The Housechick Blog

February 29th - it’s Leap Day!

Seems like as good a time as any to finally figure out why, exactly, we go around adding days to our calendar.

- The length of a solar year, on which our calendar is based, is 365.242 days, which is about 11 minutes shorter than 365.25 days.

- To compensate for the extra .242th of a day, we add one day to the calendar every 4th year, so every year divisible by 4 becomes a leap year.

- Except: Since the solar year is 365.242 days, and we’re basically making each year exactly 365.25, we’re adding a little extra each year.  In fact, adding a day every 4th year adds about 3 extra days over 400 years.  So only every 4th century year is a leap year.  The year 2000 was a leap year, but 2010 will not be, and 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years.  You can determine which century is a leap year if it’s evenly divisible by 400.

Don’t you feel better now?  I know I do.  Go enjoy your extra day.

Ah, polybutylene.  Once the favored child, now banished and reviled.

Polybutylene pipe was once considered the pipe of the future, and was used as a substitute for copper plumbing between 1978 and 1995.  It was low cost and easy to install.  Until reports of leaks started.  And didn’t stop.

Turns out, “poly pipe” has one irredeemable flaw - it tends to leak.  Not the most desirable quality in your plumbing system. 

In Tucson homes, you’ll find polybutylene pipe in homes of that era.  Anything built in the 1980s and early 1990’s should set off a little warning bell in your head.  Or your agent’s head.  Who should then tell you all about PB Pipe.

I heard a plumber talking a year or so ago, who went on about how the crimping tools for the fittings were sometimes hard to use, or that the pipe never tightened up after being stretched over the fittings.  A bit of online research says the pipe may be failing because some chemicals in the water may react with the pipe and fittings, causing them to scale and flake from the inside out, become brittle, microfracture, and so forth.

Bottom line: polybutylene tends to leak.

There’s a class action suit (but that doesn’t surprise you) that you can read about at www.pbpipe.com.  Potentially, home owners with poly in their house who have had leaks can go there and find out if the suit will help them take care of the issue.

If you’re selling a home and your house has polybutylene pipe, know that it is becoming ever more common for a buyer to require the house be replumbed - and to have it done at your expense.  We’re talking in the ballpark of $5k - $8k, roughly.  Your mileage may vary, depending on the size of the house, if there’s attic space, where the pipe runs, etcetera.  I tell you this now, as much as I know you don’t want to hear it: just replace it now.  Really.  I’m urging you to repipe your home now, from the bottom of my heart.  Please, let me help you get a good price and get it done right now, so that we can get you more money when we sell it.  Really.  Please, please, please, trust me on this one.

How do you know if the home you’re buying has polybutylene pipe?  Well, it’s grey stuff.  There’s pictures here, and here, and here.  Best bet - call a plumber and ask them to come take a look.  Sometimes, it’s only the water main that is poly.  Sometimes, the stuff in the wall is poly, but it’s connected to copper that stubs out through the wall, so all you see outside of the wall is copper.  Sometimes, we can look into the washing machine connection box and find out.  Sometimes, we’ll need to get permission to cut a coupla holes in the wall.  Usually behind the washing machine, since we know there’s pipe there, and it’s a somewhat unobtrusive area.

I recently had the, ah, opportunity to enact some of the clauses in Section 7 of the local Tucson purchase agreement.  You know, the section we head into to find out what happens when things go terribly, terribly wrong?

Let me say that our foray into section 7 was, to the best of my knowledge, an honest mistake on behalf of the other party, if there is such a thing.  I believe the error made was without malice, but we end up in section 7 all the same. 

First recourse if either the buyer or seller is in potential breech of contract is to give that party a chance to fix it with a 3 day cure notice.  This is the somewhat friendly heads-up to the other guy to say, “hey, buddy, we’ve got a potential problem here, please fix it” with an implied OR ELSE.

The threat behind the OR ELSE?  Arbitration.  Mediation.  Court Action.  Small Claims Court, if you’re dealing with a matter $2500 or less.

Our matter fell into the small claims court bucket, and my client - being a thorough kind of guy - did some research into how small claims court works, and has allowed me to post his findings. 

How Small Claims Court Works

As always, we’re not lawyers, you should seek your own legal advice, your mileage may vary. 

Spring training starts this week in Tucson!  This year, there are 30 games in 30 days as the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Chicago White Sox and the Colorado Rockies get their spring training on.  Games start February 27th and run through March 27th.

Games are all at 1:05pm (except the very last game which is at 12:05pm) at the Tucson Electric Park, over at 2500 E Ajo, just off of Kino and Ajo, or at Hi Corbett Field in Ried Park, at 3400 E Camino Campestre.

You can download the spring training schedule here.

I must say, spring training is a great way to spend what may otherwise be a dull afternoon.  Our spring weather is typically beautiful.  Not that I’d encourage you to skip out on work or anything, but you know, maybe, it might be fun to play hooky and go catch a game.  I’m just sayin’.

h/t to Jay for reminding me!

Photo via Flickr, courtesy of sin agua

Tucson MLS released their residential real estate market report this week for January 2008.  I prefer to pull my own.  As I don’t work in the more remote reaches of the large area encompassed by our MLS, I like to see stats for the areas and types of properties that I actually work with.

I’ll be working on some more detailed numbers over the weekend, updating the individual areas and graphs that you can find from the Stats link at the top of the page.  For now, the short, hard numbers:

As calculated today:

• Average Single Family Home Sales Price: $299,866
• Median Single Family Home Sales Price: $218,000
• Single Family Homes Sold: 435 units
• Average Town Home Sales Price: $205,756
• Median Town Home Sales Price: $180,000
• Town Homes Sold: 49 units
• Average Condo Sales Price: $157,194
• Median Condo Sales Price: $140,947
• Condos Sold: 34 units

Which means Citywide:

• Average Sales Price: $281,600
• Median Sales Price: $210,000
• Units Sold: 518

Please remember that I calculate stats from only the 9 major areas of Tucson: North, Northwest, Northeast, West, Central, East, South, Southeast, and Southwest.  I include only homes, townhomes, and condos.

I’ve got a client looking for a vacation home in the Tucson Foothills, and we’ve concentrated our search on the Sabino Canyon/Ventana Canyon area.

I like this little corner of Tucson a lot - there’s a nice shopping center so a grocery store, drug store, and restaurants are all very nearby, and then there’s the beautiful Sabino Canyon area, which speaks for itself.  It’s a popular second home or vacation home area.

There are several condo conversion projects in the area; some are only resale units and some are still for sale by the developer.

By the way, a condo conversion in this area means an apartment complex that has been converted to ownership units - converted to condos and each unit is sold off individually.

We spent most of our time at Veranda at Ventana, the Greens at Ventana, and at Canyon View at Ventana.  Those first two are still being sold by the developer, and the third is all resale units.

Prices vary from, oh, the $130s to the mid $200ks, depending on size, complex, view, and level of interior finishes.  There’s one complex that has a relationship with a vacation rental management company.  I don’t have costs on hand for that, but I thought that was an incredibly smart move on behalf of the complex.

If you’re thinking about a condo over in that Ventana/Sabino Canyon area, send me an email and we can set up the guided tour.

Photo via Flickr, courtesy of jordansmall

We’ll keep an eye on it as the eclipse progresses… Are you watching? It’s a beautiful night to be out moon-gazing.

If you look closely in this one, you can see two bright stars off to the right - actually, I think one of those might be Saturn…

Question from the Audience: What’s a Heat Pump and does it affect resale value?

Answer: A heat pump is basically an air conditioner in reverse.

Before we get all geeky with this answer, let’s point out that heat pumps are usually appropriate for climates where it doesn’t get incredibly cold outside, much like Tucson, and in general, don’t add or subtract value when compared to a furnace-type heater.

And now the techno-dork answer.

First, we need to wrap our minds around the concept of measuring and transferring heat and not cold.  Cold is just the relative presence or absence of heat.  So an air conditioner removes heat from the house, and a heat pump adds heat to the house.  In fact, an air conditioner takes the heat from inside and vents it outside, and a heat pump takes the heat from outside and vents it inside.

Also, your refrigerator is basically an air conditioner in a box. 

So there’s two parts: the air handler and the condenser/compressor.  The air handler’s job is to direct air over a coil full of freon, where the air either looses heat or gains it by passing over the coil, depending on which mode you’re using.  Sometimes, this is the part inside the house or the garage.  The condenser/compressor is the big box that sits outside, whose job is to compress the freon either before or after it runs through a condenser coil, again, depending on which mode you’re using.  That’s the box where the freon either releases heat to or gains heat from the outside air.

Clear?

Good.

HowStuffWorks.com has a good explanation of how heat pumps work too.  But you heard it here first!

Perhaps I was a bit hasty on my hammock installation…

And then there’s the snow…

Oh you mean those valuable broken fixtures and piles of newspaper???

Often while walking through what is an otherwise empty and vacant home, I run across piles of junk left in the garage, or in a storage room, or piles of yard clippings in a heap over in the side yard.  And my Buyers always want to know: are they going to leave that pile of stuff there?

Well - one of my favorite parts of our Tucson real estate contract states that: “All personal property not included in the sale and all debris will be removed from the premises.”

Which means no, that stuff isn’t supposed to stay there.

And as a Seller, you need to make some plans to get any remaining personal property or debris out of there before closing.

If you’ve got a lot of trash type stuff, then maybe you need a small dumpster.  During my last home remodel, I made good friends with Jack, the dumpster guy, who has excellent rates - much cheaper than what the city or the big box stores charge.  Send me an email and I’ll pass on his information.

If you’ve got donate-able goods, we can call over the Habistore and Goodwill to take usable goods away. 

As a Buyer, you should always walk through a house a couple days before closing to make sure the piles have been removed.  If we find a lot of extra stuff in there initially, we might want to start addressing that particular contract clause earlier than that.