A Griffith Listing

Real Estate Services by Jon Griffith

Handy Man Cools Off The Competition

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(Note: Please know that I am an experienced DIY guy and have lived my entire life tearing into systems to figure out how they work.  I would never suggest that you attempt to repair any of your home’s systems without consulting a professional and must tell you in advance that you may be held liable in the future if your work is the cause of failure.)

If you live in a hot part of the country, you probably have an air conditioner.  Air conditioners have moving parts, and those parts are subject to wear and tear.  Hiring a service technician is usually the first thing that you do when you have a problem, and many times it is well worth the expense.  HVAC companies can and will charge a hefty price to repair problems with your A/C unit, and rightly so.  Think about it.  You’re calling them to alleviate the pain of a very hot home, and they’re out driving all day to homes that have no air conditioning.  Who’s uncomfortable now?

Recently, a friend of mine experienced a slight problem with her A/C unit.  It was making a  buzzing noise and no air was blowing.  For those of us who have ever played with a TYCO race set as a child, or an electric train set, we all know that when something electric has a buzz but doesn’t do what it should, it’s probably stuck.

Sure enough, after a $79.00 service call the results were in.  A fan motor was stuck.  What perplexes me is the solution that was offered to pacify the problem.  Apparently the technician told her that all she needed to do was unplug the unit, reach into the blower fan, move it a bit, then press the reset button.

The reset button?  There is no reset button, as I later discovered.  It turns out that the “reset button” that the service technician was speaking of was the safety kill switch that’s disengaged when the lid to the unit is removed.  It’s not a reset button.  Based on what my friend had told me, there was no longer a problem, as I had not yet explored the unit to see what was actually wrong…

…until today.  She called me frantically to let me know that her air conditioner wasn’t working again, and the solution that she had learned about from the HVAC company wasn’t working.  So, I came by to discover what I had suspected all along.  The motor was stuck.  In fact, it had completely seized.

The anatomy of an air conditioner is very basic.  Gas is compressed into a liquid.  Compression causes friction, friction equals heat.  The fan outside of your house helps vent the heat into the atmosphere.  When the liquid evaporates, it cools quickly, just like sweat evaporating from your body during exercise.  The cold liquid which travels to the unit inside your home is piped through copper tubes; very cold copper tubes.  Blowing air over those cold tubes cools the air in your house.

Blower Assembly, Fan, Shroud, and Motor
Blower Assembly, Fan, Shroud, and Motor

The blower, a simple fan, shroud, and electric motor are the components that are responsible for moving this air.

Electric motors fail over time and eventually they stop spinning because their bearings get stuck or because the motor burns out.  We called up the same service company and they quoted us $650.00 to replace the old broken motor with a new one.  Too much for my taste.  Especially since I had experienced the same type of problem with a condenser fan on my air conditioner years ago, which only cost me $89.00 to repair because I did it myself.

For this problem, within 4 hours I had disassembled the blower (an entire 3 parts), driven to my local distributor to purchase a new electric motor and capacitor, and re-installed the new parts.  My total cost for the repair was $127.00 plus 4 hours of my time and gas.  I usually consider the education part of my time value.

All in all, I’d say $50/hr is a great price compared to what would have been $162.50/hr by the HVAC company, and now I know how to do it.

Lewis Black and Olympic Swimming

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Lewis Black has repeatedly made a point about television networks streaming information that’s distracting to the viewer on the bottom of the television screen, which I fully agree with. As a generation X’er, I was around during the days where there were no fancy graphics on the screens and the country was riveted to only 3 TV Stations. It seems that the plethora of news that we are bombarded with IS in fact distracting us. True, the visual effects are quite fantastic, but they certainly aren’t necessary to convey the message. After all, it is the message that we’re looking for.

What does this have to do with the Olympic games?  Well, I’m a swimming fanatic, and I love watching all of the swimming events, naturally.  In swimming, like most other sports, the most important moments are the start and the finish.  I don’t recall what the 2004 Olympic Games coverage was like, so this may be an old argument, but I’m finding that the lane graphics that show the name of the competitor through the entire start is detracting from the dramatic entrance of the athlete into the water.  I really like seeing how well they start the race.

Please, NBC and other stations, STOP cluttering the screen with fancy graphics.  Next thing we know there will be product placement in just the wrong places and nobody will be able to enjoy the raw spectacle they tuned in to see.

Do you agree?  Disagree?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Weekly Market Update

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As usual, the graphs below, organized by week, outline the activity in the market since the beginning of the year.

Inventory for all of ARMLS stands at 54,114 homes with an average asking price of $411,671. The average sales price over this period was $245,206. The average asking price for properties that sold during the week is actually lower than the sales price.

Homes are selling on average in 101 days. Based on our current inventory and rate of closing, we are looking valleywide at a 9 month inventory on average.

Weekly Market Update

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All stats in the weekly update are based on all residential listings and are compiled using data from ARMLS records. I do not guarantee that these statistics are 100% accurate, but they do represent the market trends accurately.

All of the statistics are represented graphically, recorded for each week of the year starting with week one, January 1 – 7.

Buyers Beware: Time Is Running Out

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For years and years the real estate market has been up and down, up and down, a cycle that repeats itself every 7 to 14 years on average.  SEVEN TO FOURTEEN YEARS!!!  That’s long enough to start a family and have kids in elementary school AND high school.  Remember how long 4 years was when you were young?

Are you renting?  Are you living at home, just out of college?  Consider your options now because time is running out.  You don’t want to be someone who’s looking back

What is the market condition?

Today, the market is in distress.  We experienced unnatural gains in 2005 and as a result, we had our second bubble of the new millennium.  The first bubble was the outlandish condition of the stock market, a market where people invested in ideas, not in solid products.  The second bubble was the same but with homes.  People investing in ideas like.  The idea that you could purchase a home for $100,000 and sell it for $200,000.  Some people were lucky enough to buy at the right time and sell at the right time, but nobody knew it was going to go down the way it has.

What do I mean when I say that the market is in distress?  In 2003, people were buying homes on adjustable rate mortgages because the interest rates were so low.  In 2005 as people saw the prices of real estate skyrocket, they did one of two things.  They either sold their property, or they pulled money out on interest only loans with adjustable rates to buy cars, boats, other homes (bad timing,) you name it.  A remodeling and new builds went nuts.  Those who sold probably had a legitimate reason to sell and weren’t doing it because they were fearful of a market bubble bursting.  Most of us asked the same question: “If I sell now, where am I going to go?” Read more about retirement investing at https://moneypacers.com Your Guide To Financial Stability .

Here’s why there is so much distress.  Those adjustable rate mortgages were typically 5 years fixed, then adjustable after that.  If you purchased your home in 2003 on an adjustable rate mortgage, then you pulled money out of your house for who knows what, you are probably experiencing hard times now because your mortgage has expired and has adjusted by around 2 points, and now you can’t afford your payment.  To top it off, your home is worth less than you owe the bank and you can’t pay.  Foreclosure is imminent, you must sell short.

Think of Owning as a Long Term Proposition

Before you own, understand that you need to come to terms with the way the market swings.  If you play the stock market and you have been successful trading short term trades, then perhaps you’ll do well managing real estate the same way, but if you cannot handle the swings, don’t buy real estate.  Buying today means owning for a longer time.

Owning a home builds long term wealth.  As you pay your mortgage, every month a little more of that house becomes yours.  Every year, on average, the value of your investment increases.  History shows that the market always increases over time, barring natural disaster or other completely unexpected anomalies.  Scottsdale is quite solid in its growth history.

What Does the Future Hold?

Nobody knows.  Isn’t that comforting.  The only thing we see are patterns, and right now, the patterns of the past tell us that even though our circumstances are unique compared to other times the market has been in distress, we are not spiraling towards our doom.  In 2008, the number of homes sold has increased.  In 2008, the number of foreclosed properties has increased.  By the end of 2009, when we have a new president in office, and people have cooled down, and interest rates have begun to climb, consumers will be more confident about spending, and more money will be invested in long term real estate holdings.

If you find yourself watching this come true and you haven’t purchased your first home by then, it will be too late.

Start looking today.  Downpayment Assistance is going away.  Think about ownership rather than preference.  Buy something! Find a home that might not be ideal and start building ownership so you can look back in 10 years and say, “Thank you…I am so glad you helped me begin building my wealth when you did, because I would have missed out.”

What Does Escrow Mean?

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Susan Gruenling in an article entitled Open Sesame, outlined what it means to “open escrow.”  As I was reading it, I was thinking about what the word Escrow really means and where it comes from, so I did a little research.

If you ever learned Spanish, you probably remember that the verb to write is escribir.  A desk is an escritorio.  The word Escrow, according to The Online Etymology Dictionary is basically a scroll that is a deed delivered to a third person to hold until a future condition is satisfied.

In real estate transactions in Arizona, the escrow is the period during which the Title/Escrow company (the third person) holds the proceeds from the sale of a home until both the buyer and seller sign their documents at which point the funds are transferred from the buyer or buyer’s lender to the seller and/or lienholders of the property being sold.

In other businesses, escrow companies are responsible for securing the funds from the buyer and holding those funds until a future condition is satisfied.  When the conditions are met, the escrow company releases the funds to the seller.  An example would be the process of selling a vehicle or other high dollar luxury item, like a piano, over the internet.  If you have a car to sell, and someone across the country whom you do not know wants to buy it, you would most likely involve an escrow company to ensure that you get your money, and they get their car.