Fads come and go, certainly, but you can’t always tell the difference in the moment between a fad and a trend  –  because refusing to adapt to the trends can be limiting . . . if not disastrous.  Let me share a couple of examples where failing to see where things were headed didn’t turn out well.   An engineer presented the idea of a “filmless camera” to the executives at Kodak back in 1975, but they laughed him to scorn.     In 2012, Kodak was forced to file for bankruptcy because they failed to adapt to the digital world.     We all know Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, but how many of us recognize the name of Ron Wayne (and, no, that’s not Batman’s brother)?     Ronny was the third founding member of Apple, and he sold his 10% stake in the company in 1976 for $1500.     His shares would now be worth over $50 billion.     WAY BACK in 2000, Reed Hastings approached Blockbuster and offered to sell ...

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 blush...

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 (sor...

“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 t...

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 se...

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...

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 homeow...

For those of us who are complete nerds and sat on the edge of our seats to see if The Fed would decide to raise the overnight lending rate again in their most recent meeting, we were both let down and excited  – no change, of course.  For those of us who aren’t quite so nerdy but do, in fact, care about  what interest rates are doing and will be doing, I wanted to take this moment and interject a little . . . calm.  Let’s take a look at a handful of things, okay? While interest rates today are creeping in the upper 4s to lower 5s, please remember that back in 1981 ( yes , I realize many of you were not even born, but I’m not asking for a show of hands) interest rates peaked just over  18.5% .  Yes, you read that correctly  – about FOUR TIMES the rate we’re dancing with at the mortgage disco today.   The average price of a new home back in 1981 was $83,000.  On a fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage for such a h...

Real estate agents and home buyers alike are feeling the squeeze from the lack of homes on the market.  Don’t despair!  For both real estate agents and home buyers, there’s a great untapped source for finding deals before they ever hit the market: your lender.  If any of you are a bit confused by what I mean when I say “your” lender, I mean . . .  w ell, us.   How do we do this, you ask?  Two words: equity watch.  For the real estate agent who helped their client buy a home, say, seven years ago, we let them know when their client has reached a certain level of equity in their home and prompt the agent to give their client a call with the good news.  It’s a good excuse for them to call, catch up, deliver the great news, and see if their client is ready to sell their home and either upgrade or downsize, depending on their station in life.  Statistics have shown that almost 70% of people sellin...

With my friend’s permission, I’m including an excerpt from a humor column he wrote a few years back.  I have a point, I promise, and I’ll make it below.   All  told, I believe there are at least 764 shades of the color blue that are completely indistinguishable to my eyes, but my wife has the innate ability to differentiate each and every one.   Stranger  still, when I tell her that Cerulean and Celestial look identical to me, she’ll say things like, “Oh, come on.   The  Cerulean has way more red in it, and the Celestial tends to be more yellow. ”   How can “blue” be red or yellow?   Aren’t  we talking about the three primary colors, the basic building blocks of all other colors? I would like to say that this truly shouldn’t matter to me, but I just spent my afternoon painting an entire wall Blue #429 – it has a name, I’m sure, but I dare not mention it for fear that one of you out there will ...

More than a couple of years ago, I witnessed something that makes me laugh and cringe at the same time.  Having lunch at a local restaurant, I spied a real estate agent and a loan originator having what I would characterize as a “first date”. I couldn’t help but overhear little snippets of their conversation, and as far as I could tell, things were going relatively well . . . at least until the agent asked the LO this question: “So, do you like to sit at open houses with agents?”  I immediately looked to the LO’s face awaiting the response.  I didn’t need to hear another single word coming out of the LO’s mouth because his face said everything:  you would have thought the agent had asked him if he enjoyed bobbing for apples in a pool of acid judging by the look on his face.  While his face was communicating complete revulsion, his lips said, “Yes, of course.”  And that’s when I looked over at the agent’s face to see, ...