Hey! Maybe it is!

We live in North Central Phoenix, right by the Arizona Canal. Alas, as walkable (and bike-able) as our neighborhood might be, it’s still in Phoenix.

So… Maybe not…

But the cool breezes of September are just around the corner! WalkScore.com will tell you how walkable it thinks your neighborhood is.

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A national website that discusses real estate trends wrote over the weekend about “Pet Friendly Real Estate Agents Thriving In Marketplace.” I’m honored that the author, Tom Royce, mentioned Greg and BloodhoundRealty.com in that article:

“And you want further proof that being pet friendly is the way to go, look no further than our good friend Greg at Bloodhound Realty. Now that is pet friendly.”

I’m grateful, too, that Tom recognizes that our care of pets is sincere, not just a gimmick. Last week, Greg and I spent several days at a national conference of top Realtors. I met a lot of the country’s best real estate agents there, and gave out plenty of my business cards!

I am always tickled when people comment on Odysseus, our Bloodhound. But started becoming annoyed when I heard more times than I would have wished the mistaken notion that Odysseus is our brokerage’s representative as some sort of stunt… as though the only purpose is to tug at people’s heartstrings.

Greg has explained this on two different BloodhoundBlog posts: We selected our name and logo, because it’s iconic. It portrays traits we admire and strive always to live up to… traits such as loyalty, diligence, tenacity. Dedicated, Devoted, Determined™. Yes, dogs are cute. But they are so much more!

And so are cats… And birds… And all God’s creatures. And as a Realtor, someone who helps families move from one home to another, it’s about making that move as easy as possible on all the members of the family. including the ones with fur, feathers or scales.

Before we acquired so many pets in our own household, we fostered cats and dogs for no-kill shelters, like Noah’s Ark. Too often, I saw family pets who were given up because the family was moving, and for some reason they couldn’t take their pets with them. I always hope that people are able to come up with better choices to keep their furry families intact. So now, as a Realtor, I can help my clients explore their different options.

When you are buying or selling your home, and you have pets in your home, there are so many issues for you to consider. If you are buying, what are the HOA restrictions? Are there dog parks nearby? How about coyotes? If you’re selling, how do you keep your house presentable to show it in its best light? How do you keep your pets secure with a lock box on it? What about open houses?

And what do you do with your pets when you’re between homes? When one of our sellers thought she would have to give up her cat, Bob, because I had sold her house faster than she expected it would sell last fall, and the only apartment she could find to take her in on her terms wouldn’t budge on its no-pet policy, we worked out a much happier solution…

… One that kept them together. Because real estate isn’t just about houses — it’s about the people, and so often their pets, who live there.

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The Las Vegas Monorail is different in important respects from the fixed-capital transit systems being built in cities like Phoenix.

For one thing, the population density of potential riders is much higher than in the other car-driven cities now avidly building trolley systems. Moreover, that population — tourists — is more favorably disposed to alternatives to driving. In other words, even though it is failing, out of all the new mass-transit systems in the United States, the Monorail is the one that had the best chance of succeeding.

For another, the Monorail is putatively privately funded, although it seems certain that local, state or national taxpayers will be left holding the bag when the project fails.

But, for a third thing, private funding seems to make acknowledging the failure of the Monorail more politically palatable. In cities newly afflicted with municipal mass transit systems, the facts of life usually go unreported. Ridership will be well below projections, costs will be well above projections, busy bus routes will have been cut or curtailed to subsidize empty trolley cars and there will be frequent accidents ensuing from building a rail system at grade level. None of this will be reported in the newspapers in plain language, and people who insist on discussing these facts in plain language will be denounced.

This was actually the case in Las Vegas for many years, as well, but just lately the dam of silence has broken and the truth gushes forth about the impending financial collapse of the Monorail, how it came about, and how it was foreseen in detail long before the system was built.

From today’s Las Vegas Review-Journal:

In the three years the Las Vegas Monorail has been shuttling empty seats back and forth behind the Strip, we’ve heard excuse after excuse why ridership levels have never met what was originally billed.

First, it was the mechanical problems that kept the monorail sidelined for most of 2004. Then it was the time needed for tourists to know the monorail was there. Then it was a fare hike. And the time necessary for new marketing efforts to take root. They might have cried about global warming for all I know.

But there’s another theory that monorail people have mostly ignored: that the monorail’s sluggish ridership levels of today could have reasonably been expected from the start.

That’s an answer that came to mind recently as I read a draft ridership analysis prepared in 2000 — four years before the monorail’s first paying passenger hopped on board — by Wendell Cox, an Illinois-based consultant hired by monorail foes to counter the rosy claims made by monorail backers.

Back then, monoplanners trumpeted expectations of more than 54,000 riders per day, projections that Cox’s report called “among the most aggressive in U.S. transit history and could emerge as the least accurate.”

Cox noted that the Las Vegas Monorail was “projected to carry more passengers per route mile than the New York subway, the London Underground and the Stockholm Metro, and more than double that of the most heavily used new rail systems in the United States.”

“It is not likely that such an intensity of ridership would be attracted,” Cox wrote.

He predicted between 18,500 and 26,600 riders per day would use the monorail.

Last year, the monorail averaged just over 19,000 daily riders.

“I apologize for being too optimistic,” Cox said recently.

How could a city smart enough to see through any scam get snookered so completely? “Strategic misrepresentation” combined with wishful thinking:

So, how did Cox get things so right, while monobuilders got things so wrong?

Cox said he just followed the facts.

“Nobody ever gave this stuff a laugh test. And it was laughable from the first day,” Cox said. “What I put in that report was not shocking. I just compared it to things that were similar,” namely other rapid transit lines that failed to gain traction with customers.

The track record of such peer projects meeting ridership and cost projections is “absolutely dreadful. What’s going on is something called ‘strategic misrepresentation.’” Cox said. “Basically, lying.

“They wanted to build the project. They believed in the project. That doesn’t make them any less wrong.”

Why does that happen? In general, because facts might get in the way, Cox believes.

“People tend to overestimate ridership and underestimate cost, fearing if they don’t do that projects won’t be approved,” Cox said. “I don’t know if that’s what happened here.”

A kind of faith-based approach to mass transit projects, I suppose.

Sometimes, such projects are enabled by the work of consultants who profit by telling project backers what they want to hear. Consultants take their cut and walk away, leaving the financial mess to others.

“I’d love to see projectors have to take a financial stake in their projections. I bet we’d see more conservative projections,” Cox said.

Because the Monorail is quasi-private, it lacks the legislative clout to stack the deck in its favor in the style of municipal transit systems. It can’t disrupt traffic flows on busy thoroughfares, for example, or impose automobile-hostile real estate development restrictions. Even so, mass transit is never profitable, and it is only popular when it is the preferred alternative to walking — that is to say, where traffic (or parking) is very difficult, as it is on Las Vegas Boulevard, or where income is too low to pay for a reliable car. Where people can — and can afford to — drive, they will. This is a simple and completely obvious fact — which suggests that you are unlikely to find it in the newspaper.

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This is me in Friday’s Arizona Republic (permanent link):

 
By-owner home seller is no match for a skilled listing agent

We’re about to list a home for sale in a fairly pricey neighborhood, so we are very aware of our competition.

We knew a similar home was ready to go on the market, but we were convinced it would be marketed as “for sale by owner,” so we didn’t feel threatened.

Why not? Because a by-owner seller is no match for a skilled listing agent.

I’m willing to concede that there are some unskilled listing agents, but that doesn’t matter to us. We compete against professionals, not amateurs.

In fact, the seller instead went with a limited-service listing, which is slightly — but only slightly — more likely to succeed.

By now, go-it-alone sellers are thin on the ground. You can get a true MLS listing at a range of discount prices, from $3,000 down to $99.

So why is a limited-service listing unlikely to succeed? In this market, a home must be marketed perfectly from Day 1 or it will sell slowly and at a deep discount, if at all.

Except for the MLS listing itself, the home will be offered by owner in every respect: priced wrong, prepared wrong and inaccessible to buyers and agents.

This is not a necessary consequence, but it is very common.

In the case of our newly listed competition, the home is offered at $200,000 over its market value. It will not be a threat to our listing.

But it wouldn’t be a threat even if priced right. A professional home marketer will bring too many weapons into battle for an amateur, no matter how dedicated, to compete.

Even worse, a limited-service listing shouts out a warning to buyers’ agents to stay away.

Why? Because it is being marketed by an amateur. The seller will have no one to turn to for advice, exposing the buyer’s agent to double the legal liability in the transaction.

There’s nothing wrong with negotiating the best price you can get for a full-service listing. But in our opinion, limited-service listings are a false economy in this market.

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About a year ago, when I was hosting an open house at one of Greg’s listings in F.Q.Story, a young man came to tour the home. While he and I spoke, I mentioned the home’s proximity to Phoenix’s planned light rail system, expecting that he, like most people whom I have talked with on this subject, would subscribe to this being a benefit.

“Bah” (or something to that effect), he declared. “I’m from Houston, and I know that light rail systems don’t really help people… they only sound good, and make politicians popular. They’re just another boondoggle.”

Well… I pretty much agreed with him. Greg’s very first post on the weblog that eventually became BloodhoundBlog compared the “popular” (read that “politically correct”) heralding of Phoenix’s light rail with The Goldwater Institute’s forthright white paper on light rail.

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about killing the 27-year-old reversible lane system on 7th Avenue and 7th Street that has served us so well. It came up again yesterday in an article in the Arizona Republic, which talked about how nice it would be if our streets were more pedestrian-friendly.

And now I have to compare that to a podcast I listened to recently, in which Randal O’Toole, Senior Fellow with the Cato Institute, and author of the insightful book, The Best-Laid Plans, discusses how Portland deliberately created gridlock as a way to ensure their failing light rail system would work.

Hmmmm….

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In a perfect world, folks back “home,” who chose to not leave the Great Lakes cities for milder weather would force me to move back, or acknowledging that forced relocation is frowned upon in a free society, the “rational” folks can always hope for global warming to push me back.

“Once the heat becomes unbearable, they may find the freezing cold a little more bearable–especially if it’s not quite so freezing cold as they remember.”

But even then,

It won’t happen without help. In Buffalo, Shibley speaks of a federal urban sustainabilty plan that funnels federal money to the Great Lakes region to help draw population back. It’s been more than 30 years since the U.S. had a comprehensive national urban plan. Looming ecological crises in burgeoning urban centers more than justify a revival. “Cities don’t grow by topsy, it’s not a thing of nature – it’s a function of public policy,” he says.

As objectionable as I found this Toronto Star column when I read it yesterday, I was — nevertheless — wishing for some relief from this summers’ heat. I’ve been putting on weight all summer, despite five dogs who would love for me to take them for walks. It’s just been too uncomfortably hot for any of us to spend any time other than what’s necessary outdoors.

But since this afternoon’s storms, have you noticed? The temperature has dropped to the low 80s! (A much more pleasant low-80s than I remember ever of a July evening in Cleveland, by the way.)

Channel 12 reported on some less-than-ideal consequences of the storms on the east side.

However… as I was driving up Central this evening, it couldn’t have been nicer. I was delighted to see all the walkers along the Murphy Bridle Path. You’d think that when I got home I would have grabbed a dog and joined the neighbors. But, alas, I made only enough time to run up to the canal to snap this photo of the stormy sky.

When you’re not living under the endlessly gray skies of the “more verdant climes,” cloudy skies sure do have their appeal.

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This is me last Friday from my Arizona Republic column (permanent link):

 
What makes a home sell? Marketing, preparation — and especially price

I looked at houses with a long-time client last week. We shopped ten houses, of which two were actually in turn-key condition. Two others were fix-ups in every way but price. Three of the homes had front-yard landscaping so overgrown they were virtually inaccessible. And the prices were all over the map.

The resale market is not as dire as it is portrayed to be, but it’s not great, either. There are a lot more homes for sale than there are qualified buyers. For a home to sell in this market, it has to be priced right, perfectly prepared and properly presented to the marketplace. Miss on any one of those factors — especially price — and the buyers will take the home up the street instead.

Consider the Terracina floorplan at Ashton Ranch in Surprise. I’ve sold several these, and I really like them. They’re bright and spacious, with wide-open sightlines. Without pools, there are seven of these available right now. Two are priced at $199,000, then they shoot up all the way to $231,900.

The two lower priced homes will probably sell first, even if the others have better landscaping and better interior amenities. Only one of these models sold in June, for $200,000.

A few miles east, at the Sundial subdivision in El Mirage, there are 25 units of the 1,238sf Zocalo floorplan available. Prices run from $166,900 to $213,900, a huge spread.

Three of these homes sold in June, and it would be reasonable to argue that the market value of this model is $185,000. The problem with that is that ten of the 25 listings are offered below that price — and they’re still not selling.

In any subdivision, I would have to look at the listings house-by-house to tell you which ones will sell soonest, and for how much. But it’s a certainty that if a home is not marketed properly, is not cleaned and repaired to show-room condition, and, especially, is not priced aggressively to the current market, it will not sell.

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Back when Greg was a real estate rookie, he came home after spending the day helping a couple find their perfect home, ablaze with new information, wanting to share with me the new term that Mrs. Buyer had taught him — The Kitchen Triangle. I think he was a little surprised that I knew what he was talking about. I wasn’t a Realtor yet — years from it. But I am a woman, and I have had plenty of decades learning the difference a conveniently laid out kitchen can make.

So, I found it interesting to learn today that the work triangle that I learned about at my grandma’s apron is so last century! Susan Serra, Certified Kitchen Designer, tells us:

The bottom line in today’s new kitchen seems to be it’s all about US (one’s family), not “me,” with multiple stations designed for specific needs and/or desires.

Her article gives us cogent examples, a diagram, and a promise of further elaboration in future posts.

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Think getting your classic Phoenix home on the National Register of Historic Places is a good idea? Think again!

A couple of years ago, when Phoenix was having a particularly cold winter, I accidently domesticated a feral cat who I had been feeding in my yard. During my first decade of driving, I lived where winters really are cold — off of Lake Erie. I had learned better… hit your hood before starting your engine, in case a cat had crawled up inside during the night for warmth. But I’ve been spoiled in Phoenix, and hadn’t given it another thought when I started out for work that cold January morning. The thump, thump, thump coming from under the hood, and then seeing fur flying when Greg opened the hood to see what was going on, stopped me in horror! I thought I had killed the little feral cat that I had become so fond of. I rushed her to Vanaken Pet Hospital, and almost two months later they returned her to me in a lime green body cast. It wasn’t until we removed the cast from her, several weeks later still, that I realized Marquina is a Polydactyl.

My love for Marquina is how I came to be interested in Hemmingway Cats.

So I thought it was too bad when I read today that the U.S. government is threatening the home of Hemmingway’s cats.

I have no idea, of course, whether the complaints against the museum are legitimate, or perhaps the story of a disgruntled employee. How could I know? That’s a matter for local authorities to ferret out. And so I think it’s odd that the federal government would throw its heft into the matter. Then I noticed what gives them the authority:

U.S. Animal and Plant Inspection Service officials argue that the house, listed as a National Historic Landmark since 1968, requires a federal Animal Welfare License, like a circus or zoo, in order to keep housing the cats.

This reminded me of a house that I recently listed and sold in one of Phoenix’s historic districts. The transaction was an incredibly smooth and amicable one. The sellers were great, and so were the buyers. The buyers’ agent was wonderful, as was the title company and loan officer they had chosen for this transaction. Everything was running like a perfectly tuned instrument until a few days before close, when the loan officer called me for clarification. “The lender wants to know whether the house is on the National Register of Historic Places.” I said, no, the house is in an historic district, but isn’t specifically listed on either the state nor national registers. The loan officer was relieved… it seems that had the property been specifically named, the bank that was lending on the second mortgage wouldn’t approve the loan. Apparently, the bank reasoned that if the mortgage payment were to fall into default, the bank wouldn’t have all the normal rights to make the loan good, because they would have to deal with the federal government. They must have had some bad experience with a mortgage loan on a property listed in the National Register, which had gone into default, so decided to avoid potential for a similar problem in the future — no one wants to take on the Feds!

I’ve had clients tell me that they’d avoid nominating their homes for the Registry because they were afraid they’d be hamstrung from making changes without going through a lot of bureaucratic red tape. It’s a good idea to think through the long term consequences of partnering up with a force so much more powerful than you before being seduced by its charm.

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We took a tour of 210 East Keim Drive over the weekend, a completely remodeled home refurbished and marketed by Rhonda Olson.

The house began its life as yet another North Central Phoenix ranch home, stately from the outside, schizo from the inside. Olson took the home to the walls, eliminating the low ceilings and byzantine floorplan, opening up the sight lines and crafting a sybaritic master suite out what had been two separate bedrooms.

We watch historic homes and quirky mid-century moderns, but this is the future of Central Phoenix: Turning the bad design decisions of the past into the modern-day luxury retreats of prosperous empty-nesters.

But Olson’s project is not just an example of fine refurbishing art. It’s also for sale for $725,000. And that’s how you turn a frog into a prince.

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I was browsing The Library of Congress’ Maps Collections, and found a Bird’s eye view of Phoenix, sketched by C.J. Dyer in 1885. I don’t know how large the original map was, but it needs a lot of area in order to make out the detail… much more than I can see on my monitor; much more than I have to show it to you here. But for fun, I made a screen shot of the northern edges of civilized Phoenix.

The sketch is oriented as though the artist was standing southwest of the center of town. That’s Central, which was called Centre back then, shooting past Monroe Street and then Van Buren Street. Do you notice the canal running along the south side of Van Buren? The map’s legend tells us that this is the Salt River Canal! You can’t see it from this shot, but the complete map shows another canal that used to run through the city further north, around Indian School, called the Maricopa Canal, with the Grand Canal just north of that.

The next gridline north of and parallel to Van Buren — the one with the little white structure on the northeast corner — must be Roosevelt, so would that make the next grid line, the one with a few trees lined up along it east of Central, McDowell? If so, the next road to the north should be Thomas. But… the legend tells us that the estate on the northwest corner of that intersection belonged to J.T. Simms, who came to Arizona in 1881 with the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company. However, we know that the property that Colonel Simms owned along Central, between Roosevelt and Moreland, was subdivided in 1893 and is now part of the Roosevelt Historic District. Since we have no reason to expect this map was drawn to scale, perhaps that corner of this map is the forerunner of today’s Roosevelt Historic District. Have any of you already researched this? If so, I’d love to see comments on what you’ve learned…

Anyway, the map is pretty cool. You can look at the full map at The Library of Congress site, which uses a technology developed by LizardTech, called mrSID. You can even download the map to your own Mac or PC, and download a free mrSID viewer from LizardTech, which gives you much more control over the pan and zoom.

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I’ve been hearing about it for the past week. Greg painted it vividly in his post describing Phoenix’s palpable heat. Since the dew point this morning is only 45°F, the season is still not officially begun — but early this morning, when I was picking up the bowls of food I leave out at night for the little colony of feral cats that AZCats has helped me to keep in check, I knew it’s just a matter of days now. No matter what the climatologists end up calling it, if you’ve ever spent even one summer in Phoenix, you know what a Monsoon is!

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Dwell Magazine is a celebration of distinctive, modern architecture and design. If you’ve never picked up an issue before, this is the month for you to explore Dwell.

This month’s Detour feature, titled “Phoenix Envy,” is an interview with local architect, Will Bruder.

In this article Bruder tells Dwell readers what he likes most about the Valley of the Sun. No surprise that most of his favorite structures here are those that he designed, including the Burton Barr Central Library and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. But he is justifiably proud. He also talks about arts in Phoenix, including First Fridays.

And if you’re ever looking for ideas for cool places to meet friends over drinks or dinner, be sure to pay attention to Bruder’s rundown in this article. If you’ve missed any of the restaurants he mentions, you really should make a point of making the rounds… especially if you’re in Phoenix’s historic neighborhoods, where so many of these establishments, such as My Florist Cafe and Zoës Kitchen, are found.

I’m disappointed with the sole photo the online article uses… it’s an unimpressive shot of our downtown skyline looking west over an empty field and detritus toward the buildings in Copper Square. It even shows a gray sky! Come on! How often do we have gray skies? The pictures in the magazine, especially that of SMoCA, are far more compelling.

Alternatively, a great source for images of local residences that have been designed, in whole or in remodeling, by Will Bruder is the MLS. You can use this link to an MLS Gateway I put together of homes currently listed for sale, or those that have sold through Realtors.

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