When the vacation is over...

... I'll post some photo's on my blog.  Yep, Cabo was great again this year (and no I did not fall for another time share, yay for me!!).

Hoover Dam Bypass photos...

Speaking of actual really nice photos, I notice a couple of really nice pics of the ongoing construction of the Hoover Dam Bypass project taken on Saturday night. I emailed the local guy who took these great shots and asked if I could post them here.

These photos are taken by Joel Gringorten.

Enjoy...

(click on images for larger view)

My weekend photos...

I sneaked out of town again this past weekend and headed to the high country of Durango Colorado. A nice visit with extended family ensued... plus I managed a few nice photos worth sharing...




... I'll probably write about water issues again this week, however I'm thinking about going a different direction. Basically if the water worry warts are right about the level of water remaining in Mohave County, shouldn't we be paying much more in fees for use of the water?? I mean if we are going to protect those last few remaining drops down there, somebody needs to pony up. Might as well be us because we are the only ones here and plus we are trying to protect that source for future generations.

I'm back...

... but I already want to go back. If you get the chance, ever... Whistler, British Columbia, Canada... is nice <--- (that is a severe understatement).

My wife is already posting photos on Facebook, meanwhile I look forward to catching up on email and the latest and greatest that always seems to happen when I leave town for a few days.

A man, his iPod, and some trisodium phosphate...

Just looking a my brand new farmers sunburn and I'm reminded of this past weekend. No, not fun in the sun angling for fish on Lake Mead for me this time. Not some golf event for that matter either. Nope, instead I decided to tackle a few projects in my backyard over the holiday weekend.

The lawn needed to be aerated and had to do it manually, plus it was time to kick up the watering schedule a bit. Some of the rose bushes were already getting too large so I cut them back to size.

And then there was the outdoor teak wood furniture set that I have been trying to take care of practically since the day my wife and I bought the set back in 2002.

For the most part regular maintenance on the furniture included some sanding and then cleaning up with a solution of Simple Green and water, but there is a little more to the why of it all. You see, when we first bought this gorgeous furniture and put it all together we had this wild idea to head to the hardware store and buy some sort of oil finish. We should have never done that. Since that time we haven't really been as pleased with the kinda expensive set. Sure, we've used that furniture each and every time we've had folks over for cookouts and the like but sealing the teak wood, as we came to find out is what we did, messed things up.

Since that time a couple of times a year, or so, I've been sanding off the finish then washing it with a solution and walking away. Over time the more natural look has come back but it had left me without a better solution as to how to maintain the teak wood of the furniture.

So I hopped on the internetz to take a gander to see if anyone else had anything on how to care for teak wood. I sifted through mostly product information for the most part and prices on teak wood care products ranged all over the place from about $30 to $200. Well, I've been burned on a product before (the oil/sealant stuff from way back when) and didn't want to plunk down a bunch of dollars on something that would cause the same mess over again (can't blame me really). But eventually I came across a bit of information that said a solution of trisodium phosphate, regular bleach, and water would help do the trick. It didn't sound like a huge expense (but I didn't know what trisodium phosphate was) so I again headed to the hardware store to check it out. Found the stuff at the paint department and decided to pick up a small box of it in powder form for like $5 bucks. The results can be seen below...


I have to say that I didn't set up the chairs in true before and after succession. The chair on the left is the finished product of my labor. The color is as close to what it was the day we put the furniture together. I finished with a light sanding by hand.

On the far right is the condition of the chair before anything was done, just simply the elements of time and weather since the last time I sanded and cleaned. The chair in the middle is how the furniture has looked after a sanding and cleaning with the solution I mentioned at the beginning. For the most part I didn't mind the look of sanding and cleaning but that was before I saw the results of the trisodium phosphate/bleach solution.

All in all, once I started to use the new (to me) solution to clean the furniture time went by pretty quickly and compared to staining the furniture it was a snap timewise. The large table and the six chairs took most of Monday, but the weather was reasonable (I thought anyway) for this kind of activity and I had the iPod on random play for and reconnected with tunes I probably haven't played in more than 10 years or so. I think I may be looking forward to the fall season to perhaps give this sort of maintenance another go and hopefully will have a fully charged iPod for listening pleasure.

The point of this post is just to sort of pay it forward, so to speak. Maybe somebody else out there in the vast internetz is pondering the same sort of activity and hopefully the before and after photos will be of some help if they happen to land on this site after a search.

Good day.

Bowling at the national tourney in Vegas

I spent Sunday and Monday in Las Vegas bowling in the USBC National tournament. Had a great time but didn't actually score very well. Actually it was rather humbling. Lane conditions were tough for me and I simply was not up to the challenge. So I won't be posting scores because frankly I've already done a great job at forgetting the rather forgettable scores.



The motley crew above represented Kingman (and Flagstaff)... and I think most all were all too happy to see this event come to an end for us. Maybe next year!!

Kingman's Tea Party

The Tea Party event held in Kingman on April 15th looked like a nice event and the comments I have received in my email say that the number of people that showed up was in the 200 to 300 range for the time period the event lasted. Not bad considering is was fairly cold and windy (I saw snow flurries that afternoon).

I wish to thank Paul Frankfurter for allowing me to post the photos he and his wife took at the event.

You can also find more photos here at links here and here.

Another email report from neighboring city, Lake Havasu, had a couple of thousand folks show up at their event. Wow!! Congrats to them. Here is a link to an article about that.

Oh... and one last thing... for the editor of the Miner... didn't see any white sheets worn by the attendees and no crosses were torched. Guess you got that one wrong too. Apology from you... ASAP.

The local Tea Party...

Sorry I missed it due to prior obligations, here's a couple of photos but see more at the MohaveTeaParty site.






I got this email from Donna about the local Tea Party...

Sorry you missed it, if I get more in I will send them to you. It actually
went very well for what it was for. People started showing up at 9:00.
There was never an overwhelming crowd there but around 1:00, Bruce, my
husband went to drop of a table for the dj and couldn't find a parking
place! By the time I got there at 2:30 there were around thirty that I
counted. By 4:00 we lost some and gained some more. There were about 20 of
us still out there at 6:00. So for an all day protest, it went well.

There will be another one on the 15th. This time the focus more defined,
(taxes and spending) and only for a set number of hours,(probably 4). There
should be a good turn out for this since everyone will be more into what
they are really doing. We had people coming into the park from hearing it
on the radio, pulling over to find out just what it was and etc. which was
really good. A lady showed up on her bicycle a little after 5, said she
lived downtown and her husband had just gotten home from work and told her
to get down there, so she made a couple of signs grabbed the kids and came
on down.

It was great.

Donna

Greetings Mr. President...

Oh by now you heard that President Obama was in the Phoenix area today to tout some spending bill or whatever.

And sure, there were some protesters. What I like about these protesters is their sense of humor (what?? No 'Obamahitler' signs??).

Links here, here and here for news coverage and a look at some of the protest signs that were seen today. My favorite...

Be sure to click on the links for more.

January Sales Report (2009)

Once again I will be changing some things up in this report to include a side by side table that compares data of traditional sellers vs. bank owned sales. I might even mess with a few other things as the creative sparks are firing this morning (might have to do with the snow storm). All the charts will still be included and the only changes you'll find on them is that I've removed the data from 2005 (it allowed me to adjust the scale of one chart).

Instead of a preview of the data we'll just skip ahead... after the disclaimer of course...

Disclaimer... all data compiled for this report comes from the WARDEX Data Exchange and does not include any sales activity from outside that resource. All research is done only on single family homes and there is no inclusion of modular homes, commercial properties, or vacant land. The geographical area researched includes; all areas within the boundaries of the city of Kingman, north Kingman, the Hualapai Mountain area, and the Valle Vista subdivisions. Click here to see maps of the included area's.

Listings and sales in units chart:

Nothing new to report on this month... either. These lines need to intersect in a bad way. Not sure if that will happen in this new year though. Many are still reporting that there are still loads more of foreclosures set to hit the market in the coming months.

Average listings and sales averages chart:

I look back a few months and I see plenty of larger traditional seller type of housing hitting the market. Units with an asking price well over $300,000... and I think that is skewing the listing average to some degree. The larger homes are not selling at the same rate that the smaller homes and foreclosures are so it may take some time before these lines on the chart get closer.

2005 through 2008 unit sales chart:

You might notice that the 'pink' line representing 2005 is no longer included on this chart. I'm going with the color 'green' for this year. January 2009 outperformed 2007 (by one sale) and 2008. I'll temper the enthusiasm since I know that it is the foreclosure market pulling the numbers but as long as prices continue to get dragged down, more sales activity is likely this year.

2005 through 2008 average price chart:

The average sales price of a single family home in Kingman fell by 35% as compared to this time last year.

2005 through 2008 median price chart:

The median price fell 31% compared to last years median price.

Final sales prices in January ranged from $17,000 to $345,000.

Average SFR statistics:

Data tables for all sales tracked in January 2009

Price Data

Item	Jan. '09
Average Price per Unit Sold	$125,140
Median Price per Unit Sold	$108,500
Average Price per Square Foot	$82

House Data

Item	Jan. '09
Ave Living Space per Square Foot	1,520
Bedrooms	3.12
Bathrooms	2.12
Garage	1.8
Year Built	1996

Marketing Data

Item	Jan. '09
Days on Market to Contract	92
Days on Market to Close	131
Price Reductions on Market	$14,892
Negotiated Price Concessions	$7,821
Total Price Concessions	$22,713
Total Percent Conceded	15.36%

Bonus Charts:





Foreclosure Impact:

I have been getting email requests to break out the numbers between traditional vs bank owned sales for the last few months. So the table below will be used as the foreclosure impact part of this report for at least until the foreclosure, or bank owned, sales are not having the sort of impact they are on the market. This should offer some interesting data and I may end up tracking this to put in a quarterly or semi-annual report.

Traditional Seller vs. Bank Owned sales comparison for January 2009

Price Data

Item	Traditional Seller	Bank Owned
Total Units Sold in Month	19	22
Average Price per Unit Sold	$144,971	$108,014
Median Price per Unit Sold	$115,250	$102,000
Average Price per Square Foot	$97	$70

House Data

Item	Traditional Seller	Bank Owned
Ave Living Space per Square Foot	1,493	1,544
Bedrooms	3	3.23
Bathrooms	1.95	2.27
Garage	1.8	1.8
Year Built	1994	1998

Marketing Data

Item	Traditional Seller	Bank Owned
Days on Market to Contract	124	67
Days on Market to Close	168	99
Price Reductions on Market	$14,605	$15,140
Negotiated Price Concessions	$9,123	$6,696
Total Price Concessions	$23,729	$21,836
Total Percent Conceded	14%	17%

As you can plainly see banks offered lower prices, slightly larger, newer homes while willing to concede a similar percentage of dollars in negotiations as their traditional counterparts. It took nearly twice as long for traditional sellers to attract a buyer in a contract. Traditional sellers should still expect a premium compared to bank owned properties and this comparison might help shed some light on the competition between traditional sellers have going among themselves.

If you are a buyer and are interested in perhaps buying a bank owned home, there is a bit more pressure being put on by other buyers for this listing. I would recommend aggressive negotiation with the banks as it appears they are still willing to give in to similar concessions.

If you are on the sidelines thinking of listing you do need to make your best guess as to where the prices will be in six months from now to help decide if it is even affordable to attempt to sell. The lower you can make your initial offering price now will likely lead to more interest from buyers, and clearly there are buyers out there... just not all that many.

No conclusions this month. I hope the new tables are helpful. Please comment or email me for anything that might help improve these reports. Have a great month... I'm off to buy a snow shovel!!



I'm kidding about the snow shovel, of course, anyway I'll leave you with our office snowman from yesterday.

Volcano photo... err... I mean sunset photo on Miner site

Pretty nice photo found at this link.

Only thing that would make it better is if there was a wind turbine at the top of the hill (I keed).

Kingman, a winter wonderland

Just some pictures from yesterday, this one is looking across the street from my office


This one was from Tuesday afternoon, I caught Mr. Claus driving down Rte 66!

This is for the people of the sun...

Of course the snow we are getting this morning in Kingman Arizona is not on par with the kinds of snow many other locations are getting, it is nice to see the stuff every other year or so. On my way to the office this morning I tried to get a few shots to share. These didn't come out like I wanted, and I didn't want to wait around for that elusive perfect shot. And as of 10:00am this morning peering out of my office window... still flurries flying. Enjoy.





UPDATE: Thought I'd share a few more in the 11:00am hour from my office. It is actually snowing harder now and there is even a winter storm warning in effect. Please, locals, be careful on the roads. I doubt the city has dispatched the salt trucks or plows (I doubt we have such things).



The Christmas tree lot across the way. Today only, free snow effect included with purchase!!

Oh... and my hockey league is canceled tonight in Havasu... sucks.

Happy Halloween...

From the fine folks at the RE/MAX Preferred Professionals office. It was kind of like a disco/hippie theme this year. Broker David Cooley (on the right) said he was disguised as 'Higgins' from Magnum PI. I did wear a flowered shirt today, but nobody confuses me with the Ferrari driving Magnum.

(no... I did not come to work today in a costume... I forgot this morning was Halloween... even though I did take some candy to work with me from the stash I'll be handing out in a couple of hours. 2 and 2 doesn't always compute to the correct answer for me on occasion)

Foreclosure photos...

Last week I made mention that I would be following up on the post about the foreclosure sales data and would have done this a bit sooner but I was distracted by other things like silly baseball games and such. Also the cooler weather over the weekend allowed me to get some things around the house done that I had been putting off. Filled up the trash can nicely.

I've also struggled with the presentation of the information and photos. I have no intention of belittling the listings of the properties that are currently for sale. Same goes with the listing brokers/agents. I won't be sharing details of the three listings I visited last week. No MLS numbers, no addresses, no prices, or that sort of thing. I basically only want to offer the reader an opportunity to see conditions for themselves. I also want to show more traditional sellers what they might be up against. I did that with the data last week and I think the photos will offer the same sort of thing.

I picked three foreclosure listings at random, but believe that the following photos are a good cross section of what buyers can expect to see when they look into listed property that has been foreclosed on. I venture to say that all of the listings have positives and negatives... much like any home on the market right now.

Backing up for just a minute I want to share some of my experience with you.

From 2002 through 2004 I used to list foreclosure property (I'll call it REO property from here on out in this post) for a company affiliated with FreddieMac. Back then REO properties were not as prevalent in the sale market as they are today. Banks used to try and compete with the traditional sellers and often would have me, the agent, see to it that the property was cleaned up and as functional as possible. The REO property may have defaulted with the borrower owing say $75,000 to the bank (for example only), but the REO property fixed up and pleasant would fetch as much as any other competing for sale listing... often meaning that the bank would see huge proceeds upon completion from the sale. It wasn't uncommon for the banks to sell for $20,000 or even much more than what the former owner owed against the property. The banks were motivated to do the spending because they knew they'd get it back and then some.

Today though... not so much.

I am not actively trying to get a bank, flush with non performing assets, as a client in this market. So I can't say for certain, but I'm willing to bet that things have changed for brokers/agents that do go after the REO property listing business. One thing I did notice was that no utilities were turned on at any of the listings I visited. Back when I listed REO property, utilities were on, toilets were operational, light bulbs were replaced, batteries in smoke detectors were also replaced. Simple things really, but each visit I made to a REO property last week came complete with non functioning toilets and chirping smoke alarms.

I'm only pointing that out to say that things are different now than just a few years ago... not better... not even worse... just different.

One other major difference I see is in attitude. It seems that all REO properties listed for sale come with the disclaimer that the buyer will be purchasing the property 'as is'... meaning no buyer requested repairs of the seller. If you are a traditional seller... please keep that in mind because it is one of the benefits that you can offer a buyer that the banks don't seem to have any interest in.

Now... lets take a look at some photos...


This is a photo from the oldest listing I looked at of the three. The kitchen is clean, but it is cramped... especially when the new owner decides to place a refrigerator in there... somewhere. Times have changed and the latest wave of new homes have better kitchen areas than older homes do.


Interior door knobs... the listing needs them for all the doors in the house.

Pride of ownership is put to the test at most REO properties. The photo does not come out as well as I would like, but this carpet had the appearance of being 'cleaned' but it is deeply stained and likely would have to be replaced unless a well placed throw rug (or two) is of the new buyers liking.

This listing could easily have been a rental at one time and I'm not disparaging the last person or person's that dwelled here. Also... not coming through in the photo is the smell that this home comes with. A typical odor that emits from many homes that have been vacant for some time and/or was a place where smoking was allowed indoors.


Is that mold?? I'd ask the owner, but the owner is a bank, and the bank is telling me that I'm buying 'as is'.


Look honey... the 'as is' home comes with an interior door that we'd have to replace.


Throw rug goes here, part two.


Only have one photo of this particular REO listing. The home was built in 2006. I didn't notice any obvious defects (other than one small deep stain in the carpet). REO properties in good condition do exist and this home might be an excellent starter home or even a good rental. For as nice as the home seems to be in, I do expect to see price reductions before it is sold. There may have been some pride of ownership in this house, but it is not as evident on the street it is located on. There seems to be at least one 'catch' with REO property.

Again, the point of these posts about REO properties was not about the folks that used to live at these places, or the brokers/agents that represent the bank owners, or the banks themselves that own these places. Just wanted to point out that properties like this are seeing the most action on the sales market. These listings are the competition for more traditional sellers.

The last couple of months have seen more sales of foreclosures than more traditional listings (owned by people with a heart-beat). Typically traditional sellers have well maintained and kept homes and offer them on the market to buyers who would appreciate the effort.

Clearly, though, more than half the buyers have settled on something much less than well maintained and kept. They've settled on price... warts and all.

Shameless plug time...

If you are interested in looking at REO properties for purchase, please consider using me as your agent. My listing experience of these sorts of properties will help you get the best possible price in today's market. We'll negotiate hard on price since it is the only concession that the banks appear ready to deal on. We'll even renegotiate when it is appropriate. I know the process and the tactics and we can use them to great advantage. Email me or call... let's make a deal!!

A few shots from high country

I mentioned earlier this week that I took the weekend off for some fishing and R&R in the Williams and Flagstaff area of Arizona. I managed a few nice photos and wanted to share.





These two (above) were taken at Kaibab Lake near Williams on Saturday morning. I didn't get many great pics here because the fish started biting.





After Kaibab... we stopped in Williams for lunch then it was off to Dogtown Lake for the afternoon. We were greeted by an early afternoon rain storm but once that passed we tried our luck here. The fishing wasn't all that great in terms of quality fish but the afternoon temps and sunset made up for all that.




We woke early and hit upper Lake Mary near Flagstaff on Sunday morning and were treated to beautiful skies and favorable conditions. This was the first time I had been to this lake... and I already cannot wait until the next opportunity comes to head back out there.