All posts by Ben

Land, Real Estate

August Real Estate Update

It’s the dog days of August, we can see the two dogs in the morning skies, that is Canis Major & Canus Minor. Canis Major has the brightest star visible from earth, Sirius.

This month we would normally be shuffling papers, and trying to get chores done before the heat gets too oppressive, like say by 8:00 am. Surprisingly, this year the calls and emails have continued through the summer, which has been mercifully nicer temperature wise too. We’ll see if sales follow; one can always hope. We have had a noticeably better year  overall with a good positive trend that we’ve needed here.

The monsoon rains are very late this year. We had rain for about a minute one night last week, but that’s been about it. The humidity is higher now though. We had been 6-10% humidity most of June and early July, but now it’s more typically 25-35%. This weekend will see temperatures a high as 111 degrees in Yucca. We’ll be a precious few degrees cooler where we are, but it’s hot!

I believe that Yucca is the last great bargain in the West. We’re relatively close to smaller, but centrally located small cities, and those (Kingman, Lake Havasu City, and Bullhead City) are becoming pricier as we see an influx of new residents. While it’s 2-2 1/2 hours to Las Vegas, that leaves many possibilities for visits from family and friends. California is just 20 miles from Santa Fe Ranch Rd., and one can be at the beaches in a little over 5 hours (avoid rush hour!)

The opportunity today I believe is in trying to extend infrastructure (as in grid power,) or by finding good property and adding septic, well and even a home.

There is a need, but many don’t have the wherewithal or physical capability to take on a home building project. To me it’s a young man’s dream, but the builders do work very hard, and are often subject to the whims of the market as we’ve seen over the years.

Considerable electric and phone infrastructure already exists around Yucca, and one can easily envision more development. Sun City, Yucca? Don’t laugh. We have water, power, rail, interstate, and thousands of acres of inexpensive (relatively) land.

Meanwhile, as we’re more than 20 miles out, I don’t think we’ll have a Circle K at the corner any time soon.

 

Off Grid Living, Prepping

Make Emergency Candles from Bacon Grease

…Nothing beats a flashlight or an emergency candle in case the power goes out, but what are you going to do when there’s no more juice in that lantern and the last piece of flick died out like the ambitions and desires of a crestfallen lover?

Make some more, of course, because that’s we preppers are good at. In today’s article, I’m going to show you a fast way to create 24-hour emergency candles by harnessing the raw power of your favorite dish – bacon.

Yup, you’ve read that right. Bacon’s not only great for breakfast, but can also be used to make portable and highly efficient light sources. So, enough chit chat! Let’s take a look at how bacon candles are made.

Source: How To Turn Bacon Grease Into Emergency Candles – Daily Prepper News

Gardening, Off Grid Living

Save Your Seeds, Save Your Life

We are told that everything begins with seed. Everything ends with it, too. As a chef I can tell you that your meal will be incalculably more delicious if I’m cooking with good ingredients.

But until that afternoon I’d rarely considered how seed influences — determines, really — not only the beginning and the end of the food chain, but also every link in between. The tens of thousands of rows surrounding me owed their brigade-like uniformity to the operating instructions embedded in the seed.

That uniformity allows for large-scale monoculture, which in turn determines the size and model of the combine tractor needed to efficiently harvest such a load. (“Six hundred horsepower — needs a half-mile just to turn her around,” joked the farmer sitting next to me.)

Satellite information, beamed into the tractor’s computer, makes it possible to farm such an expanse with scientific precision.

The type of seed also dictates the fertilizer, pesticide and fungicide regimen, sold by the same company as part of the package, requiring a particular planter and sprayer (40 feet and 140 feet wide, respectively) and producing a per-acre yield that is startling, and startlingly easy to predict.

It is as if the seed is a toy that comes with a mile-long list of component parts you’re required to purchase to make it function properly.

We think that the behemoths of agribusiness known as Big Food control the food system from up high — distribution, processing and the marketplace muscling everything into position. But really it is the seed that determines the system, not the other way around.

The seeds in my palm optimized the farm for large-scale machinery and chemical regimens; they reduced the need for labor; they elbowed out the competition (formally known as biodiversity). In other words, seeds are a blueprint for how we eat.

We should be alarmed by the current architects. Just 50 years ago, some 1,000 small and family-owned seed companies were producing and distributing seeds in the United States; by 2009, there were fewer than 100. Thanks to a series of mergers and acquisitions over the last few years, four multinational agrochemical firms — Corteva, ChemChina, Bayer and BASF — now control over 60 percent of global seed sales.

Source: Opinion | Save Our Food. Free the Seed. – The New York Times

Gardening, Prepping

How to grow your own wellness garden

Besides food, one can grow many herbs that are useful medicine. Here’s a few. Be sure to click for more info.

Modern medicine owes a lot to the plant kingdom, from the treatment of heart disease to lung disorders. But plants can be useful for minor ailments and everyday self-care, too.

Growing for wellness is going mainstream. A recent survey by Wyevale Garden Centres found that more than two thirds of British gardeners consider the health and wellbeing properties of a plant before they buy it.

At Chelsea Physic Garden, a Food is Medicine Trail starts this month to highlight plants you can grow as tonics, pick-me-ups and other soothing remedies to handle the stresses of modern life.

Many are surprisingly easy to grow, even in limited city spaces. We asked Chelsea Physic Garden’s head of plant collections, Nell Jones, to share her tips for the best “wellbeing” plants to grow at home.

Source: How to grow your own wellness garden: from peppermint to turmeric easy-to-grow plants that will help with minor ailments and wellbeing | Homes and Property

Gardening

Gardening when your life depends on it

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Here’s a good article about “food insurance” and how to achieve it.

Few of us like to think about what life would be like if our society were to break down, even temporarily, due to internal or external factors like war, insurrection, famine or natural disaster. But most of us do indeed plan for the worst, don’t we?

That’s why we purchase health, homeowners, life, automobile, flood and other types of insurance, right? We ought to add “food insurance” to that list, and that’s the concept behind “gardening when your life depends on it.”

As with any preparation strategy, planning and resultant implementation should begin now, while things are calm. If you wait until times actually get tough, you’ve waited far too long.

It would be like buying car insurance after you hit a tree or buying flood insurance when the water is three feet deep in your living room. Here are five food production and gardening strategies that will help keep you alive during hard times.

Just remember that you will get out of this what you put into it; if you just plan on things being “broken” for a few days, your meager preparations won’t matter much if the crisis lasts weeks, months or even years.

Source: Gardening when your life depends on it: five food production strategies that may keep you alive during hard times – NaturalNews.com

Real Estate

The Importance of Days on Market Time

It always amazes me to see agents leave a property on the market for years and years. While not everything sells of course, it sure looks bad to see a property that has been on the market for more than a year.

One of the first questions that I often get when sending a list of available properties is, “Why has this one been on the market for so long?”

No one notices that the price had been reduced several times, or that the market has been slow here for a long time, but they almost always focus on the market time.

The lesson is to take the property off (90 days in our MLS,) and reset the clock at least once a year. It’s easy and makes your home or land look “fresh” again.

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When we talk about days on market, we’re talking about the amount of time the home is posted on the multiple listing service, or MLS, which allows real estate agents to search for local properties for sale.

The timer starts whenever a house is officially listed on the market, and it ends when the seller has a signed and accepted contract with the buyer.

So, when you’re browsing real estate sites and you come across a home that has their days on market listed as one or two, that means the place was just listed.

Chances are, it hasn’t had very many, if any, showings yet. By contrast, if the home has 100 days on market, that means the seller has been trying to find a buyer for a long time – and things aren’t going well. So what days on market tells you is more than just how long the place has been for sale. It also provides insight into how the house has been perceived by buyers in general.

Source: Why ‘Days on Market’ is a Key Metric When Selling a House | U.S News Real Estate

Arizona, Real Estate

Short Term Vacation Rentals Divide Sedona Residents

Julieanna Bottorff has lived in her quiet Sedona neighborhood for 20 years. A deer path that runs behind her house and across the street was regularly trafficked by wildlife.

Then a developer moved in across the street and ripped up the path, she says. The developer plans to build as many as five 6,000-square-foot homes to be used as short-term rentals, neighbors say.

The once quiet street is now punctuated with the steady noise of construction. The move comes as residents of the tourist hotspot grapple with the consequences of a two-year-old state law that restricts how cities and towns can regulate short-term home rentals advertised on websites such as Airbnb or VRBO.

On Wednesday, more than 150 people attended a city meeting. The Sedona residents grilled state Rep. Bob Thorpe, R-Flagstaff, about how the state plans to address the law’s consequences.

Among them: investors moving into neighborhoods to buy up multiple homes, vacation renters driving up housing costs and the changing neighborhood dynamics.

Several homeowners supported the recent law that allowed vacation rentals to flourish in Arizona. They spoke about how the short-term rentals made it possible for them to pay their mortgages.

Source: ‘They killed our city’: Locals feel helpless as vacation rentals overrun Sedona, Arizona

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We have had an Airbnb, and have also used them. The problem is in the popular areas many can become just modern day flophouses.

Personally, I feel that the property owners’ rights to full use and enjoyment should never be infringed, but rather any control of property use is best left to the individual, or past that,  a small carefully supervised HOA or better yet neighborhood council.

Once we get to the municipal level, the rules get more ridiculous, and the monies wasted in trying to enforce the new laws just end up creating more bureaucracy (which taxpayers have to fund, defeating the whole exercise.) Continue reading Short Term Vacation Rentals Divide Sedona Residents →

Gardening

Gardening and volunteering boosts mental health, relieving stress, anxiety and depression

(NaturalNews) Looking for ways to relieve stress, anxiety and depression without resorting to pills or psychiatric therapy?

Engaging in activities such as gardening and volunteering, produce obvious practical benefits, but they can also help significantly in boosting mental health and self-esteem.

A recent BBC article described the benefits of both volunteering and gardening as valuable aids to achieving a sense of personal well-being.

Therapeutic benefits of volunteering In the BBC piece entitled “Gardening and volunteering: The new wonder drugs?” Nick Triggle wrote: “There is a growing body of research that suggests volunteering is good for your health, particularly mentally. “It can help bring stability, improve self-esteem, reduce social isolation and help people learn new skills.

“For many, it can be a gateway to paid employment, which in turn has its own benefits. “In fact, there’s plenty of evidence a whole range of social and practical activities can improve the wellbeing of people.”

Source: Gardening and volunteering boosts mental health, relieving stress, anxiety and depression – NaturalNews.com

Gardening

Seed Starting in Arizona for Fall

Now is the time to start thinking about the fall garden in Arizona. It’s hot, and the poor garden looks sad. Soon however, the temperatures will drop, and once again, all of our favorites can be started. Click on the link for more great info.

Midsummer and yikes is it ever hot! It is time for me to be starting new plants for the fall from seed but conditions are just too hot. What to do? Here are a few tricks.

The seeds of different vegetables have optimum temperatures for germination and right now most of them will not like this heat.

Beets and carrots aren’t too bothered by hot soil. Their germination doesn’t start to drop off until the soil gets to be over 90 degrees.

However, the optimum temperature for lettuce is around 65 degrees and germination drops off rapidly after the soil heats up to the mid seventies. Spinach does best at 70 degrees but by the time the soil is in the mid-80’s, forget about it. Some brassicas don’t mind the heat. Cabbage, Chinese cabbage, and kale will sprout fine in soil as hot as 90 degrees, while broccoli prefers cooler soil, its optimum being around 75. The germination on cauliflower drops off rapidly after soil temperatures hit 85.

Source: Seed Starting in Hot Weather | Old Farmer’s Almanac

Real Estate

Online real estate firm Purplebricks to Leave US

As I mentioned in my recent post about Amazons’ entrance into real estate, it really is a lot more than just taking a few pictures and putting a home online.

Just as one wouldn’t try to be their own doctor or lawyer, one should always at least get some advice from a professional.

Purplebricks, a British-based online real estate service that marketed itself as a disrupter of the traditional home-sale process, is ending its United States business after less than two years.

The company, which was founded in the United Kingdom in 2014, announced earlier this month that it was leaving the American market. When it started its American operations in September 2017, it said that Southern California would be its prime target.

Purplebricks informed the California Employment Development Department in a July 12 letter that the company would close its offices on Spectrum Center Drive in Irvine by Sept, 13. Fifth-five employees there and 68 additional people, referred to as “independent sales agents,” will be let go by the closure date.A company official, who co-signed the notification letter to the state, declined to comment on the situation.

The shutdown of all American operations is expected to be completed by the end of the year.  Earlier this year, Purplebricks also announced it was leaving Australia’s real estate market and would focus on only the UK and Canada.

“The problem is, you attract Realtors that are not of the highest caliber,”  Drake said. “A lot of people think it’s easy to sell real estate, that you just put up a sign, take photos and put them online. A good agent has relationships in the industry and knows the process.

Source: Online real estate firm Purplebricks leaving the United States