Public Comments | Flagstaff Real Estate and Community News

Love our Flagstaff night sky

Wed, 28 May 2008 12:42:58 -0400

As a lifelong lecal Flagstaff resident I would like to say that "I Love our Flagstaff night skies!!!"

Lower Turnout predicted on election morning

Tue, 20 May 2008 10:19:48 -0400

Election Office says maybe it'll be 45%KNAU reports this morning that the count yesterday was just approaching 10,000 ballots. The Election Office was then predicting a 45% turnout -- still a record. Let's get going, folks. Make it 50%. Take your ballots in today!

about the "20%"

Tue, 06 May 2008 11:28:44 -0400

Thanks for your comments. You folks are an invaluable real estate resource. The 20 percent I claimed is, as you probably have guessed, largely a WAG and based mostly on what it appears our house in DC would be selling for here. We lived in Wheaton, MD, just a few blocks north of the Kensington border and two miles north of the DC border. Kensington, being the first non-multi-millionaire neighborhood north of Chevy Chase, is highly desirable, so we benefited from a great location and also a bit from that association. Between that, excellent staging on our part, a very savvy real estate agent, and a buyer who absolutely wanted our house no matter what, we got our asking price with no strings attached, which was about $20k more than we were expecting to settle for based on comps. We sold for $342k. That very same house here would *easily* list for $425k. Probably more, as the (1950s) construction was of notably higher quality than that of the two dozen (1970s-1980s) houses we've seen here. (This is not a knock of Flagstaff at all -- it's just the way it is everywhere: newer construction is, much of the time, flimsy and cheap compared to older construction. One could argue that the older stuff was unnecessarily sturdy, and builders got smarter over time.)

Anyway, that's what the 20% guess is based on. The real number may be 15%, or maybe 25%, but probably not: 20% seems the most likely. And, yes, surprising as it sounds, housing here in Flagstaff is uniformly substantially higher than in most areas in the DC metro area. If we had to buy our house in Maryland at the price we sold it for, we could, according to our mortgage lender, handily afford that. We can *not* afford that same house here, by at least $50k, and we could sell it here for around $80k more than we got for it in DC.

Amazing, isn't it? Nobody was more shocked than us. My DC coworkers are equally shocked, since before the housing balloon anybody who got transfered to Flagstaff (like I just did) made out like bandits. Things have certainly changed, and not to anybody's benefit as far as I can tell. It won't be "normal" again until housing prices fall to rejoin the normal inflation track that housing seems to have always followed before this obscene 2004-2006 balloon.

Response to "Stunned"

Mon, 05 May 2008 23:12:44 -0400

Interesting assertion -- and comparison to D.C.

I'm not at all familiar with the D.C. market, but I'm stunned that it would not be more expensive than Flagstaff. Were you commuting from rural VA or Maryland? What do you base your "20%" on? I would say it's fairly safe to assume prices will not begin to go up again until 2009, so sitting for now is probably ok; however, I do not expect a 20% drop over the next year. Meanwhile, you lose the tax benefits of home ownership -- if you have income to offset those available deductions. I suggest you find a real estate agent who is expert in the Flagstaff market to assist you in evaluating our market relative to your needs.

Ann

Flagstaff homes affordable? Well, they're certainly overpriced.

Mon, 05 May 2008 12:00:38 -0400

Flagstaff homes are consistently about 20 percent overpriced at present. We've been looking to find a home here for over a month, now. Prices have dropped slightly, but still all of the homes we've liked so far we've had to pass up because they are so obscenely overpriced. We sold our house in the Washington, DC, area for a very good price before moving here (we got lucky), yet we cannot afford a comparable house in Flagstaff. When Flagstaff prices drop another 20 percent, Flagstaff will be somewhat competitive again. Until then, we're sitting on our money and waiting. I suspect we're not the only ones.

What is happening in May?

Sat, 03 May 2008 21:40:42 -0400

Great update for Febuary....what is new?Please keep the entertainment info coming! Thanks!