Here’s an awful picture I took of some Manhattan parking spaces when i was at Inman Connect in January.

If I recall correctly, these little gems would set you back $1,400 a month.

In this week’s Video of the Week, my city friend Rachel Natalie Klein from IntoTheBox.TV brings us a little more on parking in Manhattan….

So stop yer crying about finding parking in downtown Phoenix…

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I blog for business, I blog to learn, and I blog to share. I also blog as an “outlet” — for writing, and occasionally for venting.

Of course my favorite thing in blogging is to get a client. Selfish maybe, but I help people buy and sell real estate for a living. Without clients, we don’t eat, and the teenagers don’t get all the stuff teenagers think they need to survive.

But there is another wicked cool aspect of blogging that comes up more often than people probably realize.

There’s a guy, we’ll call him “Frank”. Frank likes to utilize our shiny new Phoenix MLS search system. And he uses it a lot. Being new, the system has a few kinks and quirks. Frank has been incredibly gracious and has been providing feedback to both myself, and one of the software developers at our IDX (home search) provider, Diverse Solutions.

He takes his own time to let us know how things are working (or not). There’s not much in this for Frank. Oh sure, he’ll ultimately get a better “search experience”, but his feedback does me, other users, and Diverse Solutions far more good than it does him. Kinda helps restore ones faith in humanity knowing there are folks out there willing to help out when there really isn’t a direct benefit to them.

How cool is that?

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OK, so “Site of the Week” should be renamed to “Site of the Undetermined Period of Time”. But that is really neither here nor there.

I just got off the phone with Melana Yanos, a Staff Writer for NuWire Investor. Before she contacted me, I’d never heard of them.

I was pleasantly surprised when I visited their web site. It is jammed full of information on “the news, trends and opportunities in the alternative investment marketplace” (from their About page).

What are “alternative investments”? According to NuWire:

An alternative investment is any investment that falls outside the realm of traditional stocks, bonds and mutual funds. The most common alternative investment is single family real estate. However, there are many other alternative investment options.

(such as Lending, Small Business, Commodities and others. See this page for more)

The site is well organized, easy to move around in and more importantly has well-written, in-depth articles covering a multitude of topics. They also run four blogs:

InvestorCentric: provides readers with timely, reliable snapshots of investor relevant news.

CommonCensus: takes a look at demographic trends and provides commentary and analysis on how they might affect investors and the economy.

The Brink Tank: created with investors in mind in order to inform readers of the most recent and interesting ideas, people, technology and resources available to investors.

Marketing2Investors: provides tips, thoughts and commentary on ways to better locate, serve and organically grow your base of investor clients.

Whether you are a real estate agent/broker, an investor, or just want to learn and understand more about real estate (and other) investment avenues, NuWireInvestor is a great place to stop and learn.

Five Stars. Highly recommended!

Screen Shot:

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I suspect two things are about to happen:

1) You’ll see a post about this on virtually every Phoenix real estate blog and an article in every local newspaper. (Probably already happening, I haven’t read anything today)

2) The mainstream media (MSM) will minimize if not ignore the good and highlight the bad. (I know, what a shocking prediction.)

The What: ASU’s Realty Studies has released its report for April’s real estate activity in the Phoenix area.

The good news: For the first time since July 2005, resale homes have posted a year-over-year (YOY) improvement.

Dr. Jay Butler, Director of Realty Studies reports there were 5,585 recorded sales in April. April 2007 recorded 4,855 sales. (4,335 in March 2008)

I’m not personally as enamored with YOY stats as many. I prefer to look at month-to month trends. I don’t quite get what is so special about looking at this month compared to 12 months ago — without looking at everything else in between. The media however, seems to love YOY numbers (particularly when they are declining).

What the MSM will likely focus on: The median Phoenix home price declined from $220,000 in March to $210,000 in April. Last April’s median value was $265,000.

From Butler:

“One of the driving forces in increased activity has been rapidly declining prices that have fueled renewed investor interest and potential owner-occupants, especially in the lower income ranges,” said Butler. “Investment interest is being driven by the anticipation that home prices will rise again in the next few years. The lower median price is being impacted by several factors, including the large number of vacant homes, especially in certain neighborhoods,” he said.

Telling numbers in the foreclosure market:

Last year, 41 percent of the resale homes sold for more than $300,000, while it was 24 percent for April 2008. Influenced by foreclosed properties, homes selling for under $200,000 have increased from last year’s 16 percent to a current 44 percent of the local resale housing market. The most evident impact of lower prices is improved affordability.

This certainly reflects what we are seeing. Foreclosure and short-sale listings in some areas of Phoenix (particularly outlying areas) account for 35% of the inventory.

Sellers seem to generally be understanding that they can not base their home value on what the neighbor got last year. Buyers on the other hand do not seem to be understanding that they can’t get short sale and REO (bank owned) properties for 50 cents on the dollar. REOs are moving — sometimes swiftly and with multiple offers at (or even above) the banks listing price. Short sales are typically not moving, and they swiftly become REOs in the vast majority of cases.

Beginning of a recovery? One time blip? Who knows. One YOY data point does not a trend make. But sales seem to be picking up steam, foreclosures are creating affordability, and absorption rates are falling. All of this seems to indicate we may be bottoming. The question once that officially happens is, how long will it last? No one knows. As I’ve said before, you can never truly call the bottom unless you’re looking behind you saying, “Yep, that was the bottom…”.

See the full report for specifics on different parts of the Phoenix metro area.

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Someone called today, seeking advice on becoming a real estate agent in Phoenix. We chatted about the pros and cons, and then they asked, “So, how’s the competition? Just how many real estate agents are there in Phoenix?”

Good question. The answer off the top of my head was “a boatload”.

Just over a year ago, I posted that there were 47,675 individuals in the Phoenix MLS area with an active real estate sales or brokers license.

How does that look today?

Returning to the publicly accessible data at the Arizona Department of Real Estate, I down loaded a whopper of a file that contains info on current, expired and former license holders in Arizona. I culled and massaged it until I got all of the active sales and brokers licensees for both Maricopa and Pinal counties into one spreadsheet (barely).

As of May 8, 2008, there are 45,243 active real estate licensees of one flavor or another in Maricopa and Pinal counties — roughly the coverage area for the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) which covers the greater Phoenix metro area.

There are currently 7,997 folks holding an active brokers license (up from 7,694 in March 2007) and 37,246 with an active sales license (down from 39,981 in March 2007).

While the overall numbers are down over the past 14 months, it’s not quite the exodus that many (myself included) thought would happen. 943 have received freshly printed licenses this year alone. The real estate schools are still churning them out, albeit at a slower rate than in the peak year of 2005. Yes, people are leaving the business, but new people are still coming in. I’ll dig through the expired and inactive licenses later and see if there is anything of note. I’m curious to see if there is any correlation between expired licenses and how long they were active (ie: is is just new people letting licenses lapse, or are the “old-times” getting hammered too?)

Of note, “active” license does not mean the holder is actively selling real estate for a living. It simply means the license is active from the Department of Real Estate’s perspective.

Many people get a real estate license and do nothing with it. Many property and commercial managers hold licenses, never intending to use them to transact physical real property. Countless hundreds (if not thousands) are part-time agents at best.

But still. 45,243 people with active real estate licenses in the Phoenix market qualifies as “a boatload”.

If you are interested in starting a career in real estate sales, be aware there are a ton of competitors. Many of which are absolutely brilliant real estate practitioners. Others… meh. Not-so-much. Pretty typical of any large industry.

How does this affect real estate buyers and sellers? Simple — you have a LOT of people to chose from. Choose carefully and wisely.

While there is far more than “years of service” that define a qualified real estate agent, time on the job is none-the-less an oft discussed item. As such, I present you with these summary statistics for the population of 37,246 currently holding a real estate sales license:

Mean number of years licensed: 6.8
Median number of years licensed: 4.1
Standard deviation: 6.9 (in other words, the “spread” is large)

Maximum time licensed: 49.8 years
Minimum time licensed: 4 days

Below are a couple of charts showing the number of agents with current licenses and the year they were first licensed. These charts reflect real estate sales licenses only — no brokers licenses. Why? Because the clock “resets” when one gets a brokers license. For example, my license date in the database is February 2008 — when I got my brokers license. There is no reflection of when I first got my sales license. This confounds the data so it’s best to separate sales and brokers licenses for this particular analysis.

Also, don’t look at this chart and think, “Wow, hardly anyone got a license between 1958 – 1976.” That is not true. This chart reflects the number of people currently holding a license. The simple fact is, everyone except one person who got a license in 1958 is either retired from real estate, passed away, or moved on to something else.

This chart is the same data, only from 1997 through 2007. It just gives you a better look at the last 10 years….

I’m relatively certain these types of posts bore many readers to tears. For that I apologize. But this blog is the best place for me to store data and trends for future comparison. And lets face it, some people like them.

Personally, I can’t help myself. I blame it on 20+ years in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. While not an engineer by education (I’m not counting those two hazy years of Chemical Engineering classes at UT), you hang out with engineers for 20 years and something is bound to wear off on you.

For better or worse.

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