**Mesa, Arizona Real Estate** Teri Ellis, Broker, CRS, ABR, GRI, ePRO

I just discovered this really cool document entitled the Home Buyers' Bill of Rights for home buyers and renters in Mesa, Arizona. The Bill of Rights' for consumers in Arizona begins with a statement as follows:

"THE ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF REAL ESTATE, IN COOPERATION WITH INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS AND THE PUBLIC, CREATED THIS “BILL OF RIGHTS” TO HELP EDUCATE YOU, THE CONSUMER, OF YOUR RIGHTS WHEN PURCHASING OR RENTING PROPERTY. AS A REAL ESTATE CONSUMER IN ARIZONA, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW MATERIAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPERTY.

THE FOLLOWING LIST REPRESENTS SOME OF THE IMPORTANT MATERIAL FACTS YOU SHOULD EDUCATE YOURSELF ON BEFORE PURCHASING ANY TYPE OF PROPERTY IN ARIZONA."

In an effort to better acquaint home buyers and renters with their "rights", I have included a link to the information above, and shared the material below as well.

BUYERS AND TENANTS: YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW:

• If the property is located in an incorporated city or unincorporated part of the county.
• If title insurance is available and if fire insurance can be acquired.
• If you will have fire and police protection and, if so, who provides this service.
• If the roads provide access for fire protection and police service.
• If the roads are maintained, and by whom.
• If utilities are available, and who provides them. (Water, Electric, Gas, Sewer, Trash)
• If the water supply is adequate.
• If the jurisdiction the property is located in has conservation restrictions and policies.
• If the property is located in a school district, and the distance to the closest schools.
• If there are any natural or geological hazards, pests or wildlife.
• If there are essential services near the property such as grocery and medical services.
• If there is crime in the area and the crime rate.
• That you have a right to equal housing opportunity free of discrimination.
• If the property is affected by a military installation.
• If there is an Arizona Subdivision Disclosure Report, an Affidavit of Disclosure or a Seller’s Property Disclosure Statement. You should read these disclosure documents before you purchase or rent.

THERE MAY BE OTHER ITEMS NOT LISTED ABOVE THAT YOU SHOULD EDUCATE YOURSELF ON BEFORE BUYING OR RENTING PROPERTY. FOR A LARGER LIST, PLEASE REFERENCE THE BUYER’S ADVISORY GUIDE FOUND ON OUR WEBSITE.

Visit www.AZRE.gov to begin answering your questions! We are here to protect you and the public.

The more informed the buyers are here in the Mesa, Arizona and surrounding areas are, the more informed their decisions can be.

Mesa, Arizona Real Estate. Call me at: 480.216-3334 for information on purchasing or selling a home in Mesa, Arizona or surrounding towns. OR email me: Teri@TeriEllis.com. Feel free to visit one of my websites: HomesAzRE.com, MoveToMesaAz.com or MoveToSunnyAz.com. Or stop by my blogs at: Active Rain; or Phoenix Valley Real Estate Blog.

I've shared several places to visit in Arizona - all within two or three hours of Mesa, Arizona. I call them my day trips. Granted, you might want to stop overnight somewhere, but you don't "have" to. You can actually go to Montezuma's Castle, near Camp Verde, just north of the Phoenix Valley, stop for lunch and be back home to Mesa within four hours.

Montezuma's Castle National Monument is a group of well-preserved cliff dwellings. I have included an excerpt from Wikipedia which is fascinating. These cliff dwellings are fascinating as well.

As a kid, we would actually crawl through them. This, of course, was before it was made into a national monument. I took my daughter and her children to see this spectacular area.

They were built and used by the Pre-Columbian Sinagua people around 1400 AD. Several Hopi clans trace their roots to immigrants from the Montezuma Castle/Beaver Creek area. Clan members periodically return to their former homes for religious ceremonies. When European Americans discovered them in the 1860s, they named them for the Aztec emperor of Mexico Montezuma II, due to mistaken beliefs that the emperor had been connected to their construction.^[1]

I definitely consider myself to be a beginner at photography, but do enjoy taking pictures and then sharing them online - especially her on Active Rain.

Enjoy the slideshow!!!!

Mesa, Arizona Real Estate. Call me at: 480.216-3334 for information on purchasing or selling a home in Mesa, Arizona or surrounding towns. OR email me: Teri@TeriEllis.com. Feel free to visit one of my websites: HomesAzRE.com, MoveToMesaAz.com or MoveToSunnyAz.com. Or stop by my blogs at: Active Rain; or Phoenix Valley Real Estate Blog.

Those of us living in the Phoenix Valley, are well aware of the fissures running throughout various parts of our valley. The Arizona Geological Society has just completed updated maps from April showing new fissures in Queen Creek in Maricopa and Pinal County. I've included a link "here" for access to the new map. Queen Creek is located in the southeast valley and straddles both county lines.

For an indepth story on these newly discovered fissures, I've provided a link to the story provided by the East Valley Tribune just today. An excerpt taken out of the Tribune is quoted below to explain to buyers, sellers, Realtors, just "what" a fissure is.

"Fissures are cracks in the earth caused by groundwater pumping. Geological survey officials call them "serious geological hazards" and say they are found in the valleys of central and south-central Arizona. Pinal County is home to three-quarters of the state's known earth fissures."

Home buyers need to be especially cautious when purchasing in this area. I've included a link to the Arizona Geological Society Fissure site "here" for Mesa, Chandler Heights, and Scottsdale, etc. Be sure to check it out.

Mesa, Arizona Real Estate. Call me at: 480.216-3334 for information on purchasing or selling a home in Mesa, Arizona or surrounding towns. OR email me: Teri@TeriEllis.com. Feel free to visit one of my websites: HomesAzRE.com, MoveToMesaAz.com or MoveToSunnyAz.com. Or stop by my blogs at: MesaAzRealEstateVoice; or Phoenix Valley Real Estate Blog

I received an email from a homebuyer just yesterday asking me whether I'd heard anything about problematic radon in kitchen granite countertops. I replied that I had not heard, but would do some research. I was surprised when I googled it because there were several articles dealing with that issue, most of them dated July 2008.

I searched around and came across an article in snopes.com, the website that provides us with the inside information of whether a rumor is true or not true. Well, it is true; however, I wanted to know if there was a test, or a way to tell whether the granite you have in your home/and in mine, is emitting this radon. This article provides information for inexpensive kits ($20-$30) to determine whether your granite is "hot." These kits can be purchased from hardware stores or online as indicated in the article.

This is great information to share with your buyers who are considering purchasing a new home into which they will be adding granite, or resale homes with granite.

As with many other things in this world, I had no idea. If you google "granite countertops radar," you will find a bevy of related articles.

Mesa, Arizona Real Estate. Call me at: 480.216-3334 for information on purchasing or selling a home in Mesa, Arizona or surrounding towns. OR email me: Teri@TeriEllis.com. Feel free to visit one of my websites: HomesAzRE.com, MoveToMesaAz.com or MoveToSunnyAz.com. Or stop by my blogs at: MesaAzRealEstateVoice; or Phoenix Valley Real Estate Blog

We now have a "monsoon season" in Arizona. Yes, we have awesome monsoons.....Our season now runs from the middle of June to the middle of September. Prior to this year, we knew our monsoon season was here after we experienced three consecutive days of 55 degree dewpoint. That still happens, but now we have a specific "season." 

During our monsoons, our skies will fill with clouds typically coming from the north and east over Four Peaks to the North of Mesa, or the San Francisco Peaks........towards Flagstaff....we then have high winds, flooding, lightening, thunder, and HUGE dust storms.

Safety precautions to take when the monsoon does come blowing into town with high walls of dust heading toward you - if you are on the freeway, pull off of the freeway...and pull off the road to safety - don't put your foot on the brakes or else someone will think that you are leading the way. They typically blow through in a few minutes.

As a kid, I LOVED the monsoons (and I still do). I can tell it's coming before I even see the rain. I open my door, and I can smell the wet dust/dirt. The monsoon will blow through our community literally filling our neighborhood retention basins with water. I jokingly tell people that right now we're living in a lake community. Because we are so flat, there will be flooding in the low areas, and people are regularly warned NOT to drive through the streets that are flooded. AND they do it anyway. The next thing we see on the news are people having to be rescued because they don't heed the warnings.

I love this time of year, and have taken some photos of the monsoon clouds...I have yet to capture a great lightening shot, but I will, and then I'll share. Enjoy the pictures.

Mesa, Arizona Real Estate. Call me at: 480.216-3334 for information on purchasing or selling a home in Mesa, Arizona or surrounding towns. OR email me: Teri@TeriEllis.com. Feel free to visit one of my websites: HomesAzRE.com, MoveToMesaAz.com or MoveToSunnyAz.com. Or stop by my blogs at: Active Rain; or Phoenix Valley Real Estate Blog.