Scottsdale Real Estate Blog - Judy Orr

MORE HOME BUYERS SEARCH THE INTERNET FIRST

UPDATE: Please note this post date - check out that computer in the picture. The figure stated below keeps rising, it is now way above 90%. Print advertising has all but died out. Many brokerages have completely cut out all print advertising.

According to the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), Internet usage has risen among home buyers. In 1995, only about 2 percent of home buyers surfed the Internet. Today that figure has risen to 77%, up 3% from 2004 (see UPDATE above).

This is the reason I use multiple social media sites and invest time and money into my Scottsdale area website.  These attract buyers to my site so they can see all of the Scottsdale and surrounding towns (Cave Creek, Carefree, North Phoenix, Fountain Hills, and Paradise…

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Don't Make These Home Buyer Mistakes

This is an older post that I've updated.  I received a real estate association e-mail newsletter with an interesting list from an Illinois real estate agent, Mark Nash. I'd like to quote his Top Buyer Mistakes and give my opinion after each one:

1.  Bought properties to flip at top-of-market prices

I still can't figure out why buyers do this. Maybe if a buyer timed the purchase around the flipping of a Scottsdale house for sale at the beginning of a seller's market, they might have seen a substantial profit. In our local market, things are slowing and I've already seen homes purchased and quickly put back on the market at a higher price (after some renovating) sitting and not selling.

UPDATE: We are still seeing flips but I do see a lot of…

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I Finally Took My First Flight - At 45

One of my life goals was to travel to distant places like Egypt and France. Can’t do that in a car. So at the age of 45, we got a trip to Cancun as a Christmas present from my then boyfriend's parents. I couldn’t turn it down. In fact, prior to going I read some books on Mexico (more on its rich history) and was excited about the trip.  This was in the 1990's.

But I wasn't excited about my first plane ride. I had never taken a Valium but I was trolling for some. I got a couple from someone I knew. I was excited to go to Mexico but I still wasn’t looking forward to flying there.

In fact, I envisioned the scene in Airplane where a woman is going crazy and everyone goes up to her to punch her (or hit her with something) to shut her up. Even a nun hit…

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Married But Not Living Together?

I read another article yesterday that was almost unbelievable. It stated that recent census reports show that more than three million couples actually live in separate residences.

The article was about a Cave Creek couple that got married and stayed in their respective homes instead of moving in together because they already had their pet peeves about each other. One was that she was a neat freak and he was a packrat. The other was the fact that he had a music studio in his place and she needed quiet to do her work at home. They actually split up the wedding gifts between the two homes and they do spend nights with each other and have dinner together. They also conveniently live across the street from each other.

I've recently read an article about…

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My First Impressions of Arizona

My parents had been living in Mesa, Az. for many years (10-15) before I finally visited them. When my boyfriend Jimmy (now my husband) heard I had never been there he insisted on taking me. My parents were very excited to finally be able to show me their home and their new state of residence.  This would have been around 1999-2000.

I was finally excited to be going.  As I've mentioned in a previous post, Arizona was not calling my name.

After departing the airplane I noticed that the Phoenix Airport seemed small and more congested than our two Illinois airports. Not impressed yet.

Driving from the airport to my parent’s house didn’t instill much excitement in me, either. I did notice that things seemed cleaner from my highway view. I enjoyed…

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Arizona Condo Sales Remain Strong

I read an interesting article in an e-mail I received from one of my many real estate magazines.  Sales of single-family homes dropped off 2.9% compared to October of 2004. However, the Scottsdale condo market has remained strong.  Condo sales were up 10.2% from October 2004.

I don’t remember condo sales outpacing single-family homes.  I certainly could have missed some past statistics but this surprised me.  I guess with the huge price increases we’ve seen in the past 2 to 3 years, many first-time buyers are simply being priced out of single-family homes.  Or, maybe it’s that baby boomers are downsizing.  Could be a bit of both.

The median home price in October went from $184,000 in ’04 to $209,900 this year, a 14.1 percent increase.  However, it…

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Arizona Housing Outlook

If you ask someone what their opinion is on real estate in 2006 with interest rates inching up, you'll get many different answers. Here are some of them:

 Diane Swonk of Mesirow Financial in Chicago was interviewed. Diane feels the real estate market will be slower but not a collapse. I agree with Diane that although Arizona certainly felt the real estate boom of the past 5 years, we were not on the highest end of that frenzy. So our softer market won't be as drastic as other markets.

Lawrence Yun of the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) was also interviewed. I will sum up his interview. Mr. Yun feels that rising interest rates are certainly not going to be good, yet at a prediction of 6.7 percent they are still historically favorable low rates.…

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My Parents Left Us

OK, so I was 32. But I was the one with the grandchildren. One of my brothers was already living in California. My 18-year-old brother was now left with a decision of moving with my parents (unless they chose a retirement area of 55 and older), staying in IL (I don’t think he had a decent job at the time), or moving in with my brother in California. He chose the latter. In fact, he’s been there ever since and is married to a California girl and they have 2 children and live in the garlic capital of the world, Gilroy.

My other younger brother, who had lived in CA for some time, moved back to IL for 3 years to work for Motorola. After that stint, he went back to CA and has lived in San Jose with his wife and kids ever since. They also have a second…

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Hello From Scottsdale Arizona

If you see the date, this was the first post on my real estate blog that was made in 2005. It is now 2022 and I've had several different web designs. You are viewing the latest, even if it's past 2022. Whatever you're seeing now is the most recent look of our Scottsdale real estate blog. 

This website has brought me many clients and in my best year, which was 2007, around 80%+ of my real estate sales came from this website!  Our home search has been upgraded over the years and I hope you find it easy-to-use and will help you with your next real estate purchase and/or sale. Below is our original post.

Welcome to Judy Orr's Phoenix area real estate blog that will introduce you to Carefree, Cave Creek, North Phoenix, North and all Scottsdale…

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