Houses in Cochise and Pima

18. May 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Real Estate · Tags:

I just posted some photos of two homes for a buyer who is moving to the area. You can see the photos by clicking the Houses link below the header photo.

The first page is of a HUD home, 4 bed, 3 bath, on acreage with a sort-of orchard or nut-tree farm along one side. More info here…10773 N Highway 191, Elfrida, AZ, 85610

The next two pages are of a home on Central Highway near McNeal, AZ. This home has been on the market for some years, now with a reduced price. 7280 N Central Hwy, McNeal, AZ

Sometimes extended time on the market can create a self-perpetuating curse for a home, sometimes unfairly. Perhaps it starts out overpriced or with a problem that should have been resolved before listing. Buyers begin to wonder what’s wrong with a home that hasn’t already been snapped-up by someone else and once that cycle sets in, the home gets stuck in a downward pricing spiral. I see some of these homes as possible opportunities. If you see something online that isn’t selling and the price seems very good, it might be well worth a second look.

It might be that house is unique in some way that puts off other buyers but makes it perfect for you. There are absolutely lovely places to live around here that are “too far” from town for some folks (13 miles? Really?), and there are people who don’t like driving on a dirt road. Or it might be that a buyer overlooks a home because it’s right in town, and doesn’t know that it’s in a quiet neighborhood. Can you see how other buyers’ preferences might benefit you? If you like it and no one else does, you might get a good deal as a result.

If you’re from out of state and you’d like more info on a home in Cochise or Pima Counties, I can have a look for you and take some more detailed photos for you. All I ask in return is that you buy through me. I’m not offering a home inspection or appraisal, just better photos than are on a typical listing, and my observations of what the home “feels” like. This last is often not mentioned when homes are listed, it’s subjective and not factual, but I think that it’s one of the most important parts. How you feel in a home is something only you will know when you are there yourself. I can only relate what I feel when I visit a listing. Maybe a home looks nice and sunny from the road, but feels like a clammy vault from inside, or looks like a fixer outside, but is cozy and happy inside. The latter might be underpriced because of low “curb appeal”, and exterior paint is cheap.

If you haven’t already guessed, I prefer rural homes with some land. But I can also find my way around Douglas, Bisbee, Tuscon and surrounding areas just fine. This isn’t the same as the diligence a buyer should do for any potential purchase (Which is to go there at different times themselves to see how things change, in town you might stop by on a Friday or Saturday night and see how noisy the neighborhood is, in the country pop by and feel how windy it is or what the noise from the nearest road is like during commuting hours.)

But it might be that we find an overlooked gem for you at a good price.

Credit Unions Are Better Places to Keep Your Money

05. November 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Real Estate · Tags:

I’ve been a credit union member since I was a small child. My father got us all accounts in a newly-formed company credit union back in the 60′s when it was being started.

The idea of a credit union is important in many ways. It’s community money, deposits get lent back out to people right in your neighborhood. When my grandfather ran a local bank many years ago, it was the same way, the money went back into the local community, and they in turn deposited profits, fostering new opportunities. My grandmother’s funeral in the 90′s was “on the house” because my grandfather had set the founder of the Funeral Home up with a loan to get started when he came back from WW II when no one else would. The owner came over to tell me personally at the funeral, it was important to him that we understood his gratitude for having been given a chance.

The situation today is that banks have been merging relentlessly for many years. You may know the folks in the local branch, but the HQ of any national chain is probably several states away from you, is concerned more with global issues than local issues. If you use your ATM card out of their network there are hefty fees for doing so. There are also fees that they charge each other when you do that, and these you also pay via other fees that big banks impose on their customers. That’s what the $5 Debit fee uproar was about, paying those unseen-by-the-consumer transfer fees between competing megaliths. Now that the furor has passed on that fee, banks are more quietly adding additional fees to checking accounts. None of my credit union accounts have “maintenance fees”. I don’t remember ever paying any fees at all.

However, banks are national in many cases, isn’t that an advantage if you travel? It used to be. Many credit unions are now part of a network called Co-op (for ATM’s) and the CU Service Centers (lobby services). So many local credit unions can now have branches all over the USA, tens of thousands of them.

So the advantages of community finance are now combined with 28,000 free ATM’s, 9000 of which take deposits, at most 7-11′s and many Costco and Walgreens, plus 6700 locations for lobby services.

There’s a certain good feeling associated with not aiding and abetting corporate malfeasance like racial targeting of subprime loans, misrepresented derivatives, illegal foreclosures, and the ever-popular awarding executive bonuses from TARP funds. For now the $5 debit card fee has been retracted. The next fee will appear, it will just be stealthier.

In Douglas there’s a branch of the American Southwest Credit Union, which also has branches around Cochise County, including Bisbee and Fort Huachuca. They will happily help me with my accounts with another credit union, and I have had great financial service wherever I go with the networks mentioned above, it really works and works everywhere.

On the other hand, there’s this story…Wells Fargo Nightmare, card cancelled, closest branch 106 miles away

And here’s one about Bank of America taking fees out of state unemployment benefits and charging recipients a fee to call customer service for help with their card…Bank of America Charges Debit Fees

 

Solar Homes as Vacation and Second Homes

26. April 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Real Estate · Tags: ,

Looking for an easy-to-care-for vacation or second home in the desert? Our agency has two off-grid homes for sale, and we can arrange for care of them and manage them when you’re not in the area.

One advantage to the Douglas area is the choices available even though you’re living out in the country. Drive toward town, arrive at AZ 80 and the choices begin: Turn east and you can explore Portal and the Chiricahuas or head into New Mexico. Turn west and hang out in famous mountain art-town Bisbee.  Or you can be shopping or noshing in Douglas (Safeway, Wal-Mart, Penney’s, lots of restaurants and small shops) in minutes from home.

You can also head south across the border into Aqua Prieta for some Mexican cuisine, or keep going and the stellar beaches of San Carlos are less than 5 hours away.

Wherever you go, just get everything on your shopping list, because once you’re back home you won’t want to leave. It is veddy-veddy peaceful out there. During monsoon the sound of the rain on the roof at night is a lullaby, with crickets and the frogs chiming in, and all year round the varying birds are up and singing at sunrise. If they wake you and you feel energetic, there’s usually a desert road to hike or bike on. You can find photos of my explorations of some of them at carl.krall.org….

No electric bill, just add residents and supplies and then relax. :^) Our agency lives off-grid, so we can answer your questions and help you settle in to the solar life. And when you’re ready to depart, no electric service to shut off.

Our two current solar homes are worth a look: One is on acreage with a creek and trees at the base of the Chiricahuas, “next door” to a vinyard. The other is an impeccably-kept home on acreage in the mountains north of Douglas. We also have parcels of nice land for sale if you want to do it yourself, and we can help with local resources.

See photos and more info on all of them at southeastazproperty.com, or call the office or Carl at 520-678-1837 for more info. If you’re visiting Douglas, we’re easy to find, just head for the tallest building, which is the historic Gadsden Hotel, and we’re right next to the main entrance. If we’re outstanding in a field somewhere, our numbers are on the office door.

 

 

Tools of the Trade: Cameras

03. April 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Real Estate

I’ve been using cameras for a long time. Over the decades it’s gotten a lot easier to make a good photo, but there are still areas where the camera relies on the photographer.

Things to consider when taking real estate photos:

-Keep the camera level side to side unless you are going for some sort of effect. Crooked horizons look slapdash and careless. Some cameras have a level in the viewfinder, but you still have to use it. Consider that your prospective buyer is going to use your photos to make a decision about seeing the house in person. Are you conveying stability or an earthquake? Pointing up or down is fine, and can be used to include more sky or land in a photo.

-Using the flash can help with detail, but often produces glare spots on glass doors and windows, and sometimes makes for sickly white lighting, bleaching out the warmth that you get from natural light. You can adjust this a bit by altering the white balance on the camera or in a RAW file, but I try to open blinds and use natural light or incandescents if available. If you turn off the flash, the shutter will stay open longer to get enough light, and you need to hold the camera very steadily or use a tripod or brace against a doorway or something solid to avoid getting a blurry shot. Taking a deep breath and pressing the button can help steady the camera. Many new cameras have anti-shake, and this can save a shot in the dark. Take lots of duplicates, so if you blur one you don’t lose a shot.

-Depth of field issues can wreck photos. To get more stuff in focus at different distances from you, the f-stop must go higher (smaller hole, like a pinhole camera, which focuses on everything). To get enough light with the aperture small, the shutter speed must be longer, which means that bracing or using a tripod will also be important if you want to avoid blur. Long DOF can help make a photo rich with detail. If you don’t have a tripod, setting your camera to use the flash can help, it will use a smaller aperture to compensate for the extra light of the flash. Conversely, short DOF can highlight one thing and hide other things in a blur if that is desired. To get short DOF, open the lens to the widest aperture and carefully focus on what you want. This is often used in portrait or fashion photography to highlight whatever it is they want to highlight, usually a product.

-Wide angle gets rid of junk, telephoto loses depth. The lower the number of the lens, the more you can pack into a photo, which is especially important inside. Wide angle also lets you include the setting in exterior shots. Someone in a cloudy dim locale may be smitten simply by some lovely blue sky in your photo.

So if you’re shopping for a camera, look at how wide the lens goes. It’s fun to zoom in on things, but what you really need is width for real estate photography. Pick up one camera and see how much fits in a photo, then compare to another. Find the lens length on the camera. The lowest number is the important one, and lower is better, more stuff will fit in the photo. So it might say 28-140 zoom lens; the 28 is the important number, if there’s a 14-100 that might be better for this work, when you’re inside more of a room will fit on a photo.

I also look for a fold-out screen on the back. I find the articulated screen invaluable for the times I don’t want my eye up to the camera while taking a photo, in many cases it would be impossible, getting a shot of a house over the top of a bush or wall or other object that happens to be perfectly in the way. It can also be useful for including yourself in a photo or taking one from waist level.

All of the photos on this site have been taken with a Panasonic G1. I highly recommend the G series, they are small for what they are, they have interchangable lenses, and the newer ones do video as well. They can be used as a point and shoot, but the settings are right there as you learn to get more out of a camera.

 

 

Silver Creek Skies

15. July 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Real Estate · Tags: ,

I’ve been collecting photos of the sky as seen in the Silver Creek area.

Passive Solar Tracker: How It Works

22. May 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Solar · Tags:

Yesterday I got curious about something. The solar panels are on a rack out behind the wood shop, and they follow the sun. I tried to find a motor or some device that was moving it, but there is nothing evident, just two trunnion bearings that the frame pivots upon, and two sets of shock absorbers to protect it from wind gusts.

I looked up the manufacturer, Zomeworks, and found this page…http://zomeworks.com/products/pv-trackers/how-trackers-work

According to a Home Power review that they link to, the material inside the frame is freon. As it expands and gasifies on the hot end, it forces the heavier liquid freon to the other end. I have noticed that it moves slowly, and that if I sight from under the center it is very close to center all day, except in the morning when it’s still cool.

The freon is in the bars at each end, each end also has a reflector to intensify the heating. The top end in the photo above is the east end, which has an auxiliary reflector to speed heating in the morning, since the panel stays facing west until the sun heats up the freon int he morning.

In any case, the system works. I came back last night and vacuumed the whole place with my Miehle vac, which is stuck on high speed, and it did fine, while also drying a load of clothes and having various lights on. I am careful about turning off lights and shutting off water, but so far it’s been no problem living off-grid here.

There are some local wildlife photos over on my personal blog…http://carl.krall.org

Living Solar

19. May 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Real Estate · Tags: ,

Maybe you’ve read about living in a solar-powered home, or have thought about what would be involved in doing so. I’ve wondered about what it’s really like, whether there would be undue hardships or deep technological learning involved.

Yesterday morning was my first one in an off-grid home. I got up, did a couple of loads of wash, made a smoothie with my 600-watt blender, and took a warm shower with great water pressure and no city chlorine in the water. I actually forgot that I was running off the panels and batteries until I went out to the wood shop to look for something and saw the array of batteries and the inverter in the corner.

I was concerned that I had overtaxed the batteries, but the inverter simply showed that it was charging, and by the time I left for work an hour or so later the light was green and showing 100%.

There are differences. One is that I tend to turn lights off more strictly than I would if connected to the grid, and the same with water, since a solar pump automatically fills the tank that’s kept cool in its own house. The light issue is helped by the way the interior is built with walls that don’t go all the way up, which allows light to spread, and skylights in the higher parts of the walls that let in a lot of natural light.

One nice feature of this particular home is that the concrete/adobe block is on the inside and the insulation is on the outside, so there’s a feeling of being in a solid house with exposed block, but there is also good insulation. It helps to be in a place in the desert where it gets very cool at night, so leaving doors and windows open once the sun sets cools the place quickly. It’s dead quiet out there, so there no need to run a fan to cover street noise.

So far I love it out there. It has a full-size fridge, nice big kitchen area, entertainment center (which is lost on me, I’d rather be out looking at the scenery from one of the porches), all the typical stuff found in a home, but no connection to the power company and no bill. Just add food and occupants.

South East AZ Real Estate

18. April 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Real Estate · Tags: ,

Welcome to my new blog about working at South East Arizona Real Estate. We are full-service in the real sense of that word. We work with homes and lots and property management in and around Douglas, Arizona, and we also do solar and off-grid homes and rural land. Now that I’m on board, I plan to expand our reach to all of Cochise County.

If you’re looking for a beautiful place to retire in or start something new, Cochise County has a variety of possibilities.

We have reborn mountain mining towns like Bisbee, re-enacting towns like Tombstone (which is one of the most-visited places in Arizona), and lots of other choices from small to medium-large, at various altitudes and attitudes. For example, our hometown of Douglas is perfect for people who want to eat lots of authentic Mexican food. Eat in town, or pop across the border into Agua Prieta for a while.

There are always periods of transition when you move to a new place, and periods of indecision. Our office was once new here as well, so we can relate and help with contacts and information to help you decide where you want to be.

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