North Phoenix Agent Blog

This is the 1st in what I hope & plan will be an ongoing series of posts about real estate price bands around North Phoenix. Essentially, I’m trying to answer the question I get from almost every out of towner who’s considering a metro Phoenix area real estate investment - “how much does it cost?”

This blog is focused on North Central Phoenix, where I live, work, and grew up. So the What You Get for the Money series will include only the ZIP code areas of 85020, 85022, 85024, 85028, 85032, and 85050. You can see these on a ZIP code map here http://maps.huge.info/zip.htm and here http://www.dreimaz.com/phoenix-zip-map2.pdf

Price Band $75,000 to $90,000
This is a challenging price band in almost every part of the metro Phoenix area, but especially so in the North Central Phoenix area (the ZIPs noted above).  In these postal codes, your dollar buys a smallish 1 or 2 bedroom condo.

In Phoenix, “condo” typically means it looks and feels like an apartment. These are usually 2-story stucco buildings, often with tile a roof. Usually, there are ground floor units and upstairs units, and about 4 to 16 units per building.

Most buyers and sellers think there’s a value attached to being on the upper floors (”no one above you” or “no one walking on your head” is common phrasing in the online ads). But it’s not a hard and fast rule that upstairs is “better”. I’ve had young singletons tell me they feel safer being upstairs, while buyers in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s tell me they want something on the ground floor for easy access when they’re older and the old knees might go. Generally, having an end unit is also desirable, because only end units get light from windows on 2 sides of the condo.

Parking is usually a row of covered, assigned spots and you’re usually assigned only 1 spot. If you must have a garage in these ZIP codes, you’ll need to stretch your budget to at least the $175,000 to $200,000 range. Storage space is found in closets and cupbaords under staircases (aka “Harry Potter’s bedroom”). Many condos have balconies and/or patios with closets for additional storage.

Condo owners own space, not land, although in most condo complexes the individual owners jointly own the common area. The common area is where the postal boxes, pool, and any other amenities are located, as well as the streets, sidewalks and any landscaping.

Condo conversions are common in this price range. During the real estate boom of 2005-06 a lot of developers took older apartment buildings and turned them into condos, selling individual units and often making hefty profits. I’m no expert in building codes and so I hesitate to even write this, but I believe (?) that the building process is different for condos vs. apartments, and so the noiseproofing between neighbors is better in condos than in apartments. But everyone has their own limit for tolerating noise from the next door neighbors, so condo conversions aren’t necessarily bad, just different. (Any readers with authority on condo & apartment building codes? Please comment!)

At today’s writing, there are  17 properties for sale between $75,000 and $90,000. It’s important to note that of these 17, only 5 are not lender owned or short sales. They’re on a map and in a list below.

As you can see from the chart above, the spaces are small, 600 hundred to 1,100 square feet. I would normally say this price band buys you only 600 to 900 square feet, but with foreclosures pushing down prices, buyers might get a little more space for their dollar.

Below are some interior & exterior photos of properties typical to this price band.

The most popular financing in this price band is often an FHA loan. These loans allow buyers to put as little as 3% of the purchase price down. For cash strapped buyers, and especially for first time buyers, buying a small condo on an FHA loan can be a great launching pad to building real wealth.

First time buyers often combine an FHA loan with a Down Payment Assistance program. These allow the seller to contribute to the buyer’s down payment. You can read all about options for first time and cash-poor buyers here: http://northphoenixagent.wordpress.com/category/first-time-homebuyer/ and get some up to the minute advice on FHA loan program changes at The Arizona Mortgage Guru’s blog.

Shopping in this price band and want more info? I am happy to help you out! Just call and I’ll set you up with a custom MLS search that will email you whenever new listings hit the market that suit your needs.

I’m noticing an uptick in the number of roadside cardboard signs that have something to do with real estate lately. You know the kind - here in Phoenix they’re usually hand-inked, on cardboard or oak tag, stuck in the ground with a stake.

Surely it’s a function of the bad economy, the looming recession, the credit crisis and the housing ‘bubble’.  Whatever, I figured it would make a good blog post. Here’s today’s Real Estate Road Sign:

Here’s the thing. A ton of people would qualify to buy a home - any home - with $500 down. The amount of the down payment is a function of 2 things - 1) the contract you negotiate with the seller, and 2) what sort of loan program you qualify for.

You don’t need to call somebody who advertises on the roadside to get a $500 down house. In fact, I submit that it’s probably not a good idea to get a home mortgage from somebody who advertises on the roadside with a cardboard sign. To buy a home with $500 down, you just need to speak with a reputable lender, and see if you qualify for a loan program that allows a low down payment.

Veteran? Done. You can buy a house with $500 down - use the VA loan program. eHow tells you how to figure out if you qualify, but I take no responsibility for their sponsored lender links.

First time homebuyer?  Done and done, and then some. You can buy a house with only $500 down - use a standard FHA loan. Or use an AmeriDream loan. Or use Nehemiah Corporation to buy your slice of the American Dream. Go through Maricopa County’s Home In Five program and get your downpaymnet as a gift. Try the Down Payment Guy website, which advertises homes for sale on the regular MLS that are owned by seller who agree up-front to partcipate in a program like these. But note that the DownPaymentGuy steers buyers to their approved stable of lenders, and you can use any lender you choose.

Not a first timer, but still cash-strapped? There are FHA programs you qualify for too. My favorite blogging lender Shailesh Ghimire explains FHA loans.

When you see a road sign like this one, remember 2 things: 1) You can work with any lender you want and still potentially qualify for a $500 Down home purchase.  2) Doing business with a “lender” who advertises on the roadside is probably not a great idea. Buying a “new in plastic, pillow top” mattress off a road sign might be OK. But selecting the single most expensive financial asset you’ll ever own in your life off a road sign is potentially a recipe for disaster.

Related Posts at NorthPhoenixAgent

• How Much Do I Need for a Downpayment
• Earnest Money Defined
• Buyer Beware - Backing Out Can Be Expensive
• Why Your Lender Shouldn’t Be Your Friend
• No Money For a Down Payment?

Related Posts By Other Excellent Bloggers

• FHA Mortgage Insurance Rates Now Higher If Your Credit is Bad (AZ Mortgage Guru)
• How Your FICO Score Determines Your Mortgage Rate (by the XBroker ; not light reading but well worth your time)

My mortgage lender friend Shailesh Ghimire posted a great little article recently that includes a chart showing how much extra you’ll pay for a home mortgage at varying credit scores. Having a FICO score below 620 will cost you about $5,500 extra in lender fees. Yikes! The same is true for car loans, credit cards and other consumer debt.

View the entire article on his website the AZ Mortgage Guru.

Updated - As of July 14, 2008, FHA loans have risk-based pricing on their mortgage insurance. Again, it’s more expensive to get a loan if your credit isn’t so good. Click to read the AZ Mortgage Guru’s explanation of risk-based PMI on FHA loans.

Related Posts from Other Bloggers

• The XBroker Explains (once and for all) How Your Credit Score is Calculated, and How it Impacts How Much Your Loans Cost You

HUD’s at it again, trying to ban down payment assistance programs. You can see the history of HUD’s efforts to squelch homebuyers’ efforts to catch hold of the American Dream in my previous blog entries and you can see AmeriDream’s reaction on their website or Nehemiah’s reaction in a Conde Nast online publication called Portfolio.com.

HUD’s contention is that down payment assistance artificially inflates the price of homes. They also point to the higher default rates of homeowners who used down payment assistance to buy their home. I have a lot more to say on this subject but have to run out momentarily - to show a home to a first time homebuyer, by the way, who’s struggling to save a down payment.

I say to HUD, why now? Congress is working it’s way through legislation to add further regulations to the down payment assistance programs. Why not let those efforts play out? If you’ve got a system with a few bugs, fix the bugs. Don’t scrap the system.

I realize that Sleep America isn’t really local in the sense I usually use the term “Favorite Local Vendor”. They have 40 locations across Arizona and I usually reserve the term for local, one-store only, Mom-and-Pop shops.

Today I wanted to highlight the excellent customer service on display at the Biltmore area Sleep America. One recent hot day I spent the day fussing arout getting a new listing staged. The owner/seller happened to have a bunch of model home furniture (long story) and wanted to use it, rather than renting furnishings from one of my favorite local staging companies (Staging Solutions, LLC).

Movers brought the stuff in, but I had to place it all and put the beds together. Started on the beds after several hours shuffling the rest of the furnishings around. Yikes! I realized I didn’t have the proper sets of bolts and so forth. I’m a total girl, I don’t know what these things are called. bolts? screws? nuts? I’m sure they weren’t nails. But I digress.

I went around the corner to the local Sleep America store, thinking, “surely they sell these bolt thingys that I need, they’re a bed store, right?”  Well, no. NotSoMuch. Duh! I should have known I needed to go to a hardware store. But it had been a long hot day. I plead exhaustion and dehydration.

The very nice man manning the counters told me they didn’t sell bolts. But then he said, “Come on back to the register. We’ve got a toolbox full of spare parts. Maybe we’ll have what you need.” In the end, the exceptionally nice crew of the Biltmore Sleep America sent me on my way with a free set of 4 bolts and washer thingys plus an ice-cold bottle of water. That’s customer service!

Need help picking a new bed set? Visit the Biltmore Sleep America crew. They do customer service the way it should be - above and beyond. They offer products by Sealy, Simmons, Serta, Tempur-pedic, Select Comfort (the “sleep number” people), Kingsdown and Stearns & Foster. Deliveries 7 days a week. Plus they’re green! Sleep America will donate your old mattress to the St. Vincent de Paul Society upon your request and provide you with the tax deductible receipt.

“Absorption rates are a  calculation of how long it will take for all the homes on the market to be sold, or absorbed, based on how many homes are on the market and how many were purchased in the last 30 days.”  - This is courtesy of blogging legend Theresa Boardman from Minnesota.

Think of it this way - if no more houses were put up for sale, and buyers continued buying at the current pace, the absorption rate is the number of months it would take to sell all the available homes for sale.

Why’s this important? Absorption rate is a good indicator of how balanced the market is. Most real estate experts and practicing Realtors agree that a 6 month absorption rate is about ‘normal’.

Absorption rate less than 6 months? It’s a seller’s market. Sellers have the upper hand and are in a position to be choosy about who they sell to, and to demand a little more from buyers: more earnest money, a bigger down payment, a nonrefundable clause for the earnest money, buyer to pay their own closing costs, etc. In extreme sellers’ markets like metro Phoenix experienced in late 2005, homes sell in hours or days for significantly more than list price.

Absorption rate more than 6 months? It’s a buyer’s market. Buyers have time on their side. They can be picky about finding exactly the right house, and take their time making a decision about which house to make an offer on. Buyers can also offer less than asking price and request that the seller pay for negotiables like closing costs and appraisals. In severe buyers’ markets (like much of metro Phoenix has been in for recent months) buyers can also ask for seller assistance towards down payments.

Related Posts

1. How Much Earnest Money?
2. May 2008 - Metro Phoenix at 9 Month Absorption Rate
3. Dec 2007 - When Will it End??

Here’s a brief breakdown that should simplify some of the language being tossed around the real estate world these days.

Pre-Foreclosure - In Arizona, this term doesn’t really have a legal meaning. What it usually means in day-to-day practice is that the home owners are trying to sell because they know they have either stopped (or will soon stop) making the mortgage payment. Often, the home owners also know or suspect that they can’t sell for what they owe on the home, and any resulting sale will be a Short Sale.

Short Sale - In this case, the homeowner has usually stopped paying the mortgage. In addition, the home is worth less than what they owe the lender. If they’re able to (1) find a buyer and (2) get the lender’s blessing on the deal, the lender will accept a portion of the total loan payoff amount. The lender is left short, hence the name. My colleague Chris Butterworth has a great series of blog posts about the Short Sale buying process.

Short Sales are sometimes great bargains for buyers, but know that buying a short sale property can take months. The home comes without any disclosures about condition, and is sold As Is. Buyers can inspect the house but Sellers/Lenders won’t do any repairs. Sellers/Lenders will almost certainly not contribute to the Buyers’ costs. Finally, you have to play a waiting game. Lenders are overwhelmed, they were never set up to operate a real estate brokerage in the first place, and will probably take a month or more to even acknowledge receipt of a Buyer offer. To add insult to injury, if you don’t submit a complete package of documents, you’ll be waiting even longer while the lender requests docs one at a time.

Foreclosure - In Arizona, this has a legal meaning. Here, we don’t sign mortgages; we sign Deeds of Trust. It’s the same idea as a Mortgage, just with an extra party inserted into the process. There’s a borrower (homeowner), a lender and a Trustee. The Deed of Trust works just like a mortgage except in the cases of foreclosure. Get 3 or more months behind on your mortgage payments and the lender will issue a Notice of Trustee’s Sale.  The Notice states that the homeowner has 90 days in which to bring the mortgage payments current or the Trustee will auction the home, often on the court house steps. Trustees are often attorneys and sometimes the auction takes place in their offices. A homeowner facing foreclosure may try to sell the house to pay off their lender. If the sale proceeds won’t entirely pay off the mortgage amount, then it’s going to become a Short Sale.

REO - Also known as Lender Owned. One way or another, the lender now owns the home. Maybe the homeowner just mailed in their keys and disappeared. Maybe the lender was stoopid and didn’t approve a short sale Purchase Contract when presented with one. Maybe the home wasn’t bought at auction. In any case, the lender owns it. They’ve already taken a loss against the original loan balance on the property. REO properties carry all the downsides of Short Sales except that you’re more likely to get an answer within days or weeks on REO properties. However, the bank is unlikely to take much below list price. They’re already taken a big loss and usually these properties are usually listed pretty close to the rock bottom of current market value.

Want More Info? See my friend Chris Butterworth’s site for 2 blog posts about the difference between Short Sales and REO properties. Try Steve Belt for advice about why listing your home for sale if you’re facing foreclosure is a good idea.  Or see my friend Dru Bloomfield’s blog post on Tips for Buying a Short Sale.

Related Posts at NorthPhoenixAgent

1. How to Buy REOs, Foreclosures, and Short Sales

The Wall Street Journal says the US housing crisis is over. They actually say we hit the bottom in April.

Of course, all real estate is local. Your neighborhood may be doing worse or better than the national average. Outlying areas like Queen Creek, Surprise and Buckeye are still experiencing severe downward pricing pressure as the foreclosure wave continues. Established neighborhoods close to central Phoenix and central Scottsdale aren’t faring so badly.

You can check out local real estate statistics by ZIP code at Jay Thompson’s Phoenix Real Estate Home. 

Today’s mortgage rates are brought to you by my neighbor and all around great guy, Larry Cappalletti of Capp Mortgage.

• 5.625% - 30 Year Fixed, with 1.50 points
• 5.750% - 30 Year Fixed, with 0.875 points
• 5.875% - 30 Year Fixed, with 0.25 points
• 6.000% - 30 Year Fixed, with 0 points
• 6.125% - 30 Year Fixed, No Fee

• 5.750% - 5/1 Jumbo ARM, No Fee
• 6.000% - 7/1 Jumbo ARM, No Fee

Capp Mortgage offers a couple of great features & guarantees, including the “7 Day Promise” which guarantees that the title company will have your final loan documents 7 days before your scheduled close of escrow.

Well, my beloved Kristi Collins has changed employers. She’s now with Maricopa Mortgage, after having been hammered lately by Coldwell Banker Home Loan’s inability to do jumbo mortgages, among other things.  CBHL just never got into ‘creative’ financing and so in today’s marketplace where anything other than a standard 10%-20% cash down, full documentation loan is a little (or a lot) of trouble to obtain, Kristi felt she could better serve her client base by moving to a lender who’s a bit quicker to adapt to a changing marketplace.

100% financing is still out there! You can still buy with less than 10% down! FHA loans are booming and aren’t just for first time buyers! Call Kristi, she’ll set you straight. One thing among many that I love about Kristi is that she’ll talk straight with you — “Here’s what I can do. Send me a quote from somebody else and I’ll tell you if I can beat it. If I can’t beat it, I’ll tell you that.”  Sadly, our mortgage world is still overfull of slick salesmen types who’ll push you into a loan that’s good for them instead of being good for you. Kristi and my other preferred lenders take care of you first.

Contact Kristi by cell phone at 602-750-8594 and contact my other preferred lenders by clicking here.

I still love CBHL for clients who fit the scenario of 10% or 20% down on a loan under $417,000. CBHL guarantees they’ll close on time or you get a 1/4% rate discount for the life of the loan. Plus, they have one of the smallest loan packages I’ve ever seen. No junk forms to sign, no writer’s cramp, no 1 hour closings. In, Out, Done. No Fuss, No Muss, and you’re guaranteed to close on time.

I miss Kristi’s sunny personality and well wishes every day at the office. It’s not the same without her. But she’s happier, and her clients are happier. She reports the mortgage rates for the weekend, for any of you home shopping out there. And if you’re shopping, you need a stupendous Realtor at your side. Haven’t got one yet? Call or email me to see if we ‘click’. I’m happy to help out.

6.00% - Conforming loan (under $417,000), fixed 30-year rate
5.50% - conforming 5/1 ARM

Thinking about buying a home? Have questions, need info, but aren’t ready to speak with a lender yet? Have a fear that a pushy salesperson will bug you till you sign?

See this awesome glossary of mortgage terms compiled by Jack M. Guttentag. Jack is Professor of Finance Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and founder of GHR Systems, Inc., a mortgage technology company. He contributes to InmanNews.com where I get my daily fix of real estate news. You can see excerpts of Inman headlines on my main website, the NorthPhoenixAgent.com.

Related Entries:

• PMI Defined
• What’s an 80/20 Loan?
• How Much Earnest Money is Enough?

I saw a cute guest bath towel idea today while touring a home for sale with clients. Snapped a pic with my phone. It’s a little blurry and the colors are a bit off but I think the idea will come through.

In any case, it was a cute idea for a guest bath. The under-towel was a dark chocolate brown hand towel, hung straight on the bar, with no fold. The 2 over-towels were a nice toffee color hand towel in a standard tri-fold. The insets were small frameless pictures measuring about 3 by 5 inches. I bet they came from a home discount store like Tuesday Morning and I’m sure cost less than $5 a piece. They’re anchored onto the accent hand towels with an elastic band in a chocolate brown. Finally, the flowers are plastic sprigs and I bet you could pick ‘em up at Michaels for about 50 cents a piece.

Of course the pictured towels are off-center & hung crooked. That pretty much speaks to the condition of the entire home. My clients called it the “dirty red house” because it was . . .  well . . . dirty and disorganized, and filled with red accent candles, chair covers, froo-froo’s and fringe. I should have photographed the master closet. It was filled to bursting with clothes and you couldn’t see the floor through the layer of dirty, discarded and (to my nose) damp clothing strewn about the floor. Here’s a word to the wise when your home is for sale: resist the urge to discard the day’s worn clothing by tossing it on the floor of your closet. Buy a hamper with a lid and use it.

One of my favorite sayings is “They call it real estate beige because it sells houses.” Don’t know where it came from. Brilliant as I am, I’m 100% certain that I’m not the first one to say it. But it is true. The most inexpensive high-return thing you can do when selling your home is slap on a fresh coat of paint. Do the baseboards, trim and doors while you’re at it. Expect it to cost about $1.15 to $1.30 per square foot (use your home’s total square footage here).

So what’s Real Estate Beige? These are some good beige tones from Dunn Edwards.

Swiss Coffee, Pearl White, Pale Wheat and Cottage White are all going to look like a nice off-white once the job is done. Same with the old standby Navajo White.  Swiss Coffee & Navajo White are in the taupe-y color family. Pearl White has a bit more yellowish undertone and Cottage White has a beige-tan undertone. If the room you’re painting gets lots of sun, you might be happier with Swiss Coffee, Pearl White or Najavo White.

Whisper and White Beach are nice yellow whites. Whisper is paler, White Beach is a creamy color about like a manilla folder. Little sun and/or a north facing room? The yellow undertones in Whisper and Pale Wheat will help warm up the room.

Ready for a bolder beige that’s a notch above off-white? Try Quicksand (yellowish undertones), Sandcastle or Inside Passage (mustard-y undertones), English Scone (brick red and pink undertones), Sandy Beach (peachy undertones), or Golden Gate (grayish beige undertones).

Want bolder still?! Try Gourmet Honey or Warm Buttersotch which are the darker hues of Inside Passage (yellowish brown tones). Or for beige with a little ruddy, reddish undertone try Travertine, Stonish Beige or Colorado Trail (listed in order from paler to deeper). Finally, Brichwood, Trail Dust and Mesa Tan are good taupe-y grayish beiges with a deeper tone than Sandcastle.

Want help choosing a color? Noelle Carpenter is a fabulous estimator for local company Certa Pro Painters and she offers excellent color-choosing help. You can contact me for her phone number or email her at nCarpenter@CertaPro.com.

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Federal Fair Housing law prohibits discrimination in housing because of:

• Race or Color
• National Origin (the country in which one was born)
• Religion
• Sex
• Familial Status (whether one has children or not, whether married or not)
• Handicap/Disability

Some states include additional groups, such as “sexual orientation”. You can check your state’s protected classes here.

The most common question I hear from buyers is “Is this a good neighborhood?”

What they’re really asking about of course, is either the crime rate or the type of people living in the area. Fair Housing law prevents me, your Realtor from telling you about the neighbors if that conversation might stray into discussing one of the protected classes. Most Realtors just don’t discuss the topic at all, for fear of violating Fair Housing law. It’s rumored that the FHA sends testers out to work with Realtors, secretly checking for violations of the law. True? I don’t know but I don’t want to find out.

Besides, my idea of “nice” or “good” neighbors might vary wildly from yours. Some people find the idea of living near folks of another race, religion or sexual orientation is a big problem. Others don’t care. My best advice to buyers in this scenario is to drive through and walk through the neighborhood yourself, at different times of the day, to see what you see. Talk to your potential new neighbors. Realtors can’t ask or answer questions about the protected classes but buyers can, and should. You’d be surprised what neighbors will tell you!

As for crime, I can and will point you towards websites that list crime statistics, usually by ZIP code. I usually beg off answering the ‘crime’ question, because one person’s ’safe neighborhood’ is another person’s ‘fringe neighborhood’ is another person’s ‘hood.’

Housing not covered by the Federal Fair Housing law

• Single family housing not sold through a broker
• Owner-occupied housing of no more than 4 units (you own a duplex & rent the other side)
• Housing operated by private clubs which limit membership (co-op’s)

The first bullet above applies to For Sale By Owner homes. Selling it yourself? Discriminate all you want. I’m kidding of course, but the government can’t interfere if you want to sell your home yourself but intend to refuse to sell it to someone who practices the B’hai faith or was born in Australia.

The second & third bullet points don’t apply much in metro Phoenix. But there are duplexes and fourplexes in our Valley, and even a few co-op’s down in South Scottsdale. No one can force you to rent ther other side of your duplex to a family with 17 kids if you abhor children. Similarly, the co-op board reviews applicants who want to purchase a unit, and they make their own rules about who can move in.

For more information, see the Federal Fair Housing booklet and information about updates to Fair Housing law. Think you’ve been discriminated against in housing? The National Fair Housing Advocate Online can help. Note that all these resources apply to housing you buy. For help with rental situations, see the Arizona Residential Landlord Tenant Act.

A Federal appeals court ruled on March 14, 2008 that “the soapbox isn’t liable for what the speaker has said.”

That gem stems from a lawsuit filed in February 2006 by a group of Chicago-area attorneys, accusing Craigslist of violating federal housing laws by publishing housing ads that attempted to exclude potential buyers/tenants because of their race, gender, or religion. The District Court judge ruled that Craiglist serves as an intermediary party and not a publisher and is therefore not liable for what individual posters said in their ads.

It’s like the difference between the glossy Homes for Sale magazines and your local grocery store’s bulletin board. Each probably has classified ads touting area homes sale. But the glossy publication employs a staff who are responsible (among many other things) for making sure that federal Fair Housing rules aren’t violated in the ad text. But the grocery store is just providing a bulletin. Individual homeowners can post any discriminatory ad up there they want to (one prays they don’t!) and no one can hold the grocer liable.

Why It Matters - This actually could have been a watershed moment in American legal history. If Craigslist had been held liable for the content of their users’ ads, it could have conceivably shut down the site and changed the world of online social networking. Craig and those other sites like Flickr, MySpace and Facebook presumably employ some staff, but the amount of staff needed to screen every ad, post, comment and photo would be immense. One imagines a lot more jobs suddenly being outsourced to India. <snerk>

In my opinion, it seemed unlikely that Craigslist would be held liable for the content of it’s posts. Even the casual online visitor (I hope) knows that bulletin board, auction & social networking websites don’t screen your posts. But a whole bunch of attorneys felt the case had merit, so what do I know? Apparently, they felt that bulletin boards in cyberspace were just different enough from pen-and-ink bulletin boards to warrant a legal once-over.

Housing discrimination is terrible and folks shouldn’t do it, but holding Craig responsible for the stoopid things regular folks sometimes say seems to take things a bit far.