Like your home shopping casual and on your own time? Stop by our Sunday open house to see this vintage Hallcraft tri-level (basement) home. No pressure, no appointments, just a terrific home at a price that makes the salesman virtually superfluous. Even if you’re just looking for a cool place to escape the heat for a few minutes, stop on by for a bottle of water if you are in the area. But fair warning, if you are in the market for a 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath, 2360 sq ft home in a prime central location … you WILL buy this house.
Why: Because you need a house, and I’ve got the best one in South Scottsdale listed for sale! When: Sunday, July 24th, 11am – 3pm Where: 4001 N. 86th St, Scottsdale, AZ 85251 (Right there ↓)
$229,000 – Vintage South Scottsdale Tri-Level Home For Sale
Location: Park Scottsdale
Tired of short sales and foreclosures? This vintage Scottsdale basement home will cure you of market malaise. Situated within minutes of Old Town Scottsdale (downtown), the Loop 101 freeway, Sky Harbor Airport, ASU, SCC and, well, everything else you like about Scottsdale, the home has been meticulously maintained by the original owner. Boasting 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, bonus room and nearly 2400 square feet, this tri-level includes a new roof (2011), newer A/C (2004) and 2006 kitchen remodel. Priced to compete with the banks, but with the ease and confidence of a traditional resale home, why consider bombed out foreclosure wrecks and interminable short sales when you can get a timely response for a superior property? It’s the best of all worlds! Contact us today for your private showing before someone else takes advantage of this incredible value.
“Three fifty? Are you out of your freaking skull,” the rotund, little man bellowed beneath a reddening bald pate.
“You disagree with my analysis,” Maxwell Listers surmised. He was not unaccustomed to the question, though twenty six years of patient rebuttal had him rethinking the answer some days.
“You call that an analysis,” Ollie Meanders dismissed. “Even my senile mother in law could tell you this house is worth five hundred grand, and she thinks you can still buy a ticket to a picture show for a nickel.”
“I see,” Max replied, organizing the stack of comparable sales he had spent the past half hour explaining in excruciating detail. “Your mother in law would no doubt be swayed by the thirty two hundred square feet you claim to possess.”
“Damn straight,” Ollie confirmed, puffing his hirsute chest beneath an overmatched, crumpled white undershirt.
“Why, that three thousand square foot house one block over just sold for four eighty after all, and it didn’t even have a fireplace, did it,” Max agreed, leafing through his stack to the appropriate property listing.
Ollie stared at the agent with suspicion roiling in his beady eyes. He knew he was being taken for a ride, he just didn’t know where.
“Of course,” Max continued, “that was all original square footage …”
“So,” Ollie challenged.
“So original square footage is more valuable than added square footage,” Max concluded on cue, his silver hair lending more credence to the proclamation than the dirty blonde it had crowded out a decade earlier.
“What the hell is the difference,” Ollie pressed. “Thirty two hundred feet is thirty two hundred feet!”
The cords in Ollie’s sausage forearms rearranged themselves into angry knots beneath his taut, freckled skin.
“Think so,” Max asked, his arched eyebrows issuing a direct challenge.
“Well, sure,” Ollie sputtered. “Who cares … I mean, what does it, uh, matter if it, um …”
“Remind me, how many bedrooms do you have, Ollie?”
“Four,” the homeowner boasted, jutting his chin at the listing in Max’s hand. “Same as that one!”
“And did I miss the formal dining room somewhere when you were showing me around?”
“No,” Ollie said with slightly less confidence. “That’s where I added the fourth bedroom.”
“And how many baths?”
“Well … still just the one and a half,” Ollie admitted.
“How about parking,” Max asked.
“I, um, enclosed the garage to make the game room.”
“And this kitchen,” Max continued, looking about the small galley.
“Installed the granite counter tops myself,” Ollie crowed.
“And they are stunning,” Max allowed. “But does this room strike you as the hub of a thirty two hundred square foot home, or would you agree that it more closely embodies your home’s former life as a seventeen hundred square footer?”
“It might be a bit on the small side,” Ollie acknowledged. “But I converted the laundry room to a pantry for extra storage.”
Max scribbled something on a manilla folder marked “Meanders, Ollie.”
“These low ceilings ….”
“No, I don’t have the big, fancy vaults that some of my neighbors do,” Ollie ceded. “But do you have any idea how much it costs to cool that extra space?”
“And the back patio … wait. Where is the back patio,” Max asked, craning his sinewy neck to look past the homeowner.
“I enclosed that, too,” Ollie replied, slowly being sapped of his pugnacity.
“Ah yes, I see,” Max nodded. “That would explain the step-down and the funky slope to the roof line. A shame how it darkens the family room and eats up the backyard.”
“Should I put in some skylights?”
Max shook his head.
“You’d just be throwing good money after bad,” Max advised the crestfallen homeowner. “I’m afraid you have a Frankenstein house, Ollie.”
“Frankenstein house?”
“A Frankenstein house,” Max confirmed. “You took a perfectly good little home and created a monster – a big, sprawling octopus of a property, one incongruous addition at a time.”
“But the bigger, the better, right?”
“No, Ollie. Not necessarily,” Max corrected. “Your house doesn’t fit the needs or expectations of a larger family despite the raw square footage, nor does the new layout fit the single or couple to whom it would have originally appealed. You are stuck between buyer demographics. Homeseller Purgatory, if you will.”
Ollie buried his head in his hands.
“You just can’t juice a little house into something it isn’t,” Max added for good measure.
“All that work,” Ollie moaned. “All those trips to Lowes.”
“Wish you’d called me in sooner,” Max lamented. “Would have aborted Rosemary’s Baby here before it was ever conceived.”
“Hey!”
“My apologies,” Max offered.
“Well,” Ollie breathed with a heavy sigh. “I need to move, but I’ve put way too much into it to sell it for three fifty. What do I do?”
Max took a moment to ponder their options.
“How’s your insurance,” he wondered.
“Insurance,” Ollie parroted with evident confusion. “Full replacement cost, why?”
“Fire bad,” Max suggested with a conspiratory wink.
The agent stood and lumbered out of the cramped kitchen with arms extended out in front of him like the monster fleeing an angry mob of torch-bearing villagers.
In a stunning reversal of internal policy, the Internet has asked that bloggers stop adding new content to the collective mainframe.
“It’s gotten out of hand,” Zachary Omega of the Internet confided when reached for comment. “We didn’t think it was possible for there to be too many blogs about the rigors of raising abused beagles in single-parent households, but we were wrong. The first-person, anecdotal nonsense has completely drowned out legitimate commentary.”
To reestablish value to its searchable content, the Internet is asking users to refrain from launching new blogs and social media accounts at this time. The embargo is voluntary for the time being, but Omega foresees a day in the near future when the effort to scale back the banality on the interwebs is not only mandatory, but enforceable by martial law.
“It’s a freaking joke,” Omega confided. “I’m in charge of the coding that separates the wheat from the chaff in online data. Me. Do you have any idea of how much chaff is floating around out there? How am I supposed to send someone to the latest reputable news source when ninety nine out of a hundred entries are posted by some twelve year old kid in Marietta, Georgia who gets picked last in dodgeball?”
Originally designed to connect people from all over the world, the Internet has done exactly that. Unfortunately, the free-flowing exchange of ideas and information has come with a steep cost: quality control.
“I’ve got nothing against cats. I’ve got nothing against kids,” Omega said. “But if I have to read one more missive about Mr. Whiskers’ new flea collar, or the scorching pink-eye outbreak that is plaguing little Joey’s preschool, I’m going to jam an overheated server straight up a soccer mom’s &$$ while I enjoy a refreshing orange wedge.”
Omega did not reserve his ire for familial pulp. In fact, there is one demographic in particular he described as “the bane of the online experience.”
“Realtors … I mean, seriously,” Omega stated. “How many more property listings in Bum Fudge, South Dakota or riveting articles about re-painting the baby’s room prior to selling a home do we really need to read? Five hundred thousand jamokes posting the same ‘Seven Secret Tips to Selling in a Down Market!’ … how novel. Maybe next we can have an authoritative list of instructions for walking and chewing bubble gum.”
Reached for comment, the National Association of Realtors® noted that now is the best time to buy a home in the history of earth.
Are you shopping in the distressed aisle for your McCormick Ranch home? Make sure to look up.
While the purchase of a bank owned home or a short sale tends to be fraught with a little more risk than a traditional resale transaction, it is important to note that buyers typically maintain inspection rights on distressed properties. While the various “As Is” clauses and addenda dictate that the seller is not responsible for making repairs on these properties, most purchases involving bank properties do allow for an inspection period (though the time frame may be shrunk from the typical 10 days allowed under the boilerplate of the standard Arizona Association of Realtors contract).
*In short, the bank won’t likely fix anything, but you are allowed to verify condition before deciding whether or not to continue with the transaction.
During the course of your inspections, it is always prudent to spend a little extra time on a bank property as there are no disclosures of prior defects. The institution that now owns the property never occupied it, and knows nothing about its history other than the pertinent fact that the previous owner defaulted on his/her deed of trust.
It’s all about the Benjamins to the bank.
The purpose of this lengthy preamble? To add a little context to the freak hail storm that struck large pockets across the Valley last (2010) fall. If you have been watching all of the new roofs going up over the past six months, you know that the McCormick Ranch area was hit hard. With insurance companies passing out full roof replacements like they were candy, it is not uncommon to see streets where virtually every home features a brand new roof. Foam and asphalt shingle roofs, in particular, took wicked beatings.
So while most owner-occupied properties in the area that sustained damage have been repaired or replaced, the bank-owned properties that have been sitting vacant for over a year are likely to leak like a sieve when the monsoons roll around this July. The price points of such properties are often attractive enough to offset the 10-20k many will need, but it can be tough to swallow when it is not an anticipated cost.
Before plunking down money on inspections and appraisals, I’d recommend having a professional walk the roof of that bank owned steal to help you determine the true out of pocket price of ownership.
Oh, and if you are buying a resale property in McCormick Ranch? Make sure to find out if the seller had any repair work performed in the aftermath of said storm. While one of our selling clients was able to obtain full roof replacement on a claim from that storm as recently as this past month, the likelihood of that happening on another property dwindles the further removed we get from the event. The insurance companies aren’t going to be in the roof replacement business much longer.
Happy hunting,
Ray & Paul
Buying or selling a home in the McCormick Ranch area? Give us a call. Online data and pictures can give you 90% of the picture. We’ll fill in the remaining 10%.
*Do not rely on any general statements herein as legal advice. We are not attorneys, nor do our statements pertain to a specific transaction. Rights and restrictions within a transaction vary depending upon the documents used, attendant verbiage, alterations, etc. Long disclaimer short: I ain’t talking about your deal, homie.
(Washington DC) – In a statement released this morning, the National Association of Realtors® announced a new initiative aimed at curbing abuse in photographic representation amongst its membership in the virtual sphere.
“This initiative has been ten years in the making,” according to NAR spokesman,Trevor Null. “Ever since Realtors entered the online space en masse, we have been fielding complaints from the public about misleading avatars.”
Jane DeVannon of Surprise, AZ filed one such complaint back in 2009.
“We were nervous first time buyers,” Mrs. DeVannon explained. “Having never been through the process, we had no idea what to expect and knew that we needed to hire a Real Estate agent we could trust to guide us through the process. So we did what we always do when we have a critical decision to make. We Googled it.”
With over 87% of today’s home buyers starting their searches online, per NAR statistics, the DeVannons’ story is a common one.
“We settled on a nice looking gentleman, about forty or forty two, with two darling children in his profile picture. Imagine our surprise when an obese seventy five year old with a goiter the size of an Olsen twin showed up to our first appointment. We tried to make the best of it, but we could just never get past the initial lie,” Mrs. DeVannon related.
“We have long had a reputation problem with the general public,” Null admitted. “Grossly misrepresenting our appearances in online marketing has only served to exacerbate the institutional mistrust. I mean, when you think you’re hiring Gary Cooper, and you get Gary Coleman, it’s a problem.”
According to Initiative UB-FUGLY, all Realtors® will be required to update their avatars monthly, without benefit of Photoshop or similar photo editing software that can alter true appearance.
“And none of this downward pointing camera angle bullshit,” Null expanded. “If you have three chins, the consumer needs to see three chins.”
Penalties for failing to comply with the new requirements will be severe, including mandatory use of DMV photos for first time offenders. Proof of ownership for any/all pets and children in a Realtor’s avatar must be furnished prior to Internet use. Nieces and nephews are off limits.
The news comes too late for the DeVannons, but they are hopeful that future buyers will be spared their painful lesson in what the NAR refers to as “photo synthesis.”
“We think he rented the kids,” Mrs. DeVannon added.
