Range pricing was invented in a rapidly changing market where it was hard to pin down a value, but you knew it was somewhere between X and Y, with market value somewhere in the middle. Used properly, I’m okay with that. You can also use range pricing as a marketing tool, especially if you think market value for your home is just over a common limit that home buyers search for. For example, if I’m fairly sure a home’s value is between $255k and $265k, I might range price it from $250k-$265k to make sure that those people only searching up to $250k see that house when they search for homes online.

However, when I see a $50k price range spread on a $250k house, in a community of very similar homes with plenty of comparable sales, then there’s something very wrong. On that kind of house in that price band, you can narrow down value to a range much smaller than $50k.

All the seller is promising to do is accept or counter offers received within that range - which doesn’t obligate a home buyer to make an offer within that range. As with all homes, we’ll do our own market research, decide on a probable value, and make offers accordingly.

Answer: Whichever way you’re most comfortable with.

I like to discuss negotiating styles with my clients before we get too far along in either the home buying or home selling process. Some folks are very aggressive, and aren’t happy with the result unless each party has gone back and forth several times with counter offers. Some folks want to make one offer and be done with it.

For you to be happy with the outcome of your home negotiations, I need to make sure that I know how you want me to negotiate on your behalf. You want to be hard-line aggressive? We can do that. Is this the one you have to have and you’re prepared to step up and take it? We can do that too. It’s all your choice.

You’ll still get my advice and my take on the situation, of course. Over the past years as a real estate agent here in Tucson, I’ve gotten pretty good at reading the situation, and usually have some kind of idea as to what will or will not work. But I think it is important that you’re happy with the process, regardless of the outcome. Just another thing you ought to be discussing with your agent.

Occasionally, I have a client who falls in love with the first home we see, but doesn’t trust that choice, thinking, how can I know if it’s the right one if I haven’t seen everything else?

Here’s what I know after showing thousands of homes, in every part of Tucson, to many, many home buyers: Not everyone has that "A-HA!" moment right when they walk in the door.  Chances are, you’ll have a good attitude when you walk in, and like what you see.  And that feeling grows as you tour the rest of the home.  But because there was no flash of light, no sudden insight the minute you stepped into the house, you’re not sure if this is the right one. 

So here’s what we do: we go see a couple more homes.  And then we’ll go back to the first one.  And if it feels right, if it feels comfortable, if it seems even better after seeing the others, chances are, you’ve got a winner.

And on the plus side, I’ve likely already checked out a good portion of the homes that meet your criteria, so we’re hopefully only seeing the best of the best to start with.  So it’s okay to fall in love with the first home, and it’s okay to be unsure about that.  Getting you to a place where you can make comfortable decisions is what I do - and we can get there.

Usually - not important.

In Pima County, home sales are public record, which means that companies can take a feed of those records, see that you just bought a house, for how much, and send you a bunch of junkmail, offering you loans or refinances and whatnot.  By and large, you can ignore this stuff.

However - it’s worth at least a quick look to make sure that the mail is really junk and not your existing lender telling you that they’ve sold your loan to some other company.  Many times, the company you make your monthly mortgage payment to changes fairly quickly after you buy a home, so you need to watch for a letter from your existing company, and a letter from the new loan servicing company with your payment coupons.

Because you don’t want to be digging through 3 days of trash to find that payment coupon you ripped into pieces without even opening the envelope, so that you can tape it all back together and mail in your mortgage payment to the new loan servicing company when you realize your loan has been transferred.  Not that I’d know from experience or anything.

Usually - not important.

In Pima County, home sales are public record, which means that companies can take a feed of those records, see that you just bought a house, for how much, and send you a bunch of junkmail, offering you loans or refinances and whatnot.  By and large, you can ignore this stuff.

However - it’s worth at least a quick look to make sure that the mail is really junk and not your existing lender telling you that they’ve sold your loan to some other company.  Many times, the company you make your monthly mortgage payment to changes fairly quickly after you buy a home, so you need to watch for a letter from your existing company, and a letter from the new loan servicing company with your payment coupons.

Because you don’t want to be digging through 3 days of trash to find that payment coupon you ripped into pieces without even opening the envelope, so that you can tape it all back together and mail in your mortgage payment to the new loan servicing company when you realize your loan has been transferred.  Not that I’d know from experience or anything.

First, this is a graph of average price per square foot for Continental Ranch from the start of 2004 through today, sold single family homes only:

You can see the Continental Ranch market peaked sort of late 2005, early 2006. And that the spread of this data, the range in selling price per square foot, has grown wider over time as well. Some of those home owners are back to 2004 values, but not all.

One other thing I think this illustrates well - I’m asked near daily if we’ve reached the bottom of the market. But if you look at the period roughly between 9/2005 and 3/2006, there’s a 6 month spread of data where values don’t really go up or down. In this case, it signaled the start of values declining in Continental Ranch, but we didn’t see that numerically until 6 months later. I can’t call an official ‘bottom’ until prices start trending in the opposite direction, which may be half a year after the start of the change. Do I think we’re close? Probably, but there are some major events coming up soon that could change that answer depending on the outcome. The best you can do is to make decisions based on the information available today, and with an eye to how long you plan to own that home.

One more chart. I do love graphs.

This is a chart of the ratio of sale price to original list price since early 2004. Lots of home buyers want to know how much to offer. As we can see here in Continental Ranch, some homes are priced well, and sell at or near 100% of listed price, and others, well, others sell far below their original list price. And many more are selling far below list price than were a couple years ago. Is this a sign of Sellers pricing their homes unrealistically? Or agents not in touch with the market and overpricing? Or both?

Let me say that our foray into section 7 was, to the best of my knowledge, an honest mistake on behalf of the other party, if there is such a thing.  I believe the error made was without malice, but we end up in section 7 all the same. 

First recourse if either the buyer or seller is in potential breech of contract is to give that party a chance to fix it with a 3 day cure notice.  This is the somewhat friendly heads-up to the other guy to say, “hey, buddy, we’ve got a potential problem here, please fix it” with an implied OR ELSE.

The threat behind the OR ELSE?  Arbitration.  Mediation.  Court Action.  Small Claims Court, if you’re dealing with a matter $2500 or less.

Our matter fell into the small claims court bucket, and my client - being a thorough kind of guy - did some research into how small claims court works, and has allowed me to post his findings. 

How Small Claims Court Works

As always, we’re not lawyers, you should seek your own legal advice, your mileage may vary. 

So if not being able to build covered parking is a deal-breaker, then how much do we investigate before deciding whether or not to make an offer?

We can look up the zoning and setback requirements, get deed restrictions and a current copy of the HOA restrictions.  But without a survey, we can’t measure distance from the house to the property line to see if a structure can be fit into the space.

So do you pay for the survey before you make an offer, or do you try to get one done in a limited inspection period?  Or make the whole deal contingent on an acceptable survey?  Will the owners even allow you to conduct preliminary inspections and surveys before going under contract?  What if you spend all this money researching and then you and the Seller can’t agree on price or terms?

And on the other side of this deal, if the owner is claiming covered parking can be built, shouldn’t they really have already done this kind of research and footwork?

Every decision when you buy a home is a trade-off.  Same goes for sellers.

If the owners had already done their research before they made the covered parking claim, they might have had an offer from us by now.  As it is, why should we go through all that trouble, when there are hundreds of other homes on the market that are just about as good?

Located on the corner of 5th Ave and Broadway, the Flats at Julian-Drew have a fairly sweet location, in my humble opinion.  They sit a block from Hotel Congress and the Rialto Theater, are just a wee bit further from the new 4th Avenue underpass, and the new light rail/trolley line should run just outside of the building, which makes University and 4th Avenue attraction access incredibly easy, and the rest of downtown - the convention center, the dining, the Fox theater - all within a couple of short blocks.

There are 53 units here, in 2 and 3 story sections.  They aren’t huge - the smallest studios start around 400 sq ft, and the largest 1 bedroom units are just shy of 700 sq ft.  The floorplans are well designed however, and there’s no space lost to hallways - I think they’ll live very well.

Right now, the Flats at Julian-Drew are apartments, so you can’t walk the units at this time, but you can peek in the gate and along with the renderings, get a good feel for what it will be.  The owner says they’re blowing out the existing building, more or less, so that the new units will have new wiring, new plumbing, pretty much new everything.  Finishes are clean modern, with maple cabinetry, granite counters, tile and wood floors, and sleek fixtures.

They’ll need 32 reservations to start the remodel, and are hoping to have the first set of units completed mid to late 2009. 

The North end of the Julian-Drew complex will stay mixed commercial/office space type places, and the middle section - the carriage house - is still undecided, but they’re talking about a yoga space or some other community type amenity, with a cafe adjacent. 

The public report should be out in maybe 2 months or so, so pricing may vary, but they’re planning on the smallest units starting around $100,000, with the largest one bedrooms coming in around $150,000.  The HOA hasn’t been finalized either, but should run somewhere around $100/month - there’s a pool in the center of the complex.

They’ve also negotiated with the city to alter the adjacent parking to be diagonal resident permit parking, instead of parallel metered parking, and have made deals with the Pennington garage and the One North 5th garage (once built) for residents to park in those places as well for a nominal monthly fee.

It’ll cost you $1500 to reserve a unit now, and an additional $1500 when the public report comes out and the reservation changes to a contract.  They’ll limit investors so that the complex can get FHA approval later on, and the HOA will most likely limit rentals to terms of no shorter than a month.

This is the first condo development downtown in this price range, and my personal favorite so far.  If you’re thinking about living downtown, this might be a good way to get there.  Let me know if you’re interested, and I can arrange a tour.

The Flats at Julian Drew are brokered by Long Realty.

Decidedly on the upscale side, condos here start at $350k-ish for the East facing, 1100 sq ft, 1 bed, 1.5 bath units, and head all the way to $1.35million for the North facing penthouses on the top, which are roughly 2300 sq ft, 2 bed, 2.75 bath units.  The public report isn’t out yet, so pricing is still subject to change.

The building will have 34 units, if I remember correctly: 10 units on floors 2-4, and four penthouses on the top.  I think they need somewhere around 20, 22 reservations before major construction can begin.

Distinctive features would be the walls-o-windows that will create the North and South exposures of the building, with a new parking garage with rooftop pool and downstairs cafe slated to go in as well. 

The floorplans are all lofts, with most having a loft-type bedroom upstairs from the main living area, and finishes should be modern and upscale: nickel finished hardware, walk in closets, solid interior doors, granite counters, stone and hardwood floors. 

This is the panorama from what will be the penthouses, looking North and West.  I love that you can see the Catalinas, the University, the Hotel Congress sign, the whole city.

There are floorplans here, as well as a little more history of the building.  After walking the site, I think there are some units here that will certainly be more desirable than others, based on location and light within the building.  If you’re interested in this project, let’s go walk it together, and I’ll show you what I mean.  Because right now, it looks like this:

44 East Broadway is brokered by Long Realty.