North Phoenix Agent Blog

Today I bid a tearful farewell to my beloved Treo 755p. We had such a short time together, just a few months. I’m really going to miss her.

If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t posted in several days, it’s partly to do with the death of my Treo - which boasts phone, camera, calculator, dayplanner, email, web browser, contact manager, Google mapping feautures and lockbox software - in other words, my life.

It went wonky on Friday evening, returned to life briefly on Saturday and died completely late Saturday evening. I spent much of Sunday in my local Verizon Wireless store and on the phone to tech support, trying to revive her. By Sunday evening my poor Treo had deteriorated to the point where the only working button was the ON power button (but not OFF), the ENTER button and the incoming call feature. On the other bright side, I do have insurance on the phone. So they’re shipping me a new one today.

Also on the bright side, the Verizon service guy from my local store wants to buy a condo or townhouse. He asked me to ballpark the monthly mortgage payment on a purchase price of $170,000. I reached for my holstered phone to run a few numbers on the calculator. My holster was empty and the Verizon guy was holding my broken baby, fiddling with it and pushing buttons while it squeaked and beeped forlornly.

This left me feeling literally (and momentarily) panicky. I had that sinking feeling I get when I think I’ve forgotten my car keys, or left the stove on. I also had a microsecond’s burst of feeling maternal and protective, like “hey don’t hurt my baby!”  Which is of course absurd, but also illustrates the point - I’ve become completely dependent on my PDA and feel lost and exposed without it.

I wonder if this is how gentlemen in the 16th & 17th centuries felt when made to remove their swords? Or how modern day military personnel feel when back in civilian life, walking around without a gun on their hip?

There’s some disagreement in the general public about whether cleaning your home’s ducts is actually worthwhile. Some say the air circulating through the ducts surely cleans them out. Others swear by duct cleaning, saying it improves overall circulation and even prevents the build up of microbes and mold inside the ducts.

I won’t weigh in on the debate, but will say if you’re going to clean your home’s ductwork, at least use someone who’s certified to do so. Recently one of my sellers agreed to clean the ducts during a buyer’s inspection negotiation, or BINSR period. We used Ductz Indoor Air Professionals and I recommend them. Here’s some of the info from their brochures:

1. Children are more likely than adults to be affected by polluted indoor air (Dept of Consumer Affairs)
2. The EPA claims indoor air has been found to be up to 70% more polluted than outdoor air
3. Air ducts contain more germs than chicken coops (American Lung Association)
4. A build up of 0.42 inches of dirt on a heating or cooling coil can result in a decrease in efficiency of 21% (EPA)

Vince DiVarco handled the duct cleaning for my seller and I; ou can contact Vince at 623-466-8625. He was a good communicator, very knoweldgeable about his job, and extremely careful to protect the seller’s home from his equipment. Vince set up a portable generator and the hosing systems needed to attach to each duct in the home. Vince brought along rubber corner protectors that he placed on the corners of the bookcases. He wore paper booties to protect the flooring from tracking unwanted dirt inside. The whole setup took about an hour or so for a 1900 square foot, 2 story townhome. The cleaning actually took less time than the setup and tear-down of the equipment.

The Ductz brochure indicates the benefits of a good cleaning last 3 or 4 years. The cost was $395. Ductz also offers additional services: duct sealing, deodorizing blocks that suck odors out of the air, dryer vent cleaning and air duct sanitizing.

Did it work? I can’t say. Vince & Ductz have the statistical information to back up what their claims about how important clean ducts are. I’m sure there will continue to be people who think duct cleaning is a silly thing to do. But the Buyer was happy. Given our current marketplace where it’s so incredibly difficult to sell a home, I count that as a success.

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.

Ladies, have you been looking for a great nail tech? Look no further (at least if you’re in the North Phoenix area). Carrie Chairez at Knotty Image Salon is an acrylic nail artisan. She doesn’t use a drill, ever. Carrie does it all by hand, from scratch and with an eye to detail that you just can’t hardly find anymore.

I’ve had trouble over the years with the nails lifting, which Carrie just recently helped me figure out was due to my obsession with applying cuticle cream during the day. But before we figured that out, Carrie took the time to adjust the acrylic solution, the undercoat, the primer, and the length, shape and thickness of the nails. Essentially Carrie’s been doing my nails differently every time, for months now, all because she really cares that they’re right.   Plus, she guaranteed my most recent full set for 2 weeks against breakage.

The price list and contact info is below. If you need a reputable nail tech in the North Phoenix area, you can’t go wrong with Carrie Chairez.

Knotty Image Salon
602 W Union Hills Dr #6
Phoenix AZ 85027
623.434.9899

NE corner of Union Hills & 7th Street

They do hair, tanning & waxing as well as nails. Prices are:

• Acrylic full set  - from $40
• Fill in / Back fill - from $25/$35
• 1 Tan - $6
• 5 Tans - $25
• 20 Tans - $75, monthly package available
• Eyebrow Wax - from $12
• Leg Wax, half/full - From $30/$70
• Haircut, Mens - From $15
• Haircut, Womens - From $20
• Haircut, Kids ages 10 and under - From $10

My good friend Chris Butterworth has a great post about how to paint a razor-sharp straight line when you’re painting with bold colors.

For several years, the interior paint trend has been sliding down the in-store color chips, towards bolder, bright, more saturated hues. Home buyers are demanding more windows, higher ceilings, and “light and bright” has become so overused in MLS ads that it’s almost the sort of trite ‘code’ where buyers have learned to read between the lines. “Charming” means exceptionally small. “Plenty of cupboard space” means galley kitchen. And “light and bright” means you can probably navigate through the house without turning on an industrial strength spotlight.

In any case, if you want to try today’s hipper, bolder colors on your walls, read Chris’ advice post first. Wondering what colors will look good? My favorite painting advisor, Noelle Carpenter at Certa Pro Painters gave me some tips on choosing colors (Noelle’s phone is (480) 962-8180 x125). See below for a list of popular paints chosen often by their customers. Or for the easily overwhelmed, visit their website to see Certa’s expert-recommended color palettes, a collection of 4 different families of hues that mix & match well. (These are all Dunn Edwards brand paints. Click here to locate a DE store near you.)

Want a bold brown? Try Cup of Cocoa (taupe-y), Florentine Clay (reddish), Pumpkin Butter (less orange than the name implies and really pretty). Ready to really get your brown on? Opt for the double bold by choosing Warm Nutmeg (taupe-y), Traditional Leather (almost the color of a Hershey bar), or Cinnamon Spice (a bit on the reddish side and a shade darker than actual cinnamon).

Seeking a soothing blue? Quiet Moment, Provence and China Pattern are popular choices. Quiet Moment is the palest, and a little on the warmish side. Provence is a clear robin’s egg blue and China Pattern is the deepest.

Going for the green? Certa Pro gets a lot of customer requests for Soothing Celadon (a cool pastel) and Lime Juice (a warm pastel). Good mid-range greens include Crisp Celery (a warm yellowish green), Green Tea (coolish mid-range green), and Dried Chervil (a neutral medium green). For bolder greens, choose Herbal Scent (clear green), Sage Green (grayish blue) or Rosemary Sprig (the darkest of the bunch, and what I think of when someone says ‘library green’).

A great way to test paint is to buy a quart of the color you think you’d like. Paint 1 or 2 walls in the chosen room with a swath of that color measuring about 4 feet square. Live with it for a couple of days; check it out in different lights. Like it? Go buy Blue Tape, read Chris’ post again and go for it. Don’t like it? Grab a primer, a new quart of bold colored paint, and try again.

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.

FINALLY. I get it. I had the V8 moment. Now I understand why every blogger Realtor I know is tweeting. 

Life happens between blog posts. Use Twitter to send & receive interesting little snippets of daily life as it happens to people you know. You can follow me at @northphxagent

This video by CommonCraft, posted by Daniel Rothamel over at The Real Estate Zebra explains it all.

Since sliced bread? Well, I don’t know if I’d go quite that far. But Jott.com is pretty awesome if you’re a person on the go. And who isn’t these days? From their website, “Jott converts your voice into emails, text messages, reminders, lists and appointments.”

I use it while I’m driving to send myself reminders of To Do’s. I call Jott’s toll free number, speak my reminder into the phone, and bam! Jott sends me an email of the reminder. Since my email comes to my crackberry phone, that might seem silly. But I ignore the email on the crackberry and when I get back to the office desktop, there’s my reminder waiting for me.  This is all waaaaay safer with speed dial and a headset than the old pen and notebook I used to use.

You can also set up Jott to send tweets to Twitter, posts to your blog, or even emails and texts to others. Their motto kinda says it all:  Life is busy. Talk to Jott. Get Simple Back™.

Today is the birthday of Vita Sackville-West, best remembered as a writer (The Edwardians) and as one of Virginia Woolf’s several lovers. But she was also an avid gardener. Sackville-West is largely responsible for getting the English upper classes outside, working in their gardens beginning in the 1930’s. At a time when most considered gardening a masculine occupation best left to servants, Sackville-West brought gardening into the mainstream through her weekly column for The London Observer. She wrote about the joys she found digging in the garden and the satisfaction of arranging her own flowers at her beloved country home, Sissinghurst.

In Vita’s honor, I present a list of desert gardening resources for the Valley’s many transplanted humans, relocated to the desert Southwest from a “somewhere else” that invariably has more rainfall. For all of us struggling to figure out how to grow anything but rocks in a climate bursting with 100+ degree temperatures and less than 7 inches of rainfall annually, I invite you to click and grow.

Of course the mac daddy of all desert gardening books is The Sunset Western Gardening Book. First published in 1972 by the same folks who produce Sunset magazine, this has been the bible for desert gardeners since publication. I believe my good ole’ Dad still has a copy, proudly purchased when we first moved to the Valley in 1978. Dad bought a 4 bedroom, 2 bath family rambler on about a 1/2 acre of land in Squaw Peak and felt compelled to make that land produce something. Anything. (My link is to the original 1972 cover art. There are newer editions but the old cover is kitschy cool so I linked to it.)

Desert Botanical Gardens is a wonderful resource for desert gardening, both online and in person. They offer online photos & tips, adult education classes, and tours of their beautiful grounds. With our recent spring rains, the DBG is breathtakingly beautiful. Visit!

(photo credit to MaggieAZ of stock.xchng)

About.com has a monthly calendar of tips and to do’s for desert gardening.

The Sierra Vista Garden Club website seems to be kept up to date with tips, events, recipes, links, and a super list of nontoxic household items useful in gardening such as tea, ammonia, baby shampoo & beer. Sierra Vista is a good deal south of the metro Phoenix region (just southeast of Tucson) so take note that their climate might be slightly different than our urban heat island affected climes. The SV Garden Club has a link to the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. You can zoom in on a region, but its a little hard to tell if Phoeix is in Zone 8b or 9a.

The Tucson Gardener has a fabulous list of desert gardening books. No links, but you could print and take to your local library.

Finally, for those who’d like to enjoy the desert beauty without attempting to garden on their own, try the Desert Foothills Land Trust and their 13th Annual Sonoran Symphony. Get out and view the desert’s beauty while being serenaded by a full symphony.

If you have a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit), you should think twice and call your lender before planning to use it. Most major banks have been freezing HELOCs lately, due to the price declines so many local market are experiencing.

From InmanNews.com, this is a partial list of the banks already known to be freezing customers’ HELOCs:

Bank of America - HELOC Freeze
Countrywide - HELOC Freeze
Chase - HELOC Freeze
CitiGroup - HELOC Freeze under review
National City - HELOC Freeze
Suntrust - HELOC Freeze
USAA Federal Savings - HELOC Feeeze
Washington Mutual - HELOC Freeze

Don’t use your HELOC again without seriously looking at the SOLD prices in your neighborhood, and considering whether you have any money left to spend. If you’re really concerned about the current market value of your home, call me (or any qualified Realtor you trust) for a comparative market analysis of your area.

An important point to remember is that most of us do NOT need to be worried about declining prices at all! If you like your home, plan to stay in it for 5 years or more, and can afford the payments, then you can ignore this headline and every other gloomy real estate media story. Love your home and rest assured that home prices will rebound by the time you want to sell.

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I had to pick up some paint today for a client at a Dunn Edwards retail store. The very nice manager, Larry, asked me if I lived in an HOA. I thought that was odd, and wondered if DE kept a file of each HOA’s approved paint colors. Wouldn’t that be cool?!

Instead, Larry explained that Dunn Edwards gives discounts to HOA members. Now that is really cool!  Manager Larry says every Dunn Edwards store gives HOA members a discount and you have to volunteer the information that you’re living in an HOA to get the discount. He wasn’t supposed to ask, it seems.

So if you’re painting your house, go get the quality stuff the contractors use and a get a discount on it to boot!  Dunn Edwards store locator.

I’m going out on a limb and predicting that granite kitchen counters are dead. Trend over, move on. Why would I say something this crazy? Granite counters are the gold standard for kitchen remodels in this town.

Well, I read articles written by Alison Rogers who’s a licensed agent in New York. She wrote a book called Diary of a Real Estate Rookie, available at Amazon. This morning I read an article she wrote for Inman News which mentioned granite counters. She says: “The kitchen countertop trend is for ‘anything but granite.’ Anything that can be labeled ‘green’ or environmentally friendly is big…”

My logic here is admittedly flawed and based on anecdotes alone. If granite counters are dead in New York, I bet they’re going to be “out” here in the Valley of the Sun in a few years. Although we’re the nation’s 5th largest city, Phoenix is dismally slow at picking up pop culture trends. Trends out of Los Angeles hit us quicker, but it seems to me that trends out of New York take 2 to 4 years to get here. I’m just supposing it’s the same with trends in the home remodeling world.

I remember watching Carrie on Sex in the City drink cosmos for at least a year before they became the drink of choice in Philadelphia where I lived in the late 90’s. I was drinking Philly cosmos for at least a year or two before I moved back to Phoenix in 2001. Couldn’t get a cosmo here to save me back then.

Course, I could be utterly wrong. Disagree with me about granite counters being over? Let me know, leave a comment.

Cover my behind legal mumbo jumbo: Today’s image provided by www.hilolani.com/granite.htm. I’m not affiliated with them or with Alison Rogers, or with Amazon.com

Everybody’s heard of the big chain yoga shops around town. I won’t even mention ‘em, because I know you have. And if you haven’t, better yet. Start local. A Desert Song Yoga (www.aDesertSong.com) and Yoga Pura (www.yogaPura.com) are fabulous local spots to begin a journey through the world of yoga. They both offer beginners classes, intermediate and advanced sessions. Yoga Pura offers individual sessions; A Desert Song offers a medico-yoga class for those with specific health & movement restrictions.

Rushing off to seal a deal, so don’t have more info just now. (Yes, homes are still selling!) Visit these great shops’ websites and learn more about how Yoga Gets Local!

Locally owned and operated Ninetta’s Passion Bistro is a hidden gem. Tucked in a strip mall on the Northeast corner of 7th Ave & Union Hills road, you’ve probably never heard of it. The owner does advertising the old fashioned way - word of mouth. What the restaurant may lack in location and big-budget advertising it more than makes up for in truly yummy food and old-fashioned customer service.

From www.ArizonaBistro.com : “The cozy atmosphere, reasonable prices, spectacular food and personalized service makes this casual yet charming restaurant fabulous.”

When I visited with a couple of girl friends on a weeknight, the owner (Marco) himself greeted us at the door. He was our waiter, sommelier and charmed us utterly. His wife, Ninetta, takes kitchen duties. She features local & regional food and wine as often as possible. These people love food and it shows.

The food was delectable! Bruschetta appetizer featured fresh, vibrant tomatoes that actually tasted like tomatoes; imagine that. The Zuca Zuca Zuca (butternut squash filled ravioli in sage butter sauce) was so good my girl friend said she wanted to lay down and roll around in it. We used bread bites to sop up the butter sauce and had to restrain ourselves from licking the plate! The Tilapia Emilio was perfectly cooked and the Chicken Picatta had a wonderful mix of lemon & capers. Ninetta herself sent over a dessert featuring chocolate & fresh berries that pretty much sent we 3 amateur foodies over the edge.

I added myself to their mailing list and get periodic calls from the owner personally inviting me to dinner/wine events, which all feature live entertainment.

Ninetta’s Passion Bistro, 814 E Union Hills, 623.434.8967

Update, Spring 2008: Marco is such a cutie. He calls me personally to invite me to his Prix Fixe dinners. Once when I told him last fall that business had been off and I’d need a boyfriend to spring for the $75 a pop price, but was lacking said boyfriend at the time, …. Marco actually called back the next day and tried to fix me up with another regular patron of his who had similarly just broken up with someone. It was adorable! By that time I was booked already but the idea of it was so cute that I nearly went. Imagine having a local restaurant where the staff actually knows your name and cares about your life! It’s almost Normal Rockwell-y.