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Pinetop, AZ Real Estate News

By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
 The Tale of an Old House. I recently read an article about how many buyers avoid old houses simply because they are old.   They tend to lean to new or newer homes with contemporary designs and features. While I understand the trend, there is something to be said for an older house. They are sometimes hidden treasures that have a history even the listing agent may be unaware of. I had a homes like this listed several years ago. On the surface it looked like an old run down house in need of major renovation. It did, there is no denying it had been used hard. However, once I started looking at it closer I discovered several things that were not immediately apparent. First it was one of the founding family’s homes in the community where I live and work. It was old by Arizona standards havi...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
 Reflections on Real Estate, do we sometimes forget…? I was thinking this morning about the nature of our business.  I wrote a post a long time ago about being real in Real Estate, and as it is the Holiday Season I thought it might a topic to revisit.     As agents we tend to be transaction focused.  Certainly we focus on developing relationships with people to build our businesses. However, once we get deep in to the transaction do we tend to forget about the people involved in that transaction?  Do we forget that both parties, buyers and sellers, have a bigger interest in seeing that transaction to completion than we do? For both of them it involves a big change in their lives.  I don't know of anyone who really likes change.  Oh we adapt, we move forward, but leaving behind the comfo...
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By Ralph Gorgoglione, California and Hawaii Real Estate (310) 497-9407
(Metro Life Homes)
Another successfully closed ActiveRain referral transaction!I referred a somewhat difficult short sale listing in Arizona to fellow ActiveRain member Kat SharrockIt was a rural property located in an area with an extremely seasonal buying period.  This was from a personal referral that was the father of a very close friend of mine.  They reached out to me, but since I am not licensed in that state, I found a great referral in Kat Sharrock through the ActiveRain referral network.Suffice it to say, Kat got 'er done!Successfully closed, and the father and his family are extremely greatful because his wife passed away and it became a difficult situation to hold on to the property.Thanks for your expertise, Kat!  Ralph Gorgoglione / Realtor / HAFA Certified Short Sale FacilitatorTop 3% Realt...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
 Appraisal Woes!  I guess in the grand scheme of things I should probably count my blessings because in all my years of selling real estate I can count on one hand the number of times I have had a really bad appraisal. However, the most recent occurrence has to be the worst. There were more mistakes and implications of issues than there were statements of fact. The appraiser spent a grand total of maybe ten minutes at this property, (the seller was there) and he apparently didn’t like the property so he tore it apart. He didn’t even value it to his own comps, I think he pulled a number out of a hat and wrote it down. Needless to say, the lender has ordered a second appraisal on the property. How in the world do you get rid of bad appraisers in a market? There are some in my market that ...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
 The Good & the Bad of an Electronic Age.        Twice in the past week the residents of the White Mountains of Arizona have found out what a world without electronic devices is like.  Our main phone service provider and one of our cell service providers suffered wide spread lengthy outages.  The first affected only phone lines and internet, the second took down phone lines, internet, and one major cell service provider.  One smaller, lesser known cell provider still had service and people who used the cable company for phone and internet were okay, but those people were in the minority.  Most people in our area, including our police and fire stations, are served by a single phone service company that has a near monopoly on service in our area. I was one of the fortunate ones, my land l...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
They can't get them in on time now.  What am I referring to you ask?  Well loan docs of course.  In Arizona, our contract clearly states that clients are to be approved without conditions and loan documents are to be at the Title Company for signature three days prior to Close of Escrow.  Buyers are expected to deposit necessary funds to close and sign that day.  That so rarely happens I am actually surprised when it does.  I shudder to think what will happen after October 3rd when that time frame is actually doubled under the TRID changes.  Most of the lenders, the big banks especially, don't even send the file to underwriting until the week before closing.  Some of them have 72 hour turn-around times in underwriting and then another 48 hours to get documents printed and sent to the Ti...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
As if things are not already difficult enough… Can they make things any more difficult for Real Estate Agents to do their jobs?  In Arizona the seller is required to provide a Claims History for Insurance to the buyers within five days of an accepted offer.  One of my sellers hit a new snag today.  They called their Insurance Company to get that report sent to me as their listing agent.  They were told by their agent that they don't do that anymore that the insured need to go online to get that information.  My clients diligently followed the agent's directions, went online to get the report.  They got stumped on a couple of the questions the online portal asked them and they got kicked out of their own portal and are now locked out for 72 hours before they can try and access that infor...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
  The Bouncer!    We all know who they are.  They are those buyers who feel they don’t need anyone to help them so they bounce from agent to agent and office to office seeking what they will never find.   They cruise around the internet thinking that if they visit enough sites they will find something they haven’t seen before.  What they don’t understand is that all those sites have the same information.  It may be presented differently and the search parameters may be different, but they seek and never find exactly what they are looking for.      About a month and a half ago I was contacted by a first time homebuyer.  They had found a property on one of the portals I subscribe to and wanted information about a listing.  I looked up the listing and provided as much information as I cou...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
 The “Bad Penny” Listing   Have you ever had a listing that just wouldn’t go away?  About a year ago in essence I “fired” a seller.  Their property had been listed for a very long time and it got little activity because it was priced a bit too high and was tenant occupied.  The tenant was cooperative to an extent, but in our area we don’t always have 24 to 48 hours to give notice of a showing.  People come in to town for a day or two only and then they are gone.    After nearly three years of trying to sell the property and having a difficult out of town seller, my broker and I agreed it was time to cut that listing loose.  It wasn’t going to sell at the price listed and the seller had little room to negotiate because the property had been purchased at the top of the market.  They had t...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
Looking back on 2014 and ahead to 2015! Another year Begins!      Real estate is always unpredictable.  Every year the powers that be predict a better year.  They project, forecast, analyze, and try to figure out what is ahead in the market.  I always find the process amusing because in one article everything looks great and wonderful, and in the next, the view is far more pessimistic.  The fact is that not a single one of the projectionists have a crystal ball and the ability to predict anything.  Oh they can do polls, they can canvas agents, they can research past trends and what things look like at the end of any given year, but the fact is no one really knows what can happen in any given year.   My observations are only based on the market here in The White Mountains of Arizona.  Wh...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
  Friday Afternoon Musings. As I am sitting here at my desk this Friday afternoon doing everything I can to avoid doing what I need to do (Christmas Cards) I have been thinking back over the year.  I have heard from every corner of the country either here in the “Rain” or on Social Sites differing stories about market conditions.  Some agents say they are so busy they are running themselves ragged, while others are sitting around wondering where all the business has gone.  The publications are amusing too because one article will say everything is looking up and it is busy out there.  The next one will say, consumer confidence sinks to a new low.  When you combine all these things together it makes me wonder what is really happening out there?    In places, apparently it was a banner y...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
Is it a good time to Buy?   I got a late evening call last night from a prospect looking at a few of my listings online.  They were mostly interested in a couple of Creekside Lots I had listed but they were open to finding a home also.  During the conversation the prospect asked me if I felt this was a good time to buy.  She wondered if prices would go lower or if they were about as low as they would go, particularly on the lots she was interested in.    I explained that during the boom days those lots sold quickly and at very high prices because the community they are in is one of the few in that area that is zoned strictly for stick-built homes with paved streets and underground utilities including sewer service.  Most of this area is zoned residential but pretty much anything goes a...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
151 Expired Listings in the White Mountains Last Night! -Sandra Paulow, Associate Broker, GRI, REALTOR®  I was studying our MLS hot-sheet this morning and noticed that there were 151 listings that expired at midnight last night.  I reviewed them and there were some really nice properties on that list that should have sold this summer.  When I looked closer though I realized why they hadn’t sold, in a word “Price”. I am sure many of those sellers are sitting over their morning coffee blaming their agent because their home didn’t sell.  Few will accept that their own unrealistic expectations are the real reason that their home didn’t sell this season.   Now I will say there are probably a few agents out there who deserve their seller’s disgruntlement.  They took the listings at inflated p...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
  Safety Must be a Priority Going Forward!  In light of the recent murders, abductions, rapes, theft and robbery of listed homes, safety and security have become a top priority in the Real Estate community. The days of meeting people at homes off a sign call, hosting open houses in empty homes, jumping in the car to show property to people we don’t know needs to come to an end.  We live in a mean and desperate world and we simply cannot afford to place ourselves in these dangerous situations any longer.   We may tell ourselves, it won’t happen here, but that is not true.  Crime is everywhere these days, no place is safe.  In an increasingly desperate and distrustful society, it is only going to get worse.  I stopped doing open houses quite a long time ago.  If a seller insists on havin...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
  On Being “REAL”! Good Sunday Afternoon Everyone,  I watched a most inspiring video this week from a real estate professional that was totally real and I loved this approach to selling real estate.  The agent didn’t pull punches, there was no effort to impress, the agent just laid it out there in no uncertain terms about what they did, how they did it, and their expectations from the Seller or Buyer.  Instead of trying to be the person they thought the clients wanted them to be, the approach was straight forward and could help alleviate the public perception that Real Estate Agents are all alike and as interchangeable as a light bulb.   Let’s face it we are in a people pleasing business. We go out on listing appointments armed with our statistics and our marketing plan in the hope tha...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
Maybe you aren’t a Good Fit! I finally found the key to getting rid of the sales calls from RDC, Z, the RS, ZB, etc.  In the past couple of weeks I have been bombarded with sales calls from all the lead generating portals and I was getting tired of it.  Mostly because the leads they had to offer or the zip codes they were selling were a joke, so I decided to get even.  The first one came from RDC a couple of weeks ago and they were so excited to reach me so they could sell me three zip codes that just opened up.  Guess what, all three zip codes were at least an hour and a half away from my office.  After giving the fellow a lecture about learning to read a map before he tried to sell something, he finally figured out I was just wasting his time and gave up.    Then it was Z’s turn.  Oh...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
  Should sellers be expected to make improvements so buyers can get funding? This issue surfaces more and more as lending criteria gets tighter and tighter.  More times than I would like to count I have had a buyer come back after the inspection period is past asking for improvements their appraiser has noted and the lender feels must be done before they will fund on the buyer’s loan.  It is one thing if it is a true safety or health hazard, but if the home inspector did their job those items will have been addressed during the home inspection.  I do not think it is fair to a home seller to have the lender come back asking for improvements to the home if there is really nothing wrong with the home, just something a particular underwriter gets a burr under their saddle about. What I am ...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
I Want a Cabin in the Woods….etc.  This is a familiar refrain in my area.  Everyone comes to the White Mountains looking for that cute little cabin in the woods with Cedar or Log Siding because they like the look.  I can’t blame them, they do look cabiny and they are pretty.  What they don’t understand is the costly maintenance involved in keeping them looking nice. I just had a sale go sideways today over deferred maintenance issues on Cedar Siding.  The cabin was constructed within the last ten years, so it isn’t old. However, the sellers have not touched that siding since they bought the house.  The siding on the property had lost all ability to protect the under-sheathing on the house.  The wood was so dry the siding was dropping down in places, many of the boards had cracked and s...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
    It’s Always about Price! How many times do Real Estate Agents hear the question; “Why hasn’t my house sold?” Sellers who want to sell get frustrated when that offer doesn’t come along.  They question whether the agent is doing enough to market the home.  They question where the property is being marketed.  They question where it is being advertised.  They push for open houses which rarely produce a buyer for the home that is held open.   They accuse of us of not working hard enough to sell the property.    When a property doesn’t sell there is only one reason, price!  It can be the nicest house on the block or the worst one.  It might back up to a busy road or have a messy neighbor or one with a dozen barking dogs.  It doesn’t matter, there is only one determining factor, it is pri...
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By Sandra Paulow, REALTOR, Associate Broker, GRI, SFR
(Aspen Properties, Inc. )
    Buyers see lending requirements as an invasion of privacy, and it is!  I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago about lending issues and this is a follow up to that post.  I am convinced that many of the problems we run in to with lending is the overwhelming documentation that lenders require from our clients.  They see it as an invasion of their privacy and they fear what happens to all that financial information if they give it.  After all, these days they want to know everything about you, almost to the point of wanting to know what color your bathroom is painted and when you went to the Doctor last and what the prognosis was.  It really has gone too far in my opinion. With all we keep hearing about spying on our conversations and the rumor mill that runs wild with claims that ...
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Pinetop, AZ Real Estate Professionals