It started with the sound of chirping birds on a peaceful morning in the Crystal Gardens subdivision in Avondale.

Suddenly the relative silence was broken by a single honk off in the distance. Followed by another, and then another … growing in frequency, intensity and volume over a several second span … heads turning, trying to determine what was causing the increasing noise, wondering from which direction the attack might come … and then they appeared, two Canadian geese flying no more than 20 feet above the ground after lifting off from the lake in search of, well, other water.

Sure, they may look positively ducky waddling harmlessly on the ground in search of bugs and water and such. But in the air, with their attack foils … er feathers … in position, rebel yell … er honk … echoing from their lips … er bills …

In the City of Surprise, real estate agents are required to disclose the presence of Luke Air Force Base to the south. Frequent F-16 flyovers aren’t just likely, they’re guaranteed.

After this morning I’m thinking there needs to be a similar notification map to warn homebuyers of the presence of Canadian geese - flying machines which soar at much lower altitudes and are more likely than an F-16 to unexpectedly drop its ordinance.*

* This is a representation of what a Canadian goose notification map might look like in Crystal Gardens and has no basis in fact, logic or necessity. In fact, this could be the stupidest idea I’ve had since trying to give a cat a bath back in 1991.

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“We’re not saying you can’t own guns. We’re not even saying you can’t carry a gun. We’re just saying you can’t carry a gun in town.”

- Sam Elliott as Virgil Earp, Tombstone

Look, I’m not saying you have to write your first offer on a home in the Phoenix market at around 10 percent of list price, assuming it’s priced at market value. I’m not saying you even have to write an offer on a home here at all. All I’m saying is if we’re going to work together, we need to be on the same page as far as strategy.

Last night, one of my prospective buyers and I parted ways before ever looking at a home here in the Valley. Why? Because we couldn’t come to an agreement on the state of the market and developing a strategy that matched both his needs and the realities of our real estate market.

Let’s take a look at two retirement communities in the West Valley, Sun City Grand and Pebblecreek. I ran the data for both and the numbers come out more or less the same:

In Sun City Grand, the lowest list-to sales price percentage for the 389 sales was 78.93%. Of those 389, all but 47 were sold for at least 90% of the final list price and more than half – 206 of the 389 – sold for at least 95% of the final list price.

In Pebblecreek, there 97 sales, only one below 80 percent of final list price and 77 of the 97 at 90 percent of list price and above.

So yes, if you really are so inclined, start the offer even lower than the 10 percent figure that seems to work so well in the off chance the seller wants to give their home away. But just don’t base your buying decision on finding a one-percenter - you’re almost certainly going to come away empty-handed.

Which is all well and good if you want to pay a retainer for the gasoline and time needed to help you view homes you’ll never purchase. Because, believe it or not, this is a business.

Extended timelines are fine, as some clients I’ve worked with for multiple years can attest. But unrealistic expectations are a completely different issue. Not believing me when I provide advice is one thing; also ignoring the hard data in favor of anecdotal stories from the cocktail party crowd is lunacy.

There’s one line from last night’s conversation that sticks with me. This buyer mentioned he knows the game because he’s purchased five homes in his time.

That’s honestly two more than I’ve personally purchased. But it’s also equal to the number of homes I currently have in escrow right now - now multiply that by six years in the biz.

It’s my experience that allows me to make my recommendations with confidence. You don’t have to follow them. But without some sort of middle ground and common strategy, there’s not much reason for us to work together.

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Just saw this come across on Twitter.

From the Associated Press, courtesy of azcentral.com:

Maricopa County officials have agreed to stop new single-family home construction around Luke Air Force Base.

It’s a move that officials hope will make the base a more-attractive candidate for training pilots on the new F-35 fighter.

Thursday’s agreement is a victory for the state and for communities near the base in the suburbs west of Phoenix. Some of them worry that Luke may close if urban encroachment prompts concerns about safety and noise.

Base closures can happen in the Valley and in fact already have. Williams Gateway Airport in southeast Mesa used to Williams Air Force Base.

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Boy, did we ever get it wrong. Unintentionally, of course. But somewhere down the line, we came to accept as gospel that technology was going to be the driving force behind the real estate industry as the first decade of the 21st century came to a close.

Oh, I’m sorry. For my readers who aren’t real estate agents, I’m going to speak Italian to Mike assuming your assent, McCluskey.

Todd Carpenter, NAR’s Social Media Manager, recently put together the beginnings of a six-year history of the RE.net. I say beginnings because the handful of milestones listed in the post don’t really give form to the changes in the way real estate agents related not just to consumers but to each other.

I made my own entry into the waters in January 2006, technically speaking, but didn’t begin posting regularly on my original blog until the middle of July. After six months on RealTown Blogs’ platform I discovered Wordpress and this site was born; the All Phoenix Real Estate.com name came about a year later when I tripped over the domain.

Todd mentions the many high-profile members of the RE.net who got their start on Active Rain; I got there in September, two months after I had launched with intent, only to give up the ghost when it felt like points mattered more than content to some. And hey, I had a brand of my own to work on.

Back in the day, there only was a handful of us in the Valley doing this real estate blogging thing; there was me, there was Jay, and there was Swann. All of us wrote local, all of us wrote national, none of us really worried about what difference it made what was written.

Phoenix’s blogging community grew faster than most and the competition, such that it was, both raised the bar and often lowered the gloves. Dust ups such as the one that Todd found himself embroiled in this week weren’t uncommon locally and they often stretched nationally. Needless to say, there usually was one common element in nearly every one of these incidents, but only the true (and somewhat blind) believers didn’t see the game for what it was - stupid tricks intended to make a name for ourselves, similar to the rookie hockey player who drops the gloves twice a preseason game to make the roster.

What strikes me most about this period was the sheer naivete of it all, the ignorance that we all showed for the rules of the road. Which probably was excusable because there were no rules of the real estate blogging road at the time; the concept of hyperlocal was just beginning to take hold and it still was more fun writing about Redfin and Trulia and dogs pissing all over themselves from the sheer irony of the pith.

It wasn’t until later, when not just more agents had entered the game but some both in and out of the industry chose to anoint themselves as the experts of real estate blogging, that endless rules and increased niceties entered the arena. Doing something different was viewed less as something different than as something wrong. Because without right or wrong there’s nothing to teach and nothing to market to the newbies.

Yes, somewhere along the line real estate blogging went mainstream, at least as much as a niche activity could go mainstream. Those of us on that leading edge believed we were ushering in a sea change in the way real estate is transacted. Fast forward a few years and it’s abundantly clear that we were wrong.

More and more agents entered the real estate blogging world over the past couple of years, often passing those on the way out of the blogging world and/or out of the business on their way through the revolving door. For every two of us in that first wave who still are around, there’s another who either has stopped blogging or stopped selling. It’s the nature not just of the real estate blogs but the real estate business in general.

Maybe it was spending the time in Brian Buffini’s 100 Days to Greatness, or maybe it was spending a year realizing technology alone can’t purchase client loyalty, but it has become abundantly clear that a large portion of the message we in the RE.net deliver is flawed. The technology stands as the focus when in truth it’s little more than a means to an end.

It’s great that I have people registering for the home search on my website (call me an unrepentant killer in that respect) but I’ve come to view those registrations less as hard numbers - x number of registrations a day equals y conversions and z commission dollars - as people often walking along blindly and hoping to make a connection along the way.

Taking two seconds to click the “like” link on a Facebook update takes far less effort and, to me, has far less impact than picking up the phone just to check in and see how someone is doing. No matter what changes technology brings - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the long forgotten MySpaace - the need for real human contact remains as strong as ever.

That’s the message you virtually never hear at a REBarCamp with its almost exclusive focus on learning emerging technologies and mastering existing technologies. (With any luck, I’ll personally be changing that with my own yet-to-be named session at REBCPHX and bringing 2.0 technologies back to 0.0 methodology.)

Speaking of REBarCamps …

After nearly 18 months of the craze, I’m still struggling to understand who the audience is supposed to be - newbies who don’t understand what the rest of us are doing and almost certainly aren’t going to implement 99 percent of what’s discussed, or those of us who have been doing this for a while and are looking for a higher level discussion?

Put another way, if there’s nothing to offer those who have been doing this social media thing for awhile except the opportunity to teach, how long before REBC* becomes little more than a playground for the vendors to push their wares? And once you’ve reached that point and virtually abandoned the spontaneous, interactive, communal discussion that’s supposed to be the hallmark of an REBarCamp, is it really a BarCamp at all or just another of the vendor fair most agents can’t help but attend in hopes of getting a pen?

That’s a discussion for another day and maybe even for a day that may never come since the march of social media education continues on without pause and seemingly without reflection. And as long as everyone stays in their lane like the bloated people floating on moving lounges in WALL-E, all will be well.

And it will be more than a little boring. Which is a shame, because that’s one thing that the RE.net certainly wasn’t a few short years ago when we all turned on our monitors and made up the rules as we went along.

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… which has no meaning whatsoever unless you had younger children at the time that Snow Dogs came out. Which is neither here not there.

This afternoon I received a short sale approval letter for my listing in Avondale. The loan was with Bank of America, which is notorious for it’s glacial pace for short sale approvals even in this era of global warming. To whit …

Contract was received on September 27 and submitted to Bank of America on September 29. (For the cynics out there, this was September of 2009.)

And, well … that was about it. Except for a couple of dozen phone calls and e-mails along the way along with three separate negotiators at least two of whom actually returned calls and e-mails. Oh, and an approval letter sent to the wrong e-mail address two weeks ago that seemed not to exist at the time of last week’s update call four days after the letter was supposed to have been sent.

There also was a small cut in the commission which I’m absorbing … what I offer in the MLS as a co-broke to buyers’ agents is what I pay; MLS rules mandate it and I’ve never been much for the 50-50 concept. Either negotiate a better deal or eat the difference. I chose the latter because it’s the right thing to do for my seller.

No promissory notes needed, no cash required at closing for my seller … a clean approval and hope of this chapter of their lives being put to bed in the next month.

Maybe this is what everyone means a childbirth … it’s uncomfortable as hell for months and painful as anything near the end but after it’s over you kinda forget all of that and instead are elated about the results.

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