12 minute read
Real Estate
Chad Arend - Realtor Neighborhood Specialist Chad Arend - Realtor Neighborhood Specialist Chad Arend - Realtor Neighborhood Specialist
SELLING HOUSES DURING A PANDEMIC
By Chad Arend, The Arend Team
We have the experienced team to handle the complicated We have the experienced team to handle the buying process of short sales, lender owned homes and complicated buying process of short sales, lender investor flips. We strive to make sure how clients are happy with our service every step of the way, from initial marketing meeting, to after closing. We promise you won’t be disappointed. • Local market knowledgeable • 14 years full time real estate experience We have the experienced team to handle the complicated buying process of short sales, lender owned homes and investor flips. We strive to make sure how clients are happy with our service every step of the way, from initial marketing meeting, to after closing. We promise you won’t be disappointed. owned homes and investor flips. We strive to make sure how clients are happy with our service every step of the way, from initial marketing meeting, to after closing. We promise you won’t be disappointed. • Local market knowledgeable • 14 years full time real estate experience • Excellent follow up skills Chad Arend Realtor Direct: 602-740-2074 Email: Chad@TheArendTeam.com www.TheArendTeam.com Chad Arend Realtor Direct: 602-740-2074 Email: • Excellent follow up skills • Aggressive negotiation tactics • Extensive marketing campaigns • Local market knowledgeable • 14 years full time real estate experience • Aggressive negotiation tactics • Extensive marketing campaigns • Large client base with multiple referral channels • Community & Neighborhood involvement Office: 21630 N 19th Ave Ste B8 Phoenix, AZ 85027 Chad@TheArendTeam.com www.TheArendTeam.com Chad Arend • • Large client base with multiple referral channelsExcellent follow up skills • Community & Neighborhood involvement Office 21630 N 19th Ave Ste B8 Phoenix, AZ 85027 • Aggressive negotiation tactics • Extensive marketing campaigns • Large client base with multiple referral channels Realtor Direct: 602-740-2074 Email: Chad@TheArendTeam.com www.TheArendTeam.com Join our Loyalty Customer Club! After 5th visit receive $5 off* New Customers: FREE Dry Cleaning* • Community & Neighborhood involvement Office 21630 N 19th Ave Ste B8 Phoenix, AZ 85027
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1930 West Pinnacle Peak Road • Phoenix, AZ 85027 Hours: Monday - Friday 7AM - 7PM • Saturday 8AM - 5PM
With our state’s real estate inventory still at historic lows, our real estate market has been fairly stable during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have noticed that certainly sales have been reduced, but new listings have been minimal as well. Currently, we’re not seeing any distressed sales come to the market, as the timeframe is too short to see any of those go through the process.
Our team is working the process much differently than normal and we are seeing good results so far. We are relying on virtual tour methods. We have begun using Zoom conference calls to meet with buyers and sellers, to tour properties on a buyer’s behalf, and to connect with new clients. We also use an interactive 3D tour program that allows a prospective buyer to virtually walk through the home from point to point with 360 views of each point. It also shows a floor plan. It’s great technology that we have previously used for our outof-state buyers, but now allows local buyers to minimize the properties they want to tour physically. It also gives us the ability to send out these tours of our listings to other agents and local brokerages so that we can reduce the showings through their home - yes, this sounds backwards. However, if we minimize the traffic through the home to someone that knows the floor plan, and has virtually toured the home and area, we then know that buyer is thoroughly interested in the home. Obviously there are pros and cons of this process, but the majority of our clients like this approach during this current pandemic. For years, I have been touring and producing YouTube videos of other homes for my out-of-state buyers for a quick candid video of the home to see if it was worth them traveling here to view the home, and now am doing this for my local buyers as well. It is much easier for one person to tour the property using a mask, shoe covers and gloves than to bring the full group through. In terms of overall market condition, we are seeing a reduction in activity overall compared to it being super hot in late February and March. This has removed the multiple offer situations we were seeing on homes priced under around $300,000 and is providing a more balanced leverage between buyers and sellers. This means buyers will have more ability to ask for concessions, and sellers will need to market their homes at a higher level and ensure the home is priced correctly.
In terms of expected price and sales volume, the Cromford Report cites, “Prices will continue to rise and sales volume will start to show the effects of ‘stay-at-home’ measures in the next few weeks. Not until supply and demand meet will we see prices stabilize and not until supply is higher than demand will we see prices decline. A lot can happen in the next four weeks, however. It’s still too early to be making apocalyptic projections for the Greater Phoenix housing market.”
The Arend Team strives to be on the forefront of the local real estate market and provide the best service and response time to long-time clients and new customers alike. We keep on the forefront of technology, yet also keep tried and true methods. Our industry skills include aggressive negotiation tactics, local knowledge, always update-to-date contract knowledge, premier marketing tools and a strong support staff. We always assure every client involved in the real estate transaction is “kept-in-theknow” on each aspect of the buying or selling process. Our goal is to make sure we maintain a true “clients first” attitude towards all aspects of our business.
Don’t Go Solar for Fake Monthly Savings.
APS, like most electric companies in Arizona, used to credit homeowners for surplus production from solar panels under a program called “net metering.” In that program, a solar system’s surplus production would go through the meter into the grid, and the homeowner would receive a kilowatt-hour (kWh) of credit. Later on in the day, month, or year— when energy was drawn from the grid at a moment the solar system was producing less power than the home needed—those kilowatt-hour units would offset each other. If you remember the solar industry screaming about a big deadline a couple of years ago, that is because this program was coming to an end thanks to APS’s successful lobbying of the Corporation Commission. The net-metering program has been gone since September 2017. Since then, we have been working under a program called “net billing”.
Here’s how it works. You will have, essentially, two meters on your house. Through one meter, you buy power from APS when the system is producing less than needed, and through the other meter, you sell power back to APS when the system is producing more power than the home needs. Your buying price is, on average, 16.5 cents per kilowatt-hour with typical on-peak and off-peak usage. The price at which you sell energy back to APS is 10.449 cents. (By the way, this price is dropping signifi cantly on September 1, also thanks to successful lobbying by APS). This creates a differential and, hence, a profi t margin for APS.
This is bad news and good news. It’s bad if you design the system for net metering. If you build the system so that production matches usage exactly, you will fi nd yourself short of the power you need to eliminate your APS billing. Averaged across total annual usage, your remaining bill will be $39 to $89 per month (in other words, $468 to $1,068 per year). Many solar companies in Arizona are showing solar proposals that
Go Solar for Big Profi ts
leave out this critical piece of information. The real question a homeowner thinks she wants to know is, “How much am I paying per year or month with APS, and what will the total be if I go solar?” When a solar company presents a proposal that makes “100%” of the electricity needed, it is leading the customer to believe that it reduces the electric bill 100 percent, a logical but erroneous conclusion that suggests a “fake monthly savings.”
This misconception is not the worst of the problems arising from such misleading tactics. The real tragedy is that the correct design would have brought the homeowner many more benefi ts, including peace of mind and satisfaction at a lower cost. It also would have brought a much bigger profi t over the time she owns the home and a much bigger return when she sells the property. The way net billing works, in contrast to net metering, there is virtually no limit to how much power the homeowner decides to create, other than the amount of available roof space that is optimal for solar. APS has some artifi cial upper restraints; however, they do not come into effect until the system gets very large, and a good solar designer can get around many of them.
If the system designer takes advantage of this fact and gets away from the bad habit solar companies have of defaulting to 100 percent of usage, a system can be designed that produces 130 percent, 140 percent, or even 150 percent. The 130-percent solution will get the remaining APS bill down to a negligible number. The 140-percent system will typically wipe it out completely, and the 150-percent solution will produce a netnegative bill for the year. I have a customer who owns a 150-percent solution, and he gets a check from APS every year. This year that check was for $1,500. Now that’s a happy solar owner.
Furthermore, by increasing the number of panels, you increase the amount of money that the US government will be investing in the system and into your home. If the 100-percent design created a $10,000 subsidy, then the 150-percent design will produce a $15,000 subsidy. There is no limit to the size of the system and, therefore, the size of the tax credit. By the way, the tax credit is dropping signifi cantly at the end of this year from its current rate, which is 26 percent of the system price. Truth be told (which is something we insist on in our proposals), the result of a properly designed system is a lower monthly and annual cost for the household’s electricity.
Janet, a customer of ours, recently purchased a home here in Peoria in the Vistancia community. Her annual usage is projected to be 12,500 kWh, costing approximately $193 per month on APS’s Savers Choice plan. The 100-percent legacy design is a 7.92 kW (7,920 W) solar system with 24 330-watt panels. That will produce 13,000 kWh annually, which will produce 104 percent of usage. The upfront cost would be zero dollars, followed by a monthly payment of $104. On the face of it, this produces an apparent, but “fake, savings” of $89 per month. What’s usually missing in the proposal is the remaining APS bill of $47. A salesperson might describe this as “not much” or “minimal account fees and grid fees, maybe $20”. That would have been accurate during the old net-metering structure, but that’s not what happens with net billing.
Our alternate design of 10.23 kW with 31 panels produces 16,700 kWh per year, also with a $0 upfront cost and a $135-permonth payment. We have calculated the remaining bill to be $14, and we include that calculation in the quotes we give. The total annual cost of electricity is actually $24 per year less, and the homeowner has seven additional solar panels and 3,700 additional kilowatt-hours of power per year. The larger system also results in the federal government’s investing $2,200 more into the homeowner’s home since she will receive a tax credit of $9,800 instead of $7,600. In addition, if the homeowner uses the extra power to, say, add a spa or an electric car or program the thermostat for cooler temperatures in the summer, she avoids spending 16.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for the additional power from APS, realizing even greater savings than if she were to sell the power to APS for 10.45 cents.
The design this customer actually implemented was an 11.55-kW system with 35 panels that today is generating 18,800 kWh per year (150 percent of usage). That will cost her nothing up front and $152 per month, leaving a remaining bill of less than zero. With 12,500 kWh of energy consumption, she will be getting a check from APS for the surplus. Her tax credit was for over $11,000, and her total cost per month and year is identical to the cost of the very smallest system.
Over the course of the term, Janet will pay $33,000 less to pay off the equipment than she would have paid APS. And the money she did spend didn’t turn into utility receipts; it turned into a paid-off $40,000 power plant that at the end of the term will be generating $7,500 worth of electricity per year (the projected cost of 12,500 kWh at the end of the solar system’s loan term). She has no doubt whatsoever that her home will be worth substantially more with a paid-off solar system, producing enough power to incur zero billing from APS, than it would have if she had spent much more buying that power from APS over the years.
For a more technical presentation on the dynamics of the APS buy/sell meters and the effect a solar system has on remaining bills, visit www.SolarTruth.com
-Michael O’Donnell is a vice president of sales and a partner at SunSolar Solutions, a Peoria fi rm that has been the top solar sales company in Arizona for each of the last four years.
GO SOLAR
AND WE’LL COVER YOUR SOLAR PAYMENTS FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR
Valid for new customers only. Not valid with any other offer. Call for details.
623-562-9009 9059 W Lake Pleasant Pkwy H800 Peoria AZ 85382 www.SunsolarSolutions.com We Make it Easy
• $0 Down, No upfront cost • Save up to 90% off your electric bill • Protect against infl ation & energy costs increases from your Utility Company • Provide clean, reliable energy for your family powered by the sun
