today. SIGH.

It’s been a wild weekend of houses and more houses. The title of this post says it all. I’ve been to South Chandler, North Mesa, Ahawatukee, Gilbert, the Historic Districts of Phoenix and the majority of the new builds in the South East Valley.

The buyers are out there and looking for deals. Of the things I’ve seen in the last few weeks, a few stand out to me:

1. Out in Maricopa, there’s a new build in The Lakes at Rancho El Dorado with 1200+ square foot houses starting at $95,900. Can’t rent for less than that!

2. One of my clients has been looking at historical homes in downtown Phoenix, which is super fun. I tend to show suburban cookie cutters in the East Valley, so an adorable 1950s bungalow with a milk door makse me squeal. This cutie:

That has been totally redone with granite in the kitchen and a fabulous detached garage in back at $159,900 made me want to live downtown. Sure, it only has one bathroom, but so well done and in such a great location, how can you beat that?

3. Well, and if I’m going to post about great houses I’ve seen lately, I would be remiss not to mention this amazing Fountain Hills home:

My client who was looking in this area and I called it ‘the bridge house’ because it sits up above a bit of a wash. If you stand in front and look down underneath you can see to the other side. It’s an incredibly modern and well thought out home. We looked at many houses in this price range and our breath was taken away by this beauty. It’s currently listed at $1,980,000. Let me assure you, if I had two million, that’s where I’d be living.

4. The last is another downtown historical home. This one wasn’t in amazing shape, and it definitely was the scariest on the block from the exterior (driving down the street with my client, we couldn’t figure out which house we were looking for; when I finally realized which house was our destination, I said, “Of course that one. The one we wouldn’t want to go into. Awesome.”), however, the layout was generally good and the house was totally livable. It has a garage with a laundry room and three bedrooms and two baths, plus a decent sized kitchen, not to mention a ginormous yard. Add to that a neighborhood close to the light rail and with mostly fabulous houses (with expensive cars parked out front) and I’m thinking that with a little bit of elbow grease and time to get the market back on track and the $132,900 price tag will be looking like money in some smarty’s pocket. Yeah, I know it doesn’t look like much:

But I think I could amount to something special in the long run (although someone should totally clean the 8 huge cockroaches out of the bottom cabinet in the kitchen ASAP).

And that’s my market take for the day. Call if you want to see anything!

I’m sure you’ve heard of it. That little airport over in East Mesa? The one that used to have a really cheap flight to Vegas, but apparently discontinued it? Yeah, that’s all I had ever heard about it too.

Two weeks ago we needed to get to Portland, Oregon on short notice (72 hours). I checked all the usual places first: orbitz.com, travelocity.com, Southwest, etc. The cheapest I could find was $420/each for a roundtrip with a layover in Salt Lake City. Then I checked our airline credit card that we put everything on to accrue miles and we had enough for one free roundtrip ticket. Unfortunately, it would have been $670 to add the second person on the same flight. So basically our options were $840 and no miles for a flight with a layover, $670 and all of our miles for a direct flight, or $420 and all of our miles for a direct flight and one with a layover (so two different drop off/pick up times at the airport and no moral support for me and my nail-biting flying fear). Not particularly attractive options.

Then I got a thought to check the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport… Because I’m the QUEEN of cheap travel. That’s right, bow down. The Mesa airport flies to a really limited amount of locations, but they do fly to Eugene, Oregon, which is about 100ish miles from Portland. Two roundtrip tickets from Mesa to Eugene was $215 (that’s including one roundtrip checked bag). Of course, being 100 miles from our destination meant that we had to rent a car, but that was only an additional $100 (and we got to keep it for the weekend). So for $315 we made the trip.

The other fabulousness of the Mesa airport is that it’s so small that parking, check-in, security and baggage claim is all super quick and easy.

Jason was worried that because it is a small airport, the plane would be super small (and my flying fear would be increased). But that was not a worry because it was a 5 seat wide, 35 seat deep jet; nice and big. The flight out of Phoenix was bumpy (as per usual), but the one in was smooth as silk.

So my vote is thumbs up! Fly Phoenix-Mesa Gateway when you get a chance. Here are the cities they fly to:

Bellingham, WA (BLI)
Billings, MT (BIL)
Bismarck, ND (BIS)
Cedar Rapids, IA (CID)
Eugene, OR (EUG)
Fargo, ND (FAR)
Great Falls, MT (GTF)
Medford, OR (MFR)
Missoula, MT (MSO)
Peoria, IL (PIA)
Rapid City, SD (RAP)
Redmond-Bend, OR (RDM)
Rockford, IL (RFD)
Sioux Falls, SD (FSD)
Springfield, MO (SGF)

Well I am officially back in the land of the living. And geez, Louise, it only took an entire month from the day we moved until I feel like I’m not being crushed by the weight of organizing the new house, work and holidays.

Two things in particular impeded all progress in getting settled in: 1. A nasty bout of strep throat that felled first our eldest, then me, and finally Baby Jo and 2. Buyers coming out of the wood-work to look at property over the holidays.

The strep we have survived. Jo is almost done with his round of antibiotics and the nasty strep rash he got is fading. I’m personally just happy (and knocking constantly on anything that could possibly be related to a tree) that Gray and Jason escaped unscathed. It’s just horrible stuff.

The buyers coming out to play is another story. In the last month I’ve shown:

30+ $1-1.5million houses in Cave Creek, Scottsdale, Mesa and Fountain Hills
25 or so $150-$190K in Gilbert
10 high rise condos in downtown Phoenix
5 3000 square foot houses under $130K in Maricopa
and a house here and there in East Mesa and Chandler

Typically the time between Thanksgiving and New Years is known as a little bit of a dead zone in the field of real estate. People tend to be focused on family and the holidays and not that interested in uprooting and moving.

This year, however, this was just not the case. I think that a combination of prices actually dropping down low enough to be affordable and interest rates hovering between 4.75 and 5.5% has spurred some interest in the fence-sitting buyers.

I’m not projecting an increase in home prices anytime soon. In fact, I’m not even totally convinced that prices have completely stopped dropping. However, eventually we were bound to reach a point where purchasing a house became an economically attractive option again, and I think for a certain part of the population (the part who didn’t make a move from 2003 to 2008, who isn’t in foreclosure or underneath their loan, who didn’t refinance and remove all of their equity) we may be at the very least approaching this point.

So even though my late December/early January has been totally insane, I’m happy to see the activity (and I’m always happy to have the work). Our economy will come back, it all just takes time, and I can be patient.

Anyway, here are a few photos I’ve been meaning to post for the last month that just haven’t made it on the schedule:

This is from one of the first nights we spent at the new house, right after it rained.

Gray calls this ‘The View’ in a sort of proper noun manner (“Where is our old house? Is it near The View?”). It’s out the little window above the boys’ bunkbed.

This is a sneak preview of a brand new listing out in Maricopa that I will have more details on later this week. Stay tuned!

OK, and how cute is this one? I have a friend (Paula) who does daycare in her home and she captured this one on Tuesday. I just love it. I think it represents the hope that this generation of children is being instilled with a sense that they need to be paying attention to our country’s leaders and taking an active role in our government and economy. History is being made and their attention is focused right where it should be. I love it.

Things are utterly insane here with my clients, Christmas and our big move to our new house. We did our final walk through today and signed and closed! Tomorrow morning at 7am the movers arrive to transport our enormous amount of crud to the new house!

So until I have time to write again, if you want to see what we’re up to, here’s a video I took of our new house today: