The Housechick Blog

Is a picture worth a thousand words? (Still having trouble with displaying tables nicely, sorry…)

History of Months of Inventory, from January through July of 2007, also called the Absorption Rate. Generally, 4-6 months of inventory signals a balanced market, less than that would be a Seller’s market, more than that would be a Buyer’s market. Interesting to see that some areas are generally overloaded with inventory, while others are not so terrible.

Data from the Tucson Association of Realtors, deemed reliable, but not guaranteed.

Coming soon to Tucson:

Chick-fil-A!

The old Krispy Kreme building in front of El Con mall will be Tucson’s first free standing Chick-fil-A restaurant.  The sign says coming soon, but there’s no mention of this Tucson site on the corporate website.

I wonder if it will be open in time for Thanksgiving.  I’m hosting the family at my house this year, and I’ve got a young niece and nephew that are ga-ga for their chicken nuggets.

Sign up now for a Free Chicken Sandwich and Coke before it’s too late!

If you’re a true devotee, you’ll be one of the first 100 in line when the store opens, to receive a free combo meal every week for a year. 

The “Fil-A” is right across from the recently opened In-N-Out burger (evidently, a location that attracts restaurants with hyphens in their name…).  The In-N-Out drive through line has been known to snake around this Chick-fil-A building during prime meal times.  Let the parking lot chaos begin!

In a typical home purchase in Tucson, a buyer gets to inspect the house thoroughly, and then can ask the Seller for repairs.  Something to consider is who will make those repairs.

According to the contract, the Seller is to complete the repairs, in a workmanlike manner. 

Consider this: If you need a couple of GFI outlets installed in the house, do you trust the Seller to know what he’s doing or do you want to call in a licensed electrician?  Did you talk to the Seller about his plumbing skills before you asked him to fix that leaky water heater pressure release valve?

If you don’t specify who will do the work, then the Seller gets to pick.  Maybe the Seller rewires the panel himself, maybe he calls Uncle Bob over to rewire it - Bob was an excellent electrician before the “accident.” (Okay, that’s just silly.)

Often, I see worked called for by a “licensed handyman.”  In Arizona, a handyman may have a license to do business, but that’s it.  They can do business.  There’s no governing board that will enforce a standard of practice for their work. 

The Registrar of Contractors, on the other hand, regulates licensed contractors - people who have been tested and have demonstrated knowledge in their field.

Are there competent handymen?  Oh yes.

Are there incompetent licensed contractors?  You betcha.

But with which do you have recourse if the work they have done is no good?

Do you always need to request the work be done by a licensed contractor?

Well, to give yourself the most protection?  Yeah, especially for the major house systems.  Maybe not if we just need the air filter changed, but for most moderate-to-major repairs, yeah.

In my own home, do I always used licensed contractors instead of handymen?  Well, no.  But that’s my choice and my risk to take!

Here’s the scenario: your home is for sale, you’ve got a veritable parade of Buyers coming through your house, haven’t yet seen a single offer.  Your agent, being a savvy sort, has been calling those Buyer’s agents to get feedback, and all you hear over and over again is, “My Buyer liked the house a lot, it’s really cute, but they’re going to keep looking.”

What does that mean, exactly?

1. The Buyers hated it, or the house just physically didn’t meet their needs, but the agent is too nice to tell us, in fear it will hurt our feelings.  (Hey, it’s possible, right?  Just because I haven’t seen that happen yet, doesn’t mean it can’t!)

2. The Buyers aren’t really serious about buying yet.  Serious buyers make offers on houses that they like, especially ones that they like a lot.

3. The house isn’t tempting enough to the Buyer to make an offer, which brings up the ugly ‘P’ word: price.

We know the marketing is working if there’s a good stream of showings.

We know the condition is right if everyone says they love the house, and at the same time, are not making specific objections: They love it but it is too small, or doesn’t have enough bedrooms, or is too close to a major road, something like that.

All that’s left is price.  So you gotta adjust your price.  Downward.  Look at it this way:  you’re on the verge of selling your house.  The marketing is working, the condition is great - the only thing you need to change is the one thing that is entirely within your control.  I’m not saying it’s fun, but doesn’t it feel at least a little good to know you can actually DO something to help sell your house instead of just sitting around and waiting?

photo via Flickr, courtesy of cobalt123.

There’s a total lunar eclipse that can be seen in the wee hours Tuesday morning on August 28th.  Here’s the timeline:

• roughly 1:00am Tuesday Morning: The darkening phase begins
• 1:51am - the moon enters the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow, becoming progressively darker
• 2:52am - the moon is fully eclipsed
• 4.22am - the moon starts to leave the full eclipse

One of my favorite sites is Heavens Above, which will give you schedules for fly-overs of various satellites, the International Space Station, and Iridium flares based on your location.  I remember often sitting with my husband in the backyard with a list of the satellites and other objects flying over that night, having contests for who could spot the objects first.  Not a bad way to spend an evening, methinks.

Okay, to date, I can only think of five, so feel free to add your own.  I think every real estate agent has a couple of these stories, and they always fall into two general categories: nudity and keys/locks.  If you don’t have these stories, and you’re an agent, you just haven’t been in the business long enough.

1. I had just listed a home in a remote subdivision and was previewing a new listing in the area.  Trying to lock up and leave, the front door key become stuck in the lock, and for the life of me, I couldn’t get it out.  I couldn’t leave the key in the lock as you could just turn it and enter the house, but the stupid thing wouldn’t pull out of the lock.  The owner was an hour away, and the listing agent was out of town.  I gave myself a blister on my finger trying to get that stupid key out for 20 minutes before I called my client in despair.  Who of course got it out in about 10 seconds.

2. Walking in on someone in the shower while showing a house.  In all fairness, I had made a courtesy call as instructed, and had rang the doorbell, knocked on the door, and yelled hello when we entered.  We were on the first floor of the house maybe 5 minutes before we went upstairs, had an awkward person-in-the-shower-incident, and made a hasty retreat.  In retrospect, the pants and shirt lying on the stairs to the second floor should probably have tipped us off.

3. Thinking I dropped a house key in a wash by a house I was looking at with some buyers, searching with them for it for 15 minutes, and eventually finding it in the bottom of my purse.  Hey, they really ought to make women’s clothing with pockets.  The small-handed population has trouble holding onto a key, a key container, the keysafe opener, and a listing printout all at the same time while opening a door, answering questions, and trying to keep the owner’s cat from escaping.  Especially when said key and key container are about 473 degrees Fahrenheit.  Or if it’s a big cat.

4. Realizing an hour into my first open house that the seam on the back of my pants had split open from waist to <ahem>, and not knowing how long the pants had been that way with all the open house visitors not telling me.

5. I noticed a somewhat “personal” piece of photography artwork in a bedroom as I was showing a house, and hey, I’m only human.  It made me giggle.  My somewhat conservative buyer hadn’t noticed the (huge 3 foot by 5 foot) picture, thought I was laughing at him for unknown reasons, and demanded I tell him what was so funny.  In front of his young family, and still in front of the picture.  I managed to at least get them out of the room before I let him on to what was on the wall.  We all had a little laugh, but the kids were quickly ushered outside.

It’s been a slow week on the blog.  We’ve been upgrading to Wordpress 2.2, and my current theme doesn’t want to support it, despite the time we’ve spent futzing and refutzing with it.  Using a different theme, our testbed up in the Elastic Compute Cloud is nearly functional though, and we should (hopefully) be launching the new look by the end of the weekend. 

I’m sure you’re all very excited about it.

More exciting this weekend is the Vail Open House Tour, take two.  We had some issues with the ad not coming out in the paper as planned the first time around, so we’ve got double the exposure and a nicer ad for the weekend, thanks to the generous folks at  Tucson Newspapers.  If you’re looking for a home in Vail, or just have never explored that side of town, it’s a great time to go visit the area.  Go see www.HomeTourTucson.com for all the homes, maps, pictures, and other details.

I work all over the greater Tucson area, but there’s a special place in my heart for Central Tucson.  I’m a sucker for a red brick house with some charm and character, and for me, Central Tucson is the place to be!

In our MLS, boundaries of Central would be River Road to the North, Wilmot to the East, 22nd on the South, and Oracle-ish on the West.

Here’s another reason to love Central Tucson:

That’s a graph of Months of Inventory for all types of Central Tucson real estate, from January 2007 through July 2007.  See that nice little downward trend?  Declining months of inventory in this case is an indicator that we’re returning to more balanced levels of supply and demand in Central Tucson.  Ideally, that should keep prices steady, if not cause them to rise, in the area.  In theory, a balanced market is between 4-6 months of inventory, and Central Tucson is sitting cozily in the mid 5 months mark at the moment - signaling a balanced market for the area.

Speaking of prices, let’s see what the average and median are running for Central:

More often than not, all of Tucson takes a dip in Average Sales Price and Median in July.  In fact, when I ran this analysis with the other areas of town, all areas save one had a reduced average/median sales price in July 2007.  Since the last reported month is the one where we traditionally dip, we’ll have to wait a couple months to see if the dip is a seasonal effect or a sign of something completely different.

Altogether, I’d say Central Tucson real estate is doing okay.  Because the houses tend to be older, a lot of the homes have funky additions, or other homeowner projects that turn what was a lovely house into an odd little place.  The good stuff, in good condition, priced right, will always sell fast in Central because of the inherent demand.

I’ve lived in Southern Arizona since 1981, and in Tucson since 1995.  Out of the thousands of homes I have ever entered, this is the first scorpion I have ever seen inside of a house.  I’ve seen two others, alive, in the wild: both outside at night on a patio.  Out in the desert, they say you can make the little translucent ones glow if you shine a black light around the yard at night, but I’ve never tried it.

This guy was a little surprise for my buyers during a final walkthrough.  Luckily, we found a bowl and some cardboard, so that brave Mr. Buyer could capture the little guy and release him back outside — and far from the house, at Mrs. Buyer’s instruction.

Happy Birthday to the Old Pueblo!  Tucson turns 232 years old today, counting back to when the Spanish established their presidio on August 20, 1775, and the town formally became known as Tucson.  Before that, Father Kino was out and about in the late 1600’s, founding the Mission San Xavier del Bac - the beautiful White Dove of the Desert that can still be toured today - and before that, the Hohokam were enjoying the area.

Turns out, there a bunch of events planned, check the link at the start of this post.  Tortilla making, walking tours, classic movies at the Fox theater, could be fun!