Okay, not so much a lesson but a rant.  I swear there are a lot of Real Estate Agents out there who don't know which end of the camara to hold on to when they are taking listing pictures or if they do, they must be cross eyed! I know I have seen this discussion before but I experienced first hand yesterday how horrible some of the MLS pictures are. 

I was helping a friend look for property out of town via Realtor.com.  Most of the listings either had no pictures, or just a couple of pictures, or pictures that were so horrible you couldn't tell anything at all about the houses.  How in the world do they expect to get anyone to call on them when they take pictures that are not identifiable?  I mean seriously, some of those pictures were so bad you didn't know what you were looking at.  Some looked like they were taken by an agent with wings?  They were taken down on a room but were so crooked or cockeyed that it looked like the room was tilted on it's side.

I wonder sometimes if it is intentional so no one will want to show the properties so the agents can sell the homes themselves, or are they just badly in need of some photography classes.  I am not professional photographer myself, but at least I can tell through the view finder if the picture is straight or not.  Some of these were so out of focus or crooked you really couldn't telll anything about the homes at all.

Maybe we need to make it a requirement that all agents take some photography classes as part of their continuing education.  Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to put a listing in the MLS without pictures.  No pictures, no listing exposure.  All I know is I can understand why the consumers get frustrated because I have never seen such horribly illustrated properties as I saw yesterday. 

Oh well, rant is over.  Have a Happy Holiday Week everyone. 

Sandra Paulow, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR 

Good Evening Everyone,

After one of the busiest fall buying seasons in recent memory, all of the sudden it's DEAD, DEAD, DEAD! I'm not sure where all the Buyers have gone but they sure don't seem to be heading to the White Mountains.  Maybe it's because it has been so nice down in the low lands but we usually see some traffic this time of year. There is snow coming soon, really there is.  It won't be long before those slopes open again.  After your ski trip stop in and say howdy, I'd love to help you find your Perfect Place for your White Mountain getaway.   

I guess everyone out Holiday Shopping and putting off their home buying trips and searches until after Christmas?  I'm really not complaining, just not sure what to do with myself.  I was so busy for so long it seems strange to have time on my hands.  I always have work to do like updating the website, working on my DB input tasks, etc. but I sure would rather be out showing property.  Guess I should have planned a December vacation.  Maybe there is still time to do that.  I'll have to check in to it.  Going out of town always generates activity so that may do the trick. 

Hope you all are keeping busy.  Any extra clients you don't know what to do with you can send them my way.  I'm always game for a referral.

Later All.

Sandie P.

Why do things always have to happen on the weekends?  If something in your house is going to break, malfunction, or flood, it always happens on the weekend. 

My latest disaster was a stool that didn't work properly and flooded my hall bath and part of the hallway.  I didn't even know about it until my dog woke me from a sofa doze in front of the tube and wanted out.  That is when I heard the water running.  My first thought ws that my Mother, she is 93, had left water running in the sink.  Oh no, the stool had been running over for at least an hour, and squish squish squish went the carpet as I went in to discover what the problem was.  It is now 9:00 on a Saturday evening. 

Fortunately I have quite a bit of experience with this type of thing having worked for several years for a Disaster Restoration Contractor.  I had seen a lot of water damages and knew what to do, but gad, who feels like doing that at 9:00 on a Saturday night. 

Oh well, first things first.  I got the stool shut off and the water bailed out of it and after a little while with the drain opener and a plunger I got it to drain.  Now to the carpet, what a mess!  My first evil thought was perhaps I should just turn it back on and let it run all night.  At least that way I'd have a big enough disaster to call someone to clean it up and then call my Insurance company about it.  Believe me in the years I worked for the Restoration Contractor I know there are people who intentionally did that about every five years because they would get new furniture, new carpet and a paint job out of it.  Oh yea, I've seen water damages that cost insurance companies upwards of 50K to repair.  I'm just not that kind of person and I would never be able to live with myself if I tried something like that.  Besides the anti-lie beacon on my forehead would start flashing "Liar Liar Pants on Fire" anyway.

So back to the carpet.  The first step obviously was vacing up enought of the water so it wouldn't keep moving further in to the house.  After about an hour of that process it was time to start pulling back carpet.  Of course it was soaked so it was very heavy and the pad underneath I knew was toast.  By now it's about 10 PM.  At that point I said to heck with it for the night, I'd finish cleaning it up in the morning.  I slept restlessly, dreaming of drowning in a sea of wet carpeting.

Morning.  Okay, first things first, COFFEE!  After that the fun would really begin.  Cutting the seams at doorways, pulling the carpet out of the house and propping it up somewhere to dry.  Removing the wet padding to dispose of it and drying out the floor underneath.  More COFFEE!  By 11 AM the carpet was outside draped over chairs to dry, the padding was removed and disposed of and I had fans and portable heaters on the floor drying out the floor and the cabinet bases etc. and I'm thoroughly wired from too much coffee. 

After the floor dried out, I went out to the garage where we just happened to have about a half roll of carpet padding to replace what had been destroyed.  I spent the next hour or so dragging that in, cutting it to fit the floor and tacking it down.  That is such fun, heavy awkward stuff!  Why didn't I call the pros again?  Oh yea, I wanted to save the money. 

Well, it is now about 2:30 Pm, my back aches, I have little cuts all over my fingers from the tack strip around the sides of the room, I finally had some lunch and the carpet is still flapping in the wind drying out.  Maybe I'll get it put back in by 10 PM tonight.  What next, cleaning it of course, but that will have to wait for another day.  I'm getting too old for this.  Remind me next time to Call the Pros!

Have a great Holiday everyone. 

Sandie P.  

I have been on a real dry spell lately for posting anything interesting on blog sites.  Why, because the market and anything related to it can be summed up in a few simple words. 

Buyers Are Scarce

Sellers lose hope

Foreclosures keep dropping values

Lending is Tight

Lenders expect repairs on foreclosures

Appraisals are Low

So, what can you say when you are trying to keep up a blog on your website when there is nothing new to report.  It gets boring harping on the same things over and over and I find it really hard to come up with anything interesting to say when nothing changes. 

Yes, it has been a busy fall.  Yes I've sold a lot of properties, but the same things keep coming back over and over again.

I need something exciting to write about, any ideas?

I was thinking about what to do to help my sellers feel less discouraged.  I have several really nice listings in the White Mountains area and they get no traffic.  I've looked at the comps, I've priced them well, they show well, everything is right about them but still no one is looking at them.  I have shown them myself when I've had the opportunity, but what can we do when the buyers for them are so scarce? 

Two of my sellers have told me that they aren't going to renew the listings since no one wants their homes anyway.  I can't argue with them, I know they are right.  Even if people who are looking could afford them, they are so terrified of overextending or paying too much that look at less than they want in the hope that they are going to find what they want at a lower price.  

Our buying season is waning, and many people will take their homes off the market for the winter months.  I have tried to convince them that they should leave them on the market for just that reason but they are so discouraged that they don't want to do that.  I wish I could give them hope that next year will be a better year, but I don't see that happening.  The home buying situation is going to be troubled for a long time to come and if the banks hold true to their actions the past couple of years, they are probably going to drop a whole bunch of REO's about mid-winter just to drive values down some more. 

If there are luxury home buyers out there now is really the time to start looking for your dream house.  Sellers like mine are so discouraged that they would look at just about any offer just to say they had one.   I truly wish there was more I could do for my sellers but the numbers speak for themselves.  If you have a high end home, you better love it because the chances for selling it any time soon are pretty slim.      

Good Sunday Afternoon Everyone,

Today's writing has absolutely nothing to do with Real Estate.  It is rather a reflection on where I was and what I was doing the morning of September 11, 2001.  I will never forget that day, it is burned in my memory like it was yesterday.

I was sitting in my living room in Sahuarita, Arizona having my morning coffee and watching the Today Show on NBC.  I remember Katie Couric's face when the first plane hit the tower.  Everyone thought it was an accident, a tragic accident but an accident none the less.  The shock and awe on the faces of those on the show is engraved on my mind.  There was horror and confusion, no one knew what to make of it other than something awful had happened. 

A few minutes later when the second plane hit the realization came that it wasn't an accident but a deliberate act designed to kill many many people and send our Country in to a complete tailspin.  Still, no one expected those towers to come down.  We already knew there were many people dead in those upper stories but we never in our wildest dreams expected that the buildings themselves would come down.  Sadly, a few hours later that is exactly what happened as we all know.

Too many lives lost just to serve the selfish means of some extremists who hate our country.  They still hate us today and although they didn't succeed in destroying us in 2002, the fallout from that day is still affecting us and is slowing destroying our country from the inside out.  There is a terrible apathy out in the world today.  We accept what is handed us and expect more! We don't complain we just just go with the flow because it is easier than fighting.  We must fight to keep our Country strong.

I read an outstanding article this week in our local newspaper about what has happened in the ten years since 9-11 and it was truly scary.  I have included the link to the article below.  Read it and weep, for if we do not change our attitudes the extremists of ten years ago will have won despite everything. 

http://www.wmicentral.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/ten-years-after-have-we-become-the-enemy-of-freedom/article_f4d19760-da70-11e0-bc8c-001cc4c03286.html

It is time once again to stand up and defend our rights as Americans and if you will not fight then you will fail.  It is time to change the world again and defend what has made this country great.  Apathy is not accomplishing anything, action will.

Have a wonderful week and remember.....We The People!!!

Sandra J. Paulow

Hello Everyone,

Happy 4th of July Weekend.  I hope things are going well for all of you and I can say, at least we are starting to get a little moisture in to Arizona and boy do we need it.  It might make for a bit of a soggy 4th but I don't think anyone will complain.  We have all been doing the Rain Dance for the past month or so.

On to the subject at hand: Bank Addendums.  I'm sure you all are selling REO's I seriously doubt any of us would be in this business long if we didn't.  But I have to say I am getting really tired of how much they have in common with mousetraps.  They are filled with subtleties that can trap your Buyers and cost them money. 

Case in point, I had a deal going with a certain Bank who shall remain unnamed that was so full of mouse traps that even an Attorney missed one very important one.  This one happened to be under the Buyer Inspection section.  You see, it actually conflicted with itself in a way that could have cost a buyer a significant amount of Earnest Money. 

The gist of this was that the Bank allowed the client 7 days to complete an inspection. There were 3 additional days allowed for the Buyer to notice the seller of disapproved items.  On day 7 the buyer submitted to the seller a disapproved item that was quite significant.  It involved the square footage of the home and the cost per square foot would have been significantly higher because the square footage was much less than was originally represented at the time the buyer made the offer. 

As a result of this discovery the Buyer presented to the Seller a Disapproved Item on the Buyer's Inspection Notice and on an Addendum requesting that the seller reduce the price to a comparable per square foot price for the square footage on the property as it truly was.  This was all done well within the bounds set by the addendum.   All sounds okay right? Wrong.

In the same section under the buyer inspection of this Bank Addendum there was another paragraph that stated that if the buyer did not cancel by the 10th day from the date of acceptance the buyer's earnest money might be at risk.  Still sounds okay right? Wrong!  The problem was there was nothing in the Addendum that said the seller had to respond to the Buyer's request for repairs/compensation before the 10th day, or ever for that matter, and that is exactly what happened.  The seller did not respond within the 10 days and if the buyer had waited for a response and the seller said No, the buyer would have been in a position of either moving forward at whatever terms the Bank set down, even if they wanted the price on the original offer, or risk his earnest money if he canceled. In this case the Earnest Money amount was significant!   

It is my belief that the Bank intentionally did not answer in that 10 days and their intent was to wait until after that 10 days had passed, deny the buyer the adjustment to force the buyer to either close at the original price or forfiet his earnest money.  Good or Bad, the buyer decided to cancel on the 10th day to prevent the Bank from claiming his earnest money.  The buyer was out the cost of the inspection, he did not get the house he wanted to buy, but at least he would not lose his earnest money. 

This is the kind of thing that makes me really angry when dealing with the Banks on Foreclosures.  There is no requirement anywhere that they comply with the laws of the States in which they do business and the Buyers have absolutely no protection what-so-ever.  They are often caught in the position of doing exactly what the Bank wants of they lose! Not just the house they want to buy but sometimes a significant amount of money that they put up to show their seriousness about buying the property. They are forced to deal with the Bank's, in their pocket, Title Companies who in Arizona have the final decision making responsibility if there is a question about the Earnest Money and who it rightfully belongs to on a failed transaction.  The States take no position on this one way or the other because they might lose the support of the huge Bank Lobby in most States. 

This is what I am referring to by Mouse Traps.  The banks see the consumer as being foolish as a mouse and they use houses as the bait.  They know that most consumers would not see the subtle traps they have set for them and to be truthful, as Real Estate Professionals some of them are so subtle even we don't always spot them when we are working with our Buyers on an offer.  I'm not even convinced the agents who are handling the REO's know all the subtle traps inside these addendums because they vary so much and they are buried so deep in legaleze many times that they are not readily visible.  As I mentioned at the beginning, in this case the Buyer had an Attorney review the document and while they caught many things, this particular trap was not one of them.

So what do we do?  We can't not sell the Foreclosures because they are still dominating the market.  I am a Real Estate Agent, not an Attorney, yet in Arizona because I have the right under our State Constitution to act as one when writing contract and assisting Buyers and Sellers, I have the same responsibility to spot the traps that might ensnare my clients.  I can recommend that the client see an Attorney but if they can't spot the traps what hope do I have of protecting myself as well as my client? I am not a newbie.  I have seen and dealt with a lot of contracts in my 13 years of selling Real Estate, but in dealing with Banks I often find myself feeling like I don't know a thing and have no way to protect my clients from the treachery of these Banks.  I risk my license and my livelihood every time I write an offer for a Buyer.  It is pretty scary and I just am at a loss as to what to do about it. 

Sandra Paulow, Associate Broker, GRI

The fire is not out yet and it won't be until it rains.  The firefighters are starting to get some containment on it and some of the evacuated residents have been allowed to return home.  The smoke is still bad though so even though they could go home it was recommended that those with breathing problems might want to stay away a while longer.  Another summer in the White Mountains with smoke billowing in the air.  Will people never learn?

So I have a thought and I wanted to get some feedback from you.  Is it time for Cute little Smoky the Bear to go away?  I suggested a Fire Breathing Dragon with his breath blowing toward a stand of forest.  What do you think?  How can we get people to take better care when they are in the woods.  Rumor has it that this fire was caused by idiots who left their campfire burning on a windy day and went for a hike.  I don't get it, has our society slipped to the point where no one has any common sense anymore? Do they not get that fire is dangerous?  What part of "Only You can Prevent Wildfires" don't they get?

I guess the bottom line is you just can't fix "Stupid"!

The Wallow Fire in the White Mountains of Arizona continues to rage out of control.  I thought perhaps some of you would like a local perspective on this fire.  To put it in a word, it is a Monster! We didn't think 9 years ago when we lived through another monster fire that it could ever be worse.  We were wrong.  This fire is raging in an area of heavy timber with no natural breaks to allow fire fighters to get a handle on it.  To compound things we have been dealing with high swirling winds ever since it started on May 29th.

Several communities have been evacuated, two more just this evening.  Now there are over 10,000 people who have been forced from their homes because of this massive wildfire.  The air tankers have had to be grounded because of the winds but those are supposed to ease a bit tomorrow. 

Tonight it was announced that they are bringing in a 747 slurry plane that can lay down up to a mile of slurry in one pass.  Many have asked why they haven't brought them in before?  Well, according to the Fire Fighters using slurry on a Ponderosa Pine fire is like spitting on a house fire.  It just doesn't do any good.  Now that the fire is beginning to move out of the tall pine forests on the North side they may be able to contain it because it is getting in to Pinion and Juniper Trees and open plains.  Still, it is going to do little except perhaps protect property and structures, this monster will not be stopped by any force of man.  There is only one thing that is going to help put out this fire and that is rain, lots and lots of rain. 

It is sad to see all these gloreous forests going up in flames and all because of the carelessness of some camper who didn't put out their campfire when they left the area.  They have not said that was the official cause but those of us who live here know that to be the truth.  It happens every summer when out of town visitors come to visit our forests to escape the desert heat in the low lands and they think a cooler of ice and a gallon of water will put out a campfire.  Then off they go on their merry way without another thought for the dangerous situation they left behind.   

The forest that are burning now took 150 years or more to grow.  None of our children or grandchildren will have the privilege of enjoying what is being lost.  It is truly sad to watch and know that it isn't over yet.  We still have monsoon season to get through with it's lightening storms and spotty rains so this could perhaps be only the beginning of the fire troubles in the High Country.

All I can say is Pray really hard for Rain or a miracle because we need all of both that we can get.

Sandra Paulow, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR

Russ Lyon Sotheby's International Realty in Show Low, Arizona

Good Afternoon Everyone,

Don't know if anyone besides me has noticed but the inventory of Homes For Sale is WAY down.  I had clients in town over the weekend and they were really disappointed to find that 2 of the 7 homes they wanted to see had sold between Wed. & Friday.  What homes we did view while very nice homes, were higher priced than the buyers wanted to go.   They came thinking they were going to find the perfect home at a great price and went home realizing that wasn't the case any longer.  It is possible that the people who have been sitting on their proverbial fences may have waited a bit too long. 

The market is shifting again.  I'm not sure whether this signals the end of the REO market and that most of the inventory in our area is depleted or if it simply means that people are getting back to work, working out loan modifications with their lenders, or if it is just a lull before the storm. 

I'm inclined to say, at least in the White Mountain Area, that we may be seeing the steady decline of the last couple of years slowing down.  Those deals and bargains are just not out there any more and while the buyers coming late to the market still want a deal, the sellers remaining, even some of the Banks, are simply saying NO!  They know they have something someone wants and they just aren't willing to take the kind of loss that they have been in the past.  They have a product to sell and if someone wants it they are going to have to meet a certain price point to get it.  My last Bank Owned Sale took six counter offers to come to an agreement.  The Buyers had to come up significantly on their original offer in order to purchase the property.     

Perhaps that is a good thing.  While it may be a bit disappointing to the Buyers who have stayed on the fence a bit too long, it may be good for the sellers who have wanted to sell but were unable to because they just couldn't afford to take the kind of losses the buyers expected. 

Is this the year we begin to see things turn around?  We can only hope!