The Housechick Blog

I’ve been having more discussions than usual with my clients about when to order the appraisal.

Usually, once the lender orders the appraisal, you need to pay for it, somewhere around $350-$400.  That’s only fair, if the person does the work, they get paid for it, whether or not you buy the house.

A couple years ago, we wouldn’t order an appraisal until we were through inspections and repair negotiations - no sense in incurring the appraisal charge until we know if the house is in good shape and we know you’re going to buy it.

In today’s real estate market, however, sometimes appraisals are coming back marked as a declining market, which means you may have to pony up additional down payment.  This is something we might want to know sooner rather than later.

More often than not, my clients are deciding to have the appraisal done during their inspection period.  Yes, the incur that cost without having gone through repair negotiations, but at least they know sooner if the appraisal will come in fine or if it will cause problems.

Just like the cost of inspections, it’s what you pay as a home buyer, basically as risk mitigation.  Better to pay a bit up front and find out for sure if the property is sound and that you can get appropriate financing, then not pay those things and end up with a lemon.

I believe I really infuriated a lender yesterday.  It wasn’t my fault, really.  If my clients bring me a Good Faith Estimate where the lender charges are twice what is typical with an unimpressive interest rate, you’ve got to expect me to challenge that.  And when I send my clients go back to the first lender with a reasonable Good Faith Estimate from one of my lenders, and the first lender refuses to match it and insinuates my lender is going to add hidden fees at the closing table, starts using scare tactics, causing my clients leave the first lender to go to the second one… well, they didn’t like that much.

Too bad.  My duties are first to my client, not to their lender.  Don’t be charging my buyers crazy extra fees.

I’ve got a buyer thinking about making an offer on a short sale property.

Remember, a short sale is where the owner owes more on the house than they can sell it for.  They’re most often incredibly long, frustrating sales, and often, the sales never actually complete.  You have to get the lender to agree to take less than what is owed, and, well, I don’t want to go into a huge short sale discussion now, but know that they’re often ugly transactions. 

On the plus side, if the listing agent deals often with short sales, knows that they’re doing, then you’ve got a better chance of actually purchasing a short sale home.  That’s a better chance, but still no guarantee.

Today, there are 665 single family homes in the Greater Tucson area marked as a short sales in the Tucson MLS.  In the last 6 months, 139 disclosed short sales have actually sold.

Which makes the chances of a short sale closing roughly one in five. 

Last time I ran that calculation back in March, it was one in ten. 

Progress? 

If you read here regularly, you’ll remember I had Lasik done last week.  Given the process involves lasers and my eyeballs, I was more than a little nervous about the whole deal.  I knew I didn’t want to go to one of those huge cattle-call laser eye surgery places, I knew I wanted some personal attention, and I wanted a whole lot of warm-fuzzies from the doctor and the staff before I selected who I would go with.

Just because I was scared of the procedure didn’t mean I wasn’t committed to it.  I just wanted the right person to help me through it all.

Skip to a few days ago when an email arrived in my inbox from a woman looking to buy her first home.  She had a whole list of questions for me, and after a couple of exchanges, she let me know that she firmly believes that buying a home is absolutely the scariest thing she’s ever done.

And when I read that, it made me pause for a bit.  Man, I remember being a first-timer.  I hadn’t a clue what was going on half the time, I didn’t understand the loan stuff, overall, it wasn’t a fabulous experience.

But how awesome is it that this person is taking the time to find an agent that will work in her style, and give her the confidence and knowledge she needs to make good decisions?

So many buyers just end up with some random agent from an open house, or by calling a number on a for sale sign.  I know I did.  More than once.  I wish I had put the same kind of effort into picking my real estate agent that I did picking my Lasik surgeon.

And that first time buyer?  We’re meeting this weekend.  I’ve got a whole bag of warm-fuzzies and lots of questions and answers.  We’re gonna get her through this, making confident, well-informed decisions, with a smile on her face when it comes time to pick up the keys to her new home.

As part of buying a home, you’ll get a big packet of stuff from the Title company, with a preliminary title report. It’s very important that you read through the stuff the title company sends you, as the title report can uncover some interesting things. Such as….

See those words circled in blue?  “Well agreement.”  Ah, what well?  We have no information about a well on the property.

Also this: see that blue arrow pointing to that long rectangle?  That long rectangle is a utility easement, 10 foot wide, where the electric company has the right of way to that strip of land on the parcel, a strip where the owner can’t put a building or a fence or otherwise obstruct the electric company’s access.

Now, I’m no surveyor, but I’m going to give you one guess as to where it appears house is, relative to that easement…

I don’t normally make product sales pitches here, but I was contacted by a guy in New Mexico who has written a book all about evaporative (swamp) coolers - how to “summerize”, “winterize”, repair, and generally maintain, complete with pictures and descriptions.

You can learn more about it at his website, EasyCoolerCare.com.  Given the amount of questions I field from people buying homes with swamp coolers, this book looks like it might be a fabulous $10 (plus $5 shipping and handling) investment.

There’s a section of the Easy Cooler Care book available free via PDF file that you can download and read - it’s a guide to helping you figure out the proper sizing, make, model, and so on for your cooler.  I think that’s pretty helpful if you don’t know how to measure for pads or what size pump to purchase.

I recently had the pleasure of helping a couple of Canadians buy real estate here in Tucson as investment property.  The current exchange rates make real estate here in Sunny Arizona rather attractive at the moment to our Canadian friends.  I think we both learned a lot about how real estate works in each other’s country, but the big take-aways were thus:

• It can be difficult to finance non-resident foreign nationals (AKA Canadians) trying to get an American mortgage.  I believe I still have two resources where a Canadian can get an American loan to finance a home here in Tucson though.  You’ll need at least 30% down.
• Prices for homes in Tucson are much more affordable than pricing for similar homes in such areas as Vancouver, or so I’m told.  We can find a 3 bed, 2 bath, reasonably sized home, pretty much move-in ready, anywhere between $175,000 and $250,000 pretty easily, depending on the area of town.
• If you’re looking for investment property, I’ve got resources for property management, general handymen repair, landscaping, etcetera, to help you maintain and operate the property here in Tucson while you’re back home in Canada.
• Also - If you’re looking for a vacation property here in Tucson, we’ve got several condo conversion projects that might fit the bill perfectly.  There’s even a condo project in a resort area with a rental pool, to help offset the carrying costs of the vacation property.

I’m told it’s 12°C and rainy in Vancouver today.  Supposed to be in the mid 30°s over here in Tucson.  I’m just sayin’.

It’s heating up in Tucson!  I’ve seen lots of people on their roofs this weekend getting their swamp coolers ready for the season.  I have a friend who claims to not know how to service his swamp cooler, to get it ready to use.  I think they just are trying to get me to go over there and do it for them, but how will they ever learn if they don’t figure it out themselves?

But let’s review the basic concepts.

Hopefully, you winterized the unit properly (or had it winterized properly, if you weren’t feeling so handy).  It should have been completely drained and cleaned, pads removed, motors oiled, unplugged, water turned off and water line emptied, possibly the pan rust-scrubbed and coated, and kept covered over the winter.  If you didn’t do those things, you may fire the evap cooler up and find water dripping out the bottom of the holes rusted through the water pan.  In which case, just get off the roof and call your home warranty person or a cooler repair person.

You’ll need to turn the water back on, make sure there are no holes in the supply line.  You’ll need to install fresh cooler pads as well.  If you winterized everything properly, setting up the cooler for the summer season should be a snap.  Remove cover, turn on water, install pads, plug in pump and motor, and voila.

If you’ve got a MasterCool, you can download their user manuals at the MasterCool site, which should help you figure stuff out and do some basic troubleshooting. 

Don’t know if you’ve got a MasterCool?  Does your evaporative cooler draw in air from one side or from 3 or more?  If it’s pulling air in from only one side, chances are, it’s a MasterCool.  MasterCool pads and operation are a bit different from the traditional evaporative coolers.

If you’ve got the regular non-MasterCool type of swamp cooler, best bet is to go down to your friendly Ace Hardware and ask for help, if you get stuck.  Don’t forget to measure the size of the unit so you know what size pads to purchase.  Otherwise, you’ll be making lots of trips on and off the roof and back and forth to Ace.  Trust me on that one.

I’ve been thinking a lot about trade-offs lately. 

Whether you’re buying or selling a home, there’s always a trade-off.  Price for location.  Condition for price.  Yard size for age of home.  Condition for age of home.  The list goes on.

I think it’s important to make smart trade-off decisions.  If you’re a geek like me, you could make a weighted scoring function to help you decide.  But if that doesn’t float your boat, you could always just sit down and make a list of pros and cons. 

I think learning how to make those trade-off decisions is the hardest part about selecting a home to purchase.  Your picture of the ideal home may change over time as you see what kind of homes are available for your money in Tucson.

It’s a skill that takes a bit of time to develop, and one that I can help you with, but ultimately the decision is always yours.

I’ve got a sweet first-time buyer couple going through this right now.  Not only are they making a decision which home to purchase, but it’s one of their first big decisions as a couple.  Will it be the one with the big garage and back yard with no HOA and the small bedrooms and new paint needed?  Or the move-in ready one with the smaller yard and garage and the HOA?

Lasik yesterday, back to work today.  Thanks to all for the good luck wishes.  The surgery was extra creepy, but painless and fast, and I’m seeing nearly 20/20 today with very little irritation or discomfort.  Many thanks go to the good folks over at Hodges Eye Care for taking excellent care of me during the whole process.

Oh, and I scored these sweet goggles. 

Tres chic, no?