A Griffith Listing

Real Estate Services by Jon Griffith

You are here: Home / Archives for time

Wanting YOU to Know How It Works

by

One evening, while expressing my thoughts in a small group, it was brought to my attention that I take a relatively evangelical approach to life, and I don’t necessarily mean in the religious sense.  This was contrary to my own self-perception.  I had expressed, perhaps hoping to not be branded an “evangelist” due to the negative connotations, that I didn’t believe I was evangelical.  I was corrected.

I think I am, and the evidence is here and in many other places to prove it, else why would I take the time to write, in hopes of influencing people I care about, like you.

Real estate is a constantly shifting landscape that has many variables and can be quite complicated.  It is my goal to help you understand how to make the right decisions at the right times based upon the mountain of information that comes your way every day, and to make sure the information you receive is relevant and up to date.

The following link will take you to one of the best resources that I have at my disposal to measure the market.  It’s an exclusive tool that I pay for that provides you with a chart that will help you make better real estate decisions.  Take a look, play around, and if you need some guidance, let me know and I can help you interpret the information you see.

Days of Inventory

 

I hope you’re having an awesome day!

 

 

 

It’s Mostly About the Asking Price

by

Supply and demand is a powerful economic force that has many dynamic variables that affect consumers and suppliers.

When it comes to selling a home, ultimately, it comes down to the price. There’s a supply of homes on the market, each supplied by a single owner (for the most part) and represented by a myriad of brokerages competing to be the best at what they do.

It’s different than a company that produces the same product over and over again. Create a widget, and the number of widgets compared to the number of widgets demanded plays a huge role in determining market value of that widget. Please go and read stockpair review at gobinaryoptions.net.

Real estate is different, however. In a widget store, the location of the widget doesn’t affect the retail price of the widget. In real estate, one builder could build the same house in two different locations and the demand will be for the location before the house itself.

This is not always true, but is for the most part.

When you ask more than the market will bear, in consideration of the competing properties and their show quality, you’ll have a hard time selling.  When you price a property just right, you tend to sell it much faster than the competition.  Often it doesn’t matter what you’re buying so much as it matters where you’re buying it. Any home can be remodeled to maximize its value in its location.  Tear it down, re-build.

 

 

Real Estate Update as of March 2015

by

Inventory is down, and as long as demand driven by re-bound buyers (people who sold their homes during the mortgage crisis who can now qualify) are taking advantage of low interest rates remains the same, that only means prices increase.

March showed us more closings than any other single month in the entire year 2014 and pending sales are also up.

As always, the media is behind the 8-ball on reporting and only now will be telling us that the real estate market is hot. If a home is priced right, it goes rather quickly, and this is coming from first-hand experience in the trenches with buyers who are having a hard time negotiating contracts with sellers. Sellers control the market right now.

If you want it, you need to be able to jump to action quickly, which means you need your financing in place before you even think about buying.

Property Appreciation Over the Past 14 Years

by

California_home_Prices

We all know that we experienced what economists would call an “anomaly” between 2004 and 2011, and as a result, thousands of people who were adversely affected by it have developed a particular point of view concerning the value of real estate and it’s viability as an investment.  Remember that time?  Prices shot through the roof, then the whole market “crashed.”

Savvy investors understand that their wealth is built over time, and strange occurrences in the market can be averaged over time to reflect common, long-term patterns.

You may often hear from real estate agents that the average rate of appreciation in the Greater Phoenix Metro Area ranges between 4-7% annually.  That doesn’t apply in every area of the valley, but that’s why they call it an average.

Appreciation is calculated year over year using a rather complicated formula.  Determine a single year’s appreciation is simple, but in order to figure out a pattern of growth over a long period of time dating back many years, this formula must be applied.

A Sampling of One Area of Scottsdale

The area I’ve chosen to highlight lies between Hayden Road and Pima Road, South of McDonald, and North of Chaparral Road.  It contains approximately 2,636 parcels according to the tax records, which are public.

In this area, from the year 2000 through the end of 2014, there were 1,132 closed sales recorded in the Arizona MLS, starting with an average price per square foot in the year 2000 of $87.16 through a final average price per square foot of $172.13 in 2014.

Remember, individual home values should not be calculated based solely on price per square foot.  There are many variables that will improve or hurt the value of an individual home.

Through the mortgage crisis, the highest average $/Foot was in November of 2005 at $223.00, but despite the massive bubble that we all lived through, over the past 14 years, the average rate of real estate appreciation rounds out at 4.98% annually.

Despite the chaos, we have found a relatively normal appreciation rate based on past performance.  This is an important number because it is the number any investor would use to determine what the potential future value of a home might be worth (sans the crystal ball that we all have in our back pocket.)

This average can only be applied to the area that I’ve sampled.  It’s not general.  It’s specific.  It takes time to calculate this information, but it’s important to know what to expect when you compare the value of your home to the current rate of inflation.

Your investment in real estate starts with your equity in the property you own.  Whether you pay cash for a property and own 100% of the home or you make payments whereby a portion of your payment is added to your equity, you can apply an average rate of appreciation to that equity to forecast what it will be worth in the future.

If there’s an area you’d like to have analyzed, I’ll be happy to do that for you.  Contact me today.

How Real is Too Real?

by

Since first learning about Gary Vaynerchuck, a date, which at this point, has completely escaped my brain, I’ve repeatedly come across stories of individuals who have adamantly stated that transparency is golden.  This inspired me to be transparent, and I wrote about how transparent I was actually going to be, and that fizzled out like a fat balloon full of chocolate rippling its way through a factory of wayward sailors smoking cigars stuffed with tuna.  In other words, I failed at being transparent, and I continue to do so to a degree.

I’m a 41 year old guy right now.  Who’s to say when you’ll actually read this, but that’s the case at the moment.  I’m not married yet, I don’t have any children, and I’m in a career that utilizes about the same percentage of my gifts and talents as the human utilizes his brain.

I have ADD, despite what you may believe to be a bunch of crap, and it’s poison to my ability to function on a daily basis.  It takes the extroversion that God gave me and makes in introverted.  It builds walls.  It creates a barrier to success through unexplained and misunderstood behavior.  It makes me think in ways that cause me to believe I’m unlike everyone else, and while I see what “appropriate” is, I don’t want to live in the land of “appropriate.”  I need an outlet.  I need a way to be me.  I need a way to be who I am and still put food in my belly and provide for a household.

Or maybe I need to abandon everything that the world tells me that I should achieve and pave my own path with goals that don’t line up with what we (and by “we” I mean “everyone but me”) expect to be the “norm.”

How real is too real?  How much truth can we speak about ourselves in our current sphere of influence…the truths that we know about ourselves that nobody else knows, without causing a complete melt-down in our community structure?  A pastor I knew once said that “if you knew some of the thoughts that went through your neighbor’s head, you wouldn’t want to be their neighbor anymore.”  What about those thoughts?  What would happen if we actually expressed them?  What if I actually pushed you off of the top of Camelback mountain?

There are people who operate with reckless abandon in this life.  They say what they want to say regardless of the consequences.  How do these people get along in life?  Are they TOO transparent?  Are they angry?  Are they oblivious to what’s “appropriate?”  Some days I just don’t care what others think.  I have respect for the fact that they have thoughts and opinions, but they ultimately don’t matter.  To me, there is only one thing that matters and that is that God loves me and made me and will support me and love me regardless of my errors and omissions (real estate reference, sorry about that.)

I want so desperately to be 100% real, but in testing the waters with this “transparency” idea, I have received less positive feedback than negative feedback and I struggle to understand why.  I’m hesitant to be as real as I really feel like I need to be, for the very reason I feel I need to be hesitant.

“Some things are best left un-said.”

I have a miserable spirit of discernment when it comes to what I should or should not say, but tonight, I feel like I need to say some things, so I’m going to get real, and try some genuine transparency.

Earlier today I was texting with Melanie Mitchell (a relatively common activity done mostly on a device we call “smart”) about how I felt.  I don’t have a problem expressing my feelings.  So I told her that I was feeling rejected today:

“Not by you. Not by family. Just in general.  It’s probably me being hard on myself for not walking the walk I talk sometimes.  I’m having difficulty getting motivated to work today.  On a lighter note…etc., etc…”

I had no idea the shit was going to hit me in the face before it hit the fan.  Today, it seemed as though nothing went the way it was expected to go.  The events of the day had me doubting my career, my time at Crossfit, and ultimately, my life.  I’ve been through tough times before.  I’ve experienced heartache in the past in many ways.  I’ve struggled with thoughts of suicide before, and have recovered.  No need to call any hotlines, I’m okay and will continue to be.  BUT, there are times when I feel like giving up.  Quite honestly, a few of the things I enjoy in life the most are the most likely things to be at the bottom of the list of priorities.

I’ve heard about 100 times in the past 5 years, that I sound like the Moviefone guy and that I should be in radio.  I was told by Kevin, the owner of Cactus Crossfit who can also will provide special expedia coupons and on one of my first consultations 18 months ago before I was a Crossfit junkie, that I missed my calling as an Olympic weight lifter.  I was then told by the daughter of the architect who designed the Optima on Scottsdale Road that I have the perfect body type to be an Olympic lifter.

I sell real estate.

I was in the Phoenix Boys Choir for 4 years, and I traveled the far east and most of the U.S.A. singing goofy little songs that mean a whole hell of a lot more to me than the value of their actual sound (sorry, some of them just suck.)  While in high school I used to acquire by questionable means various types of Kodak 35mm slide film for all of the annual church trips we would attend and then I’d put together a musically …  dammit.  I’m tired of how long it takes to get a point across.

I love making music.  I love So You Think You Can Dance.  I love stories of people overcoming adversity.  I love financial freedom.  I love my friends and family.  I do a shitty job of letting them know it.  I do a mediocre job of letting my clients know that I care about them.  I love shooting video.  I love editing.  I love the creative process.  I have no idea how to make a living doing what I love to do.  Teaching is primary motivation that I have when it comes to helping people with real estate.

Over the past 4 years, I’ve had the opportunity to help people prevent foreclosure through the sale of their home.  The primary focus was always preventing foreclosure.  The secondary task was selling the home.  The home sale is easy.  Keeping a client who is short selling happy is also easy because of the type of tasks that are involved in making that short sale happen.  Agents shied away from short sales because they were “difficult.”  I find them to be very easy because 99% of the time, the seller has checked out.  They don’t care anymore about their house and they have no emotional tie to it anymore.  They’ve thrown their hands up and handed the problem over to someone else.  Maybe I have a savior complex.  Maybe I’m just good at calling “bullshit” to their lenders.  Through the short sale process, there was greater emphasis on helping the seller understand what was happening and how they were going to navigate the short sale.  It was where I was able to exercise my ability to teach.

I don’t want to be a “teacher” of children.  Don’t get me wrong.  What I really enjoy is showing people how to get better at something.  Showing people that there’s a new way to do something, or if it’s not exactly new, it may be new to them, so it would be great to be able to help them learn it.  I am finding that I’m struggling with the “normal” day to day tasks…and…CUT.

Was that good?  Do we need another take?  CRAP!  Seriously?  The film ran out 20 minutes ago?  Son of a…

Spending Your Time Struggling to Flail

by

You’re standing there wearing a harness with a slacked bungee cord attached to your back and you don’t even know it.  That cord holds you inside a circle with a radius that you haven’t yet discovered.  That radius will soon be made known to you as your currently perceived boundary of personal limitations.  One day you wander far enough from the center of your own world to feel the tension build.  You realize you need to put more energy into moving further from the stagnant world of comfort you live in and the bungee cord starts to tighten up, holding you in a pattern.  As you struggle, you get stronger, but at the same time, while attempting to break through the barrier and be released from the grips of the bungee cord that’s holding you at bay, you fear the few seconds beyond the release as you know that you will be completely out of control until you situate yourself.  Stronger and stronger you become as you persist, tugging, and pulling, hoping that the cord will finally break and you’ll go flying out into a new realm, expanding your reach, enlarging the radius of your world.  You’ve grown accustomed to the angle of attack, the pressure on your shoulders, the burn in  your thighs, until suddenly, the cord snaps sending you tumbling forward towards a new horizon.  Wham, crash, bang, scrape.  Again, another SNAP as the end of the bungee cord whips you from behind, reminding you of where you were and making it evident that even though you’re somewhere new, and your world just got bigger, breaking through was a struggle followed by a short period of being completely out of control.
That moment when we realize we are stuck somewhere and that we need to get out is often enough to foreshadow the impending “snap” of the past which will inevitably send us flailing into the unknown feeling completely out of control.  More often than not we perceive our current circumstances to be less painful than change, but the truth of the matter is, change is good, and yes it is painful, but it leads to a bigger and better world for those who dive in and make it happen.

Related Posts

Zemanta