Another Boost for Our Housing Market

Once again, Tucson is on a list of the best housing markets in the country. Fiserv Case-Shiller says Tucson is among the top 15 U.S. cities for projected increase in home values in the next five years. They are predicting 7.9% annualized home value appreciation for Tucson from 2012 to 2017. The projected national average home price increase is 3.3% over the next five years.

If you exclude the cities with horrible climates, or insane home prices, we're number one, I'd say.

Only Santa Fe has a lower unemployment rate than ours, which is 7.5%. National average is 8.1%.

Johanna Skibsrud

My fabulous client Johanna Skibsrud will be at Antigone Books, 411 N 4th Avenue, promoting her second book on Friday, March 29 at 7:00 PM. The reading will be followed by refreshments and a question and answer session. This is from the flyer promoting the event:

Join us for a literary short story collection double header with Johanna Skibsrud, author of This Will Be Difficult to Explain (Norton, $14.95) and Jamie Quatro, author of I Want to Show You More (Grove, $24.00). Skibsrud’s collection of masterful stories introduces a cast of characters experiencing life-defining moments that weave throughout their everyday lives. Time and again they find themselves confronted with what they didn’t know they didn’t know, at that point of intersection between impossibility and desire. Her first novel, The Sentimentalists, won the Scotiabank Giller prize, Canada’s most prestigious literary award.

John Melillo

Just as cool as his wife Johanna Skibsrud (see post above), my fabulous client John Melillo is creating a buzz as singer/guitar player of Algae & Tentacles. Is that a marvelous name or what? Check out this review in the Tucson Weekly

3141 E 28th Street

This colorful home is a visual delight. Cozy and sweet.

 Large family room is currently used as a third bedroom. Mature desert landscaping and an orange tree. The back yard is enclosed by a fence and block wall for privacy.

Two room shed with electricity and a workshop. Laundry room off the carport.

Evaporative cooler is about three years old per owner. The inviting front porch welcomes you home.

Only three miles to UofA and downtown on the Golf Links Parkway bike route.

Just six blocks to Reid Park, where you can enjoy concerts, theater, festivals, dog park, golf, baseball, zoo and recreation center with pool. Our City parks are nationally recognized for excellence. This is the affordable urban life style everyone's talking about. Get your place in the sun now. Sold May 14, 2013 for the incredibly low price of $77,000.

Rainbow

I love it when it rains while the sun shines brightly. This was actually a double rainbow, but it faded before I could capture it. There are plenty more where that come from during this lovely winter rainy season

New Down Payment Assistance Program

A new down payment assistance program offers down payment grants to qualified home buyers in Tucson and Pima County. The buyer's income must be under $65,500 and the buyer needs a credit score of at least 640. The house doesn't have to be a vacant foreclosure like that cumbersome Neighborhood Stabilization Program grant, and the house can be anywhere in Pima County, including the City of Tucson.

To see whether you qualify, please call loan officer extraordinaire Catherine Ellinwood at Fairway Independent Mortgage. 520-954-1907. Or email her at cellinwood@fairwaymc.com.

What's a REALTOR®?

Many people use the word Realtor as a synonym for real estate agent. I was surprised to learn that only 30% of the real estate agents in Arizona are Realtors. Most real estate agents are in sole proprietorships or small companies where they have little oversight and training. In Tucson, the largest companies require that their agents be Realtors.

Why does this matter? Realtors (or REALTORS® as the National Association of Realtors wants us to spell it) have sworn to uphold the 17 page Realtor Code of Ethics. Eighteen years ago this March, I actually had to stand up in a room with one hundred other new agents, raise my right hand, and swear to uphold the Code of Ethics.We need to take a refresher course in the Code of Ethics every four years when we renew our real estate licenses.

This Code is over 100 years old, and has been updated to keep up with changes in the business and technology. I think these are the two most important paragraphs:

The term REALTOR® has come to connote competency, fairness, and high integrity resulting from adherence to a lofty ideal of moral conduct in business relations. No inducement of profit and no
instruction from clients ever can justify departure from this ideal.

In the interpretation of this obligation, REALTORS® can take no safer guide than that which has been handed down through the centuries, embodied in the Golden Rule, “Whatsoever ye would that others should do to you, do ye even so to them.”

Oh, by the way, it's pronounced just the way it is spelled, not Reel-lah-ter!