The Clark Report
I respect your privacy. If you would like your name removed from this email list, please respond to this email address.
News, Culture, More Than 140 Characters
July 2010
In This Issue
May Get Your PHX
Mid-June Market Memo
In Other Market News...
CenPho Community
A Note from the Author
July Get Your PHX: CO+HOOTS

co+hoots

The goal of Get Your PHX is to show up, en masse, to support those who pioneer new restaurants, stores, bars and event spaces. We want to provide them a boost as they put their sweat, tears and wealth on the line to make life great downtown. Plus, we want to provide a chance for you to meet others like you, who want to get the most out of Phoenix.

Thanks to Brigitte Jordon-Mincks and Mindy Shields of the UofA College of Medicine for hosting the June Get Your PHX, as well as Dan Hlavac for sponsoring, and, of course Joey Robert Parks for the incredible 26 Blocks installation. We had over 100 people at this last event and I heard great feedback, all around.

I want to set the stage for July's Get Your PHX by talking about coffee shops --so much business happens in coffee shops, you know? They are the new elk's lodge. The new "place where everybody knows your name."

Yet, the same atmosphere which can be so inspiring can also be quite draining. Loud music, distractions and limited space keep you from getting the most serious projects done.

Enter "coworking" -renting a desk or cubicle and access to conference facilities in an open, creative space with like-minded worker bees. This is not new to America, but it is new to downtown Phoenix.

CO+HOOTS may just represent the future of how creative businesses operate. It is a move away from the standard old rental office space, with its styrofoam coffee and bad lighting.

Photo by Mark Taylor Photoimages
co hoots
Jenny Poon, owner and creator of CO+HOOTS was looking for office space for her design business last year and was frustrated by the prices, given that she needed just a little room. She found those office rental-by-the-hour places to be stultifying and too expensive.

With the able assistance of her husband Odeen Domingo she got together with Joseph Lewis, the owner of the historic Bayless Grocery Market building at 7th St. and Garfield. He had the space and she had the idea. Check out this  article by the good folks at Downtown Phoenix Journal, which gives a little more background.

CO+HOOTS offers monthly rates for work space on an application basis. That comes with internet access, a conference room to share, a kitchen with fresh coffee and other amenities. Memberships from $350 to $650 a month, a $100 two-week trial option or a $10 day pass option.

Poon expects to fill up pretty quickly on those slots, but has left the day pass option for when the local coffee shop (God love em'.) just won't do.

I'm intrigued by this as I don't think this will be the last of its kind. Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in 2008 that those areas of the country that  survive the Great Recession the best are the ones where density leads to creative interaction and innovation.

Poon's CO+HOOTS is geared toward designers, photographers and publishers. The next may be geared toward the sciences or architecture. They are where Internet crowd-sourcing meets the physical world.

Yet another step forward in the evolution of CenPho.

But that is not all! Order now, and you will also get a special local art exhibit with Brian Boner, Christine Cassano, Chelsea Glass and exclusive catering by Verde Restaurant!


July Get Your PHX
Thursday, July 22nd from 5:30 to 7:30
Co+Hoots
825 n 7th St.
Phoenix, 85004
Map here

(Interesting Note: If you do a Google Street View of this address, you get a big Coca-Cola truck. That's all. Try it.)

Please RSVP to me via email or through Facebook so I can get an accurate count.  Parking will be available in the parking lot on the northwest corner of 7th St. and Van Buren, north of the college.

The Mid-June Market Memo

It is a bit too early to see if there has been a massive drop in prices, as predicted by some of our more speculative and sloppy reporters.
But we can see a couple other trends that your might find interesting:

#1 The Number of Foreclosures in the Market is Starting to Drop.

According to this article in NuWire, an investment newsletter, "Last month they (foreclosures) represented 50.5 percent of the resale market, compared with 64.9 percent a year earlier. The peak for foreclosure resales was 66.2 percent in March 2009."

The Arizona Republic, usually happy to predict the end of days every time a baby cries said "Foreclosures were 33 percent of the market's recorded activity in May, down from 40 percent in March, according to the latest realty-studies report.

This does not mean that the market it out of distress. The number of short sales is edging upward as sellers, banks and agents get better at selling homes before they go to foreclosure. See below. What does this mean? It means that if you are looking to buy, you are more likely to want to look for short sales and leave yourself plenty of time for the deal to close --3 to 6 months.

Mid-June Market

#2 Prices Per Square Foot Are Going Up. So, this means that regardless of the size of the home, people are willing to pay more. Not a whole lot more, but they are edging upward.

Mid-June

So, what does this mean?

I think it means that once all of the dust settles from the tax credit, we will be on a steady, slow upward climb back to normal and that it will take a couple years.

If you are looking to sell, hang tight unless you are looking at using the low market to trade up. If you are looking to buy, you should be looking now because a 5% increase in the home price can be $100 more per month, depending on the home.

Either way, contact me at [email protected] and I can help.

In Other Market News...

Renewable Energy in Arizona
OK, so this is not exactly real estate market news, but it is incredibly important. If Arizona does not diversify its economy, say by investing in renewable energy, then we are doomed to just build out in to the desert in a futile attempt to sprawl our way to economic recovery.

I believe that this election will indirectly impact the real estate market and whether people choose to invest in Arizona.

The Arizona Corporation Commission sets your utility rates and it chooses our energy sources --renewable, coal, nuclear, etc. Whom we put on the commission decides our future in very specific ways. If we neglect our new energy future, we will not keep pace with our neighboring states in job creation.

We have two choices this November: either embrace this future or pretend that the old way of doing business will somehow save us.

Two candidates who are running for the Corporation Commission understand this. Renz Jennings was previously on the Corporation Commission. In fact, he is the father of the Renewable Energy Standard, which now provides us with solar and wind as an option. David Bradley is a wise retiring state legislator (I served with him), who understands the issues and will bring a level head to the game.

These two gentlemen need their $5 Clean Elections contributions by the end of July.

Two of their opponents are also opponents of a new energy future. Gary Pierce is a very nice guy, who has made comments as a sitting commissioner that imply that he would be willing to weaken the renewable energy standard. Brenda Burns is the former Senate President who oversaw the senate when the Alt Fuels debacle cost the state over $200 million (I wish we had that now!). She has sided against renewable energy many time.

My Kingdom for a Shade Tree

tree at house
Many, many years ago, when Phoenix was still young, people planted desert shade trees because they, you know, shaded things!

Tucson still does this. Somewhere along the line, we decided that rows and rows of palm trees were the way to go.

No offense to folks in neighborhoods with these dramatic palm trees, but trying to hide from the sun on a palm-lined drive is like trying to play hide and seek behind Kate Moss.

So, the streets are hotter, there is less of a green canopy to prevent the heat island effect and we all suffer.

treesIf you want a real-life example of this, drop by your friendly (not-of-this) neighborhood WalMart parking lot. Then drop by the parking lot of the Burton Barr Library, which actually meets the requirements of the long-standing City Plan: 51% shading of the total ground surface by trees.

When I served on the Encanto Village Planning Committee, this issue was my monthly refrain. No developer got past us without me bringing up this issue. (My fellow committee members were very patient with me.)

Your car stays cooler, your shoes don't melt on the way to the front door and we all pay less to cool our buildings.

Now, I would not advocate tearing all those palm trees out, but the City of Phoenix has just released a new vision for our arboreal future. Down load it here.

I spoke to Lysistrata "Lyssa" Hall with the City Parks and Recreaction Department at the last Get Your PHX. According to Hall, the Mayor deserves recognition for making more shade in Phoenix a priority. She credits city Forestry Supervisor Richard Atkins for doing the legwork: documenting how Phoenix is actually losing its urban forest and building a cross-department plan for moving ahead.

According to Hall, the national average for urban forest maintenance is $7.65 per capita per year, while Phoenix spends only $3.48 per capita per year. Perhaps we just use our money more wisely, but if we are losing our urban forest density, it is more likely we neglect the issue here.

Here are some more highlights:

Tree Banking --if a development is not fit for trees, the developer should contribute to a fund so a certain number of trees will go in somewhere in the city.

Use GIS tracking to develop an inventory of just how many trees and how much shade we have.

Have a vision of 25% canopy shade 2030.

Have an actual Tree and Shade Committee at the City Council, rather than just think of this as a third-rate issue.

Build public/private partnerships with utility companies, which benefit from combating the heat island effect.

Hall says that the only way the new shade plan will work is if we all take ownership of building our urban forest. A quote in the Shade Plan from Warren Buffet says it all: "Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
CenPho Community

Come, Geek-out with Me about the Future
Imagine Phoenix with very few air conditioners heating up rooftops, adding to the heat island effect and drawing massive amounts of power. There are many technologies, like this one, that improve our current design or even use solar power to run air conditioners.

New Historic Neighborhoods
We have added a few historic neighborhoods (locally defined as such) to the national registry of historic places. This is important. Contrary to comments of opponents of the historic property tax reduction, not every historic home can see a tax cut. Only those on the registry. Click above for a handy list from Downtown Phoenix Journal of all of the new historic properties. This is a huge deal for owners of properties in these neighborhoods, as home values tend to be higher in these areas.

Look for more recent posts on www.GetYourPHX.com.

A Note From the Author

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have been so kind as to send me referrals over the last years for your friends who are buying or selling a home.

Like many of you who are also in business for yourself, I don't have a huge marketing budget. You won't see my face airbrushed, five feet tall on a freeway billboard.

So, I appreciate your referrals even more. If you are at one of many summer barbecues this year and you hear somebody opining over their all-beef patty that they need to buy or sell a house, please think of me and encourage them to look me up.


I specialize in Central Phoenix, but I work all over the valley.

Now, back to your regularly-scheduled barrage of emails.

Final Words, Compliance and Other Legal Stuff

As always, I respect your right not to be bothered with annoying spam email. If you would like to be removed from my email list, just let me know. Thanks!


Sincerely,
 
Ken Clark

Realtor logo  Equal Housing  John Hall Logo
Sites I Like
Join Our Mailing List
Organizations Worth Supporting

Local First AZ
 

Phoenix Green Chamber

AZLCV