Here in the lovely state of Arizona where we live six months of the year seven inches from the surface of the sun, we usually have what we like to call a “dry heat”  –  not unlike an oven, if you will. However, for about six blessed weeks in the middle of all this wonderful heat, we have Monsoon Season where it rains like it’s trying to catch up with Seattle’s annual precipitation totals, and our streets turn into rivers and our parks into lakes.  You can read all about it in the brochures they give out at the airport.   After one of our most recent monsoon storms, I was driving along one of the higher-elevation streets that didn’t become a river, and I noticed that on one side of the road in front of a rather fancy housing development was a row of rather mature Palo Verde trees  –  and every single one of them had been toppled over by the wind with their entire root systems exposed for all to see. (I’m sure arborists were blushing.) Based on my extensive research (three minut

Years ago when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created, we had some wacko thought that part of the job of the folks filling its ranks would be to . . . protect the consumer.  In some people’s view, this would mean that builders of new homes would no longer be able to dangle the carrot of “free” incentives if the buyer would finance the purchase through the builder’s in-house or preferred lender.  To those same people, it just made sense that the CFPB was created to even the playing field and make it so that the consumer got the very best deal available.  Well, we were wrong. Builders ARE allowed to offer incentives for using their in-house and preferred lenders despite the fact that sort of goes against the idea that the consumer is getting the very best deal available. And for most consumers, all they see is the incentive, and this computes to less money coming out of their pocket at closing  –  and they’re right (sort of).  The purpose of today’s article is si

“We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” There are multiple jokes out there with that as the punch line, but we won’t go down that path today  –  it could lead to some pretty dark and/or inappropriate places, and this is a family show.  I’m not down on the government, and that’s not the point of this week’s newsletter, but this is a cautionary note to all of you out in real estate land about a government program here in Arizona called Pathway to Purchase  –  I’m sure each state has a similar catchy-named program. For those who qualify for P2P (we even have a cool acronym, right?), they can get up to 10% of the purchase price or $20,000 (whichever is less) FREE to be applied to the down payment and closing costs. Bring it on!  The qualifying individual(s) can have an income up to $92,984 (I’m sure that oddly specific number comes from some pointy-headed individual deep in the bowels of our state’s bureaucracy), and the purchase price can go up to $371,936 (Mr. or M

All I wanted was something to drink, nothing more. It was a warm summer afternoon, and I’d been walking what seemed like a million miles  – that might be a slight bit of hyperbole  – to visit the sights of a well-known city here in this great country of ours.  As my thirst was getting the better of me, I happened upon a nationally known fast-food restaurant that was literally across the street from a huge tourist attraction  – not only was the location a prime one, there were no other fast-food restaurants nearby so competition was next to nothing.   When I stopped in, it was close to lunch time, so the restaurant was understandably busy with a mix of locals and tourists  – the line was one of the longest I’d ever seen for this particular “brand”.  As I was waiting to place my order, I noticed that there were four or five registers mounted at the counter, but the manager only had two of the registers running. That seemed odd.   The person in front of me in line had jus

When I was a young whippersnapper, I played a game with my fellow whippersnappers  – both boys and girls  – called Telephone Line.  I’m sure most of you have played this game in one form or another, whether it was called “Telephone  L ine” or something else.  You would sit in a circle  – the more people the better  – and one person would start the game by whispering a phrase like “my dog has fleas” into the ear of the person to her/his right (or left, depending on your political leanings).  The person in whose ear the phrase is initially whispered turns to the next person in the circle and repeats that phrase in a whisper, and the game follows in that manner until the phrase has been passed to the last person in the circle.  At that point, the final person in the circle repeats out loud the phrase as she/he understood it.   Ninety-nine times out of one hundred,  the  original phrase changes  rather dramatically through repeated retellings usually due to poor hearing, muffed wh

According to the US Census Bureau  – that bunch who make every party worth attending  – the homeownership rate for the first quarter of this year is 64.2%.  In comparing that number against the same time last year, they stated, “The homeownership rate of 64.2% was not statistically different from the rate in the  first quarter 2017 (63.6%).”  While they may not find a .6% increase to be “statistically different”, I beg to differ.   According to this same bunch of party animals at the US Census Bureau, there are over 251 million people living here in the United States over the age of 18 years old.  When you multiply that number by .6%, you get over $1.5 million MORE people who became homeowners.  I’d say that’s VERY significant.   Before any of you get all technical and wonky on me by saying, “Well, sure, 64.2% is a pretty great number, but that means that there’s still 35.8% of us who aren’t homeowners  – and when you multiply that number by the adult population of the U