AZRuralHomes

    I attended an all-day out-of-town training yesterday with a nationally known coach in the hopes of learning some new techniques to make me better at my business. (Sincere thank you here to Chicago Title-Debbie Donaldson for sponsoring my entry.) I learned some things about myself and our industry that left me unsettled. The basics of sales and contract management haven't changed. Reminders about these back-to-basics, tried-and-true methods were valuable, and I'm glad I went for this alone. But, it was a little uncomfortable to realize that I'm apparently a Luddite, which seems a complete contradiction to me because I'm immersed in technology to do my job effectively. Most of the training day was spent teaching me that if I wanted to grow my business, I must use AI incessantly. This included how to get AI to create blogs, videos and CONTENT for me without my input, and that posting a huge volume of this AI created content on multiple platforms was the w...

  It's that time of year. Monsoons have begun in parts of the state, and we HOPE they're headed our way. Road closures due to flooding or accidents abound. In an area like I live in northwest Arizona, that can mean very long (50 miles or more) detours to get home. But NOT obeying the road closure is a certain recipe for disaster. Following Google's 'alternate routing' can be even worse.   My husband was on the way home from Seligman to Kingman today. There was, sadly, a traffic fatality that closed westbound I-40. Google re-routed him along the 'fastest' route, which would have taken him down 30 miles of unmaintained dirt roads, which are mostly passable in a high-profile vehicle when it isn't raining--key word there is mostly . Google did put the warning I put in the photo above in a TINY window below the route. (see photo above) My husband was fine--he's a local so he truly knew his options and didn't choose to go that way.  Another...

  What are you looking at in this photo? That's Brian with Mohave Well Service at the bottom of my 10' tall water tank, cleaning the bottom, and Robin, his wife, is at the top holding the camera and doing the boots-on-the-ground part of the job. This post is from MY house, when Brian and Robin came to clean out the BOTTOM of my water tank. WAIT, WHAT did I just say??? That's right, Brian climbs to the bottom of these 2500 gallon (and up to 10,000 gallons, he told me) water tanks to clean the minerals off the bottom. I had the added pleasure of dead spiders in mine along with the minerals. EEW; I'm drinking that!  So ... if you have no idea what I'm talking about, in our area of NW Arizona, the wells are deep, and fire protection services are far away, so most of us rural homeowners have a 2500 (or more) gallon water tank that sits next to the well as a holding tank. This allows the deep-well pump to only turn on periodically. For examp...

  I had a birthday recently and decided I wanted to go do something fun with my family. I've been knocking about Kingman since 2013 now, but have NEVER been to the Mohave Museum of Art and History, so we went to go see what that's about. It's a very cool museum that contains lots of local history of the area. Did you know Mineral Park was the original County Seat for Mohave County? And that Kingman is named after a railroad survey engineer? The fun photo above refers to the wagon trails through the area; it's funny because we're still a huge off-road adventure community. SO much to learn, I'll certainly be going back. But the best part of the day for me was our ice cream cone at Scoops on 66. We had the good fortune of running into one of the owners while we were there, and she shared some of the history of the building with us as well as some of the interesting aspects of their business. The ice cream shop building dates back to th...

In the photo above, this group of 7 deer is visiting my home daily right now during my morning coffee-time, then heading over to the neighboring parcel to visit them. I guess our weeds are what they're looking for right now! We love seeing them, and our Australian Shepherd, is learning to tolerate their presence on his turf. I've received LOTS of helpful advice from neighbors on how to attract them better so that I can see more of them (which I would love), but alas, I do not have a fenced property and I live in an open range area, so anything I'd put out to attract the deer (water, mineral licks) would ALSO attract the cattle. Since the Rancher uses water to move his cattle from one area to another where he wants them to be grazing, I really don't want to interfere with that, so I'll enjoy the time the deer give me with my weeds.  Have a blessed day, everyone!!

  What is Deed Fraud? It's when a bad actor STEALS YOUR REAL ESTATE PROPERTY. Starting this year, Realtors in Arizona are now required to complete 1 hour covering Deed Fraud per period of continuing education to renew their license. That's how important the Commissioner thinks this problem is. Who's most at risk for Deed Fraud? Vacant Land Owners, first and foremost. Secondly, residential owners who have no mortgage against their property, especially vacation homes or people who travel a lot. These properties are more at risk because there's no lien to release through the deed transfer process. What can property owners do about it? This varies county by county across the nation. My rural Mohave County was a very early adopter with two programs. One is the Address Protection Program with the Assessor's Office (see graphic above). This 'locks' the tax address for the property. A defrauder's first step is usually to change the address so that ...