Wow, it almost has already been a year again since I have blogged about where to celebrate Forth of July in the Phoenix Metro area.

Most of the links in last years post point to updated information, however Scottsdale’s Family Barbecue will be celebrated at the Scottsdale Stadium.

photo credit: phxpma

If you are not sure where to celebrate Independence Day in the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area and looking for another 4th of July community or special event then go check out phoenix.about.com.

The Arizona Republic has also a list of events here.

There is a very good chance that the Phoenix DUI Taskforce saturation Patrols and other law enforcement will be out and around the valley this coming holiday. Needless to say who they will be targeting…So if you are going to party make sure you have a designated driver or use public transportation. Some of yo may think there is not much public transportation action going on in the valley, however the light rail is coming very soon. Having said that, RailLife.com is a great source for learning more about the areas and venues surrounding the light rail line and Nick Bastian covers the 4th of July festivities in Tempe on the RailLife Blog.

Enjoy Independence Day 2008 and be safe!

Michael explained all the features and possibilities while we were chatting on meebo on his blog. During our chat conversation Michael surprised me by offering accssess to the Altos Reports while they were betatesting- I was thrilled and offered to help during betatesting and on several occasions I helped by comparing MLS data to the Altos reports.

Finally, Altos Research Reports are available for Phoenix and I could not resist displaying the median home price charts on the blog.

Look over at the right side of this page, and scroll down until you see the Market Stats heading with a chart right under it. That chart shows you the median price of real estate. The range of prices is on the left axis, and the time span is on the bottom.

Pause for a moment and you’ll see that the chart changes every couple of seconds, and scrolls through Phoenix, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Peoria, Avondale, Surprise, and Buckeye, AZ. You’ll also see a significant difference in the charted line depending on which chart you’re looking at.

For instance, Mesa and Glendale show a steady decline, Scottsdale shows a sharp drop and steep recovery, and Paradise Valley keeps going up. Of course, you have to look at the price ranges to get a clear picture.

• That decline in Glendale is $7,000 down from a high of $300,000, or about 2.3%.
• But the range for Scottsdale is only $5,000 with a high of $799,000, which is only 0.63%.
• And in Paradise Valley that increase is $150,000 but it’s on a base of $2,825,000, so that’s 5.3%.

This is just the surface and a sample of the excellent work done by Altos Research. Their real time real estate market intelligence makes fascinating reading, even for people who are not turned on by statistics. Most important, the information can help keep you ahead of the curve whether you are a home seller, buyer, or real estate investor. Their weekly market profiles show pricing trends, and the executive summary shows not just median home price trends, but also other important measures such as days on the market and inventory. So why are Altos Reports different?

A lot of systems will provide you with an estimate of a home’s price using previously sold properties as sales comparables. While this number is nice to know, it lacks in a few critical areas. For example, the sample size of comparable sales is often too small (just a handful of homes that sold over a given time period) to draw any reasonable conclusions about what the market is doing right now. In a real estate market that may change rapidly, this information is insufficient to help you make informed decisions .

In other words, most people are too focused on recent sales data versus looking at absorption rates and the trend of asking prices when trying to predict where the market is headed.

I admit it, I love this kind of in-depth information. Thanks to Altos Research, I’m able to make it available to my blog visitors, too. Just click on the chart in the sidebar and select “Please send me the Altos Research Report” in the Required Contact Reason dropdown-box and don’t forget to include your ZIP code……

Many of you may know that my wife, son, and I live in the Titus House, the only remaining Victorian residence in Scottsdale. Built in 1892, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Through some wonderful luck, we were able to buy the house that my wife has loved all her life, and we moved in almost two years ago.

Now we have received an invitation to share a tour with the Scottsdale Trading Post and other historic buildings. The thing is, the house is still a project in progress, and we have to decide if we can get the house presentable for an event this important. We are still mulling that one over.

But it is nice to be asked, and we are wondering whether our unexpected visitors the other day had anything to do with the invitation. It was a bit unnerving to find strangers in our house, talking about it as if they were in a museum. We actually do not mind giving tours if we have some warning. The question is, can we be ready for The Scottsdale Historical Society House Tour by October 21? Just in case, put that date on your calendar now. It will be a great day to see historic and significant homes in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley, and if it turns out that the Titus House is one of them, we’ll be glad to show you around.

In the mean time, you can read more about our adventure of historic proportions in a modern world at the Titus House Blog.

Tyson’s home in Paradise Valley, a suburb of Phoenix, has been on the market with a listing price of originally $2.45 million raised to $2.7 million. One of my clients made an offer on the house but it was not accepted. So when I read about the recent sale at $2.34 million, I wondered if the buyer got a good deal.

Looking at the photos, you might think it’s a steal, especially when there are many beautiful homes in Paradise Valley with much higher prices. And yes, the home’s location at the end of a cul-de-sac and its magnificent views make it desirable, but there’s more to the overall picture. For instance, the interior.

The home was built in 1988 and represents the architectural design of the time. This house is so 1980’s, you could almost expect Don Johnson to step out of the front door as if it were in a Miami Vice episode! There have been zero upgrades since then, and what was “in” 20 years ago is very “out” now. A four-car tandem garage, five bedrooms, pool, game room, library, and guest house cannot make up for an obsolete floor plan and loads of needed work. Not to mention the tiny swimming pool.

Many investors looked at the property, and the main concern was that it was too good to tear down, but very difficult to bring up to today’s standards because of the cost involved in changing the difficult floor plan. Some people argued that the lot itself without the house would be worth $1.5 to $1.8 million. But tearing the house down and rebuilding it would also be challenging because of the demolition cost and tedious permitting process. If the house were torn down and then completely rebuilt it would be priced quite high, and the competition in Paradise Valley is very stiff with many nice homes available in the $3 to $4 million range.

So did the buyers, a limited liability partnership called Oppenheimer Partners Properties, get a knockout deal or a TKO? Like beauty, that’s in the eye of the beholder. It will be interesting to see what happens next with this property.