One of the most useful and often misused tools are real estate statistics related to sales and market data. While statistics, when properly gathered, are hard to refute they can easily be misinterpreted. Many times a person that is not familiar with a local market may draw incorrect conclusions about the health of a local real estate market. The results are often Buyers or Sellers with unrealistic expectations.

Two areas that I often see being misinterpreted are month to month sales...

The Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) is one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas of the country. Whenever I encounter someone that is considering a move to the area they often ask “Where should I live in the Phoenix area”? This is always a difficult question to answer because Phoenix, affectionately known as The Valley of the Sun, is in many ways unlike any other area of the country with regard to employment and housing. The Phoenix MSA (which is officially known as Phoenix/Scottsdale/Mesa)...

Normally this column is about real estate topics, but today I have decided to talk about our recent day trip driving the Apache Trail, one of Arizona’s most beautiful natural scenic drives.

We started out at the AZ88 exit off of US60 in Apache Junction. The road takes you past the Lost Dutchman State Park and several small rural developments just south of the Superstition Mountains twisting and turning through the Tonto National Forest toward the first of 3 beautiful desert...