Flagstaff Blog - Real Estate and All Things Flagstaff: February 2008

I've customized my recent posts about the book Microtrends to talk about who is buying Flagstaff real estate. Lots of people think that with the market down -- as they read in the papers and hear on the news -- that NO ONE is buying. If you work to dispell that myth in your market, it will move those on-the-fence buyers off and demonstrate to sellers thinking of listing that you know what you are doing. Read my post Who Is Buying Flagstaff Homes as an example.

The trick is to find different ways to say the same thing over and over to make the message appear new, original, and interesting. And you have to be yourself while doing it, or people will recognize that you are not authentic and back away from your services. The only way I can manage to do that is to read a lot! I read other people's blogs on Active Rain, I read our professional magazines, I read the Wall Street Journal, I read the links to other real estate feeds that I have on the right side of my other blog and I read books.

Recently I created a post about Days on the Market for my other blog after getting the views of other agents on the issue from comments on one of my Active Rain posts. (Thank you Active Rainers!)

All of this keeps me busy, but it also saves me marketing dollars. The funds that I used to spend on pay-per-click are now out of the budget. Many of the links that I paid for are gone from the budget. I'm creating my own links and improving search engine placement by writing interesting, informative blogs. I e-mail particular blog posts to clients who have asked me questions about related issues. I e-mail blog posts to prospects. All of this is saving me money and getting my team more business.

You can do this too! Get to work!

Ann Heitland, Flagstaff real estate

In the last two posts, I explained Mark Penn's central theme and gave you some of the microtrends that impact real estate. Read them at Microtrends - Insight for Real Estate and Life - Part 1 and Microtrends - Insight for Real Estate and Life - Part 2. This final post about the book Microtrends covers some more of the trends Penn spotted that affect real estate everywhere, and in Flagstaff in particular. Mark Penn failed to relate the last one that I mention to real estate, but to me it hit home. (Pun intended).

A few years ago, I noticed the trend in my real estate business which Penn labels "Stay-at-Home Workers." Their only question they had for me was "does the house have high-speed internet?"  Of course, now every Flagstaff home has high-speed internet. Unless the satellite dish is covered with snow.

The word "microtrend" is a bit of an understatement for Second-Home Buyers when it comes to the Flagstaff real estate market, where 25% of our housing stock is estimated to be second homes - either vacation homes or places where parents house their kids while the kids attend Northern Arizona University. Plus a few other investment properties - probably no more than normal in any other college town.

We see fewer International Home Buyers in Flagstaff, unlike Manhattan, which according to Penn is a hotbed of international home buying. But in the last few years we have seen people from the U.S. State Department and the United Nations buy or sell their Flagstaff homes with Team Heitland at RE/MAX Peak Properties.

Flagstaff is a popular place for Penn's microtrend of Working Retireds. Some seniors work because they have to, but the microtrend is those who work because they love to work. Penn reports a Merrill Lynch survey taken in 2005 in which 75% of baby-boomers reported that they have no intention to seek a traditional retirement. Many of these boomers are switching careers rather than retiring, and they look for a second career in a place where they can also enjoy life. Of course, many also just stay on the job. Penn notes that trend may force younger workers, who find no room to move-up in traditional jobs (since the boomers aren't moving on), to move out into entrepreneurships. Either way, it involves moving and home buying and selling.

Penn has a chapter on Hard of Hearers. He notes that there are an increasing number of us as the population ages and as young people still blow out their hearing with loud music, generation after generation. Penn mentions nothing about how this affects housing, but I've got some ideas based on my own experience.

I attribute my hearing loss to heredity rather than the Rolling Stones (but I could be fooling myself). Homes need intercoms for people like us. We can't shout from one end of the house to the other and expect to understand each other like we used to. Furthermore, those intercoms have to improve in quality. Having designed and decorated our home with lots of hard surfaces to alleviate allergies, we find that, in our old age, we need to add soft surfaces to absorb sound. I predict new home décor trends based on this "Hard of Hearers" microtrend.

All in all, I recommend this book. Penn covers 75 microtrends and I've just covered a few in these three posts that relate to real estate. You're sure to find others that you can relate other parts of your life to. 

To see how I've written about Microtrends for my clients, click here.

For the 1st Active Rain post about my take on Microtrends click here.

For the 2d Active Rain post about my take on Microtrends click here.

For everything about Flagstaff Real Estate, click here!

So, who are the homebuyers of today? As active real estate agents, we know they cannot be fit into a single description. Here are three small groups. I'll cover some more tomorrow. These are all ideas from Mark Penn's great book, Microtrends, and the labels in bold are from his book. To learn more about his book, see Part 1 of this series about my take on Microtrends.

Without kids, perhaps, people are freer to establish more homes - many married couples have two homes. Penn calls them "commuter couples" - they work in separate cities, or have a house where one of the couple stays during the week near work and then commutes "home" on weekends - or at least on some of the weekends. I know people in Flagstaff, Arizona who do this. Some prefer life in Flagstaff, but work in Phoenix or Cottonwood. Others prefer life in the Verde Valley, but have a condo in Flagstaff near their jobs at Northern Arizona University or Gore.

Then there are the "extreme commuters" - people whose daily commute is greater than 90 minutes, according to Mark Penn. They have one house, but hardly spend any time in it because they are in their cars for 3 or more hours per day. As Penn says, these are people who care a lot about the price of gas. I think we have a few of these in Flagstaff also. They prefer to live in Flagstaff and drive elsewhere for jobs.

Another important trend, and this one comes directly from National Association of Realtor^® statistics, is the number of single women homebuyers. This arises from what Penn calls the Sex-Ratio Singles. Simply put, there are not enough available men to match all the single women so if women want to own a house, they have to buy alone.

Photos are courtesy of flickr.com photographers found with the search "commuting":

And here is a link to a flickr.com photo reminiscent of my Chicago commute. (I left it behind for the short commute in Flagstaff nearly 13 years ago.)

There is more to come on Mark Penn's Microtrends tomorrow! Meanwhile, for info on Flagstaff real estate, visit our website.

I started to read this fascinating book last fall after seeing many posts about it on Active Rain. I immediately saw so many ideas for blogging that I started to plan a series of posts based on the book. Then I ran into the freight train known as the end-of-the-year. Now I'm back to it, and I've finally read the last two chapters today. I'm not sure I'll do the humungous series I had originally intended, but I plan to do a few posts over the next few days with highlights from the book that are related to real estate.

The book is Microtrends and its author is Mark Penn, Washington D.C. business and political consultant and current advisor to the Hillary Clinton campaign. (Don't stop reading; the book is not a political diatribe.) The central thesis of Microtrends is that society is changing in ways that few people appreciate or understand; that a look at the numbers suggests that people should look at the numbers more often. According to Penn, most observers are missing the fact that trends with vast potential for impact on society involve less than 1% of the population. By the time they hit 1 percent, the trends are "ready to spawn a hit movie, best-selling book, or new political movement."

Penn hits on something important to us as real estate professionals in his introduction. While the U.S. population growth has slowed to less than 1 percent, the number of household formations has "exploded" - almost 115 million people were heads of households in 2006 versus only 80 million in 1980. The percentage of households consisting of one person living alone increased from 17 percent in 1970 (when my mother, living alone, was an oddity) to 26 percent in 2003. The proportion of married-with-kids households has fallen to less than 25 percent.  

Who instead are the homebuyers? I'll cover that tomorrow.

See how I'm tying this reading into my real estate marketing efforts by reading this post: Why So Many Statistics?

Here is Mr. Penn's website and blog about the book: Microtrending.com

I hesitate to say there is a downside to living in Flagstaff, AZ. That's how much I love the place. But yesterday, even I had my doubts. Here's why.

In a weak moment sometime ago, we agreed to take care of the grandkids while our daughter and son-in-law go away for a week to celebrate their 10th anniversary. Then, they told us that instead of going in May, when their anniversary actually is, they were going to Hawaii this February. Oh. The only problem with that is that they live in Iowa. Ok, love conquers all.

We planned ahead -- the kids don't leave until tomorrow a.m. and our itinerary had us arriving at 1:30 p.m. yesterday. Then a Flagstaff winter storm intervened. Two inches on the ground when we arose at 5:30 a.m. to head toward the 16-seater prop flight scheduled to leave Flagstaff for Phoenix at 8 a.m. All went well for a while - a little slower drive on the usual 20 minute drive to our little airport (where there is free long-term parking), but we arrived safely in plenty of time. And, as we pulled up, we could see joyful news:

There was a plane! There were the pilot and co-pilot! TSA was working away checking people's bags by hand! We boarded on time, door closed, we were de-iced. Then the bad stuff: visibility dropped and the pilot (wisely) cancelled the take-off. We deplaned and got our luggage, planning to take a shuttle to Phoenix. Already this is a bigger problem than it first appears -- the plane we were to catch from Phoenix to Des Moines was set for 10:00 a.m., and the next one doesn't leave until 7:56 p.m., scheduled to arrive in Des Moines after 11 p.m. (10 p.m. for our buy clocks.) Ugh.

Next, after we've phone to schedule the shuttle bus, the airline announced they are again boarding our flight to Phoenix. But, they won't take us back on because we have taken our 4 pieces of checked luggage (lots of snow boots and down coats for playing outside in the Iowa winter) out of TSA's custody (in preparation for that shuttle ride - remember). We look terribly sad and grandmotherly, so after everyone else (except those who have already abandoned ship and left the airport) boards the plane, the TSA guys decide weren't not looking like terrorists so they will let us go through again, if we VERY QUICKLY take off our shoes and our outer coats, pull the little plastic baggies with all of our liquids out of wherever it has gotten to, pull my laptop out of its case, and show them our drivers' licenses again. In the "very quick" process, I misplaced my cell phone.

We pile into the back of the plane with the remaining 8 passengers who had been waiting in the cold with the door open (all in the far back seats to balance the plane). All the passengers looked very unhappy with us, except our nice neighbor, with whom we'd chatted earlier. The door closed and the cute flight attendant started to tear apart the inside of the plane. It turned out he was warming his hands on the hot water heater up front and had to take apart a substantial part of the inside of the plane to get to the hot water heater. Meanwhile, as the deicer machine approached the plane, I was desperately searching through all of my carry-on luggage and pockets to find my cell phone. I was worried that I hadn't called to cancel our shuttle reservation, but more worried that the shuttle driver would call and the phone's ringing would reveal to the entire plane that I hadn't turned off the cell phone in accordance with pre-flight instructions. Meanwhile, the flight attendant finishes warming his hands and moves down the aisle offering all of us some of the upscale hand lotion he carries. Someone notes out load that this is a GIANT bottle and would never make it though TSA. The flight attendant says he has "special privileges." We all laugh. He is very cute. He says he plans to go to Medical School next year and he hopes the plane takes off because if it doesn't fly, he doesn't get paid.

Then, the plane de-icier broke. Flight again postponed and passengers sent back to terminal. As we walk into the terminal, thinking we might have to drive our own car to Phoenix, the location of my cell phone becomes apparent when the driver calls to say they have been running late, but will be there in 5 minutes. We scramble to reclaim our bags from behind the counter and from the frustrated airline personnel who, in Flagstaff, do the check-in, rescheduling, and also do the baggage loading and unloading AND run the deicing machine (when it runs).

The shuttle guy gave me a hard time because he knew we had tried to fly out with out calling to cancel. But he took us anyway, and he picked up two more passengers to fill his load of twelve trying to get out of the storm and down to Phoenix. One-half hour later, we were passing Sedona on I-17 when the sun broke out of the snow clouds. When we arrived in Phoenix, it was 67° and sunny, and 1:30 p.m. We killed time in the Phoenix airport until 7:30 p.m. and arrived at our final destination just after midnight. Ugh, again.

My wireless connection in the Phoenix airport was slow, so I wasn't able to complete my weekly Flagstaff Weekend blog post before the laptop battery ran out (and I had checked the power cord - last time I do that!) I finished it this a.m. after breakfast with the kids, and a post-breakfast nap.

When not traveling from Flagstaff, it's still the best place to live. Here are a couple of earlier posts to prove it:

Snowed in Here in Flagstaff

Weather Is Warmer in Flagstaff with Plenty of Snow

And, now that I think of it, I have had trouble traveling from other places - there was that Christmas Eve that I spent in the Pittsburgh airport....

Flagstaff is a little blue island in Arizona. (Actually, Tucson is a bigger blue island and much of the Phoenix area has turned purple in recent years -- a combination of Republican red and Democrat blue.) The Democrats in Flagstaff like to act-up and this weekend we were in full swing.

Friday night, I attended a house-party fundraiser for a great young woman, Sara Presler-Hoefle, who is running in our non-partisan election for Flagstaff mayor this Spring. There are five candidates in the race, so there will be a primary in March and the top two will go to the final election in May. Sara represents the strong young energy of Flagstaff and hopefully will show well in the primary.

Saturday morning was the annual Democratic Party Tamale Sale. Four hours of networking around information booths by a total of twenty candidates for city council, mayor, Coconino County offices, and Arizona Congressional District #1. A great turnout, and great food. We stocked up our freezer with tamales and enchiladas that will last for months as quick dinners after busy real estate selling days.

Sunday, another house-party fundraiser for Howard Shanker, running for Congress in CD-1. A great turnout  with over 50 people, looking for change.

I'm sometimes asked by real estate agents from other parts of the country whether all of my political activity hurts my business. In a town like Flagstaff, it does not. I'm on the side of the clear majority and the people who disagree will me are not likely to hire me anyway. I believe my passion for politics and my willingness to work hard shows people how I will feel about selling their homes -- passionate, committed and hard-working. Furthermore, it's important to have a life outside of real estate that reflects one's values. This is mine.

Ann Heitland, Flagstaff real estate agent!

By the way, if you haven't seen it, this is an amusing article about the Presidential candidates homes.

Come on up to Flagstaff this weekend. The weather will be in the forties, maybe the fifties, in town at 7000 feet. At 8000-9000 feet where the skiing is there is plenty of snow. And, there is a plenty going on, including special Winterfest events organized by the Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce, a choral music festival, prize-winning drama, and a chocolate celebration. (I know that last one is going to get some comments.)

There will be racing at the Arizona Snowbowl and the Snowplay areas will be in full swing. NAU theatre performers are heading off to perform at the Regional Kennedy Center drama festival in Los Angeles, and their final dress rehearsals tonight and tomorrow are open to the public.

Check out my selection of fun-filled Flagstaff events for this weekend.

Personally, I'm attending an event to support one of our Flagstaff mayoral candidates tonight, then I'll be at the Tamale Sale in the morning, celebrating a friend's birthday Saturday night, and at yet another political meet and greet on Sunday afternoon. In between, I'll be selling Flagstaff real estate, and so will the buyers' agents on my team. 

If you know anyone who would like to explore living in Flagstaff and the Flagstaff real estate market, send them to Team Heitland at RE/MAX Peak Properties.

Thanks, Active Rainers, for keeping us in mind.