Phoenix City Living

Agents gone bad: the inside story of real estate

Here's a trailer from the new movie, Closing Escrow, a mockumentary about home buyers and their agents.

Why you should always keep the front door locked when kids are near

Size can be deceiving.

California continues to burn and humans can only sit and watch

So very, very sad. Our thoughts are with you good neighbor.

And you think that the slowing market made sales tough enough!

A little paint here, some window treatments there....instant magic! (ok....where the gas and matches!):

Don't drop the ball! Don't drop the ball!

Sorry for the recent drought in postings. I've been very busy wrapping up a few large projects and dealing with a partial move (ugh...is moving ever easy?!). I'm now finished the big stuff and ready to juggle fire sticks and chainsaws (or just post more frequently - safer!)

Daddy's little girl doesn't drive in an icky school bus

It's hard to know just where to start to deal with the insanity of this article. And I thought my son was so much better off than I was 'in the day" with door-door service to school in our car for the foreseeable future (back in the "old days' parents would kick you out to the curb without a second thought to catch the yellow bus). I just hope Global Warming isn't part of her curriculum: Off to school, in a corporate jet:

Some high school students will be making their way back to school this week on a bus, or, if they are lucky, in their very own car. But the stepdaughter of Edward Mueller, the new chief executive of Qwest Communications, has a much fancier option.

A regulatory filing made Friday, on the eve of the holiday weekend, disclosed that Qwest has authorized Mr. Mueller’s wife and her daughter to use Qwest’s corporate jet to travel between Denver, where the telecommunications company is based, and California, where Mr. Mueller’s stepdaughter is finishing high school.

Footnoted.org, which looks for interesting nuggets among corporate filings, estimated that the corporate-jet perk could be costing Qwest as much as $600,000, based on normal charter rates for the Falcon 2000. “As for me, it certainly beats the B-64 bus that I used to take to high school,” Michelle Leder wrote.

When life at home just gets too bizarre (but convenient for the kids!)

This is just wrong in soooo many ways. Beyond wondering who may have been asleep during the entire approval process, do you think this homeowner has issues that go well beyond the state of the housing market?

It's a great thing that Encanto-Palmcroft finally voted down the huge new Six Flags Park that would have involved paving most of the existing Encanto Park. Just what would have happened to prices in the historic district then? And the parking.....don't ask!  (disclaimer: the previous sentences are called.....a joke)

Check out the lifestyle we're all missing out on: here

UrbanVertical | the site is a little slow out of the gate!

Our cool new site on Phoenix's condos, lofts, & townhomes is just weeks from finished and we'll finally have that weight off our backs! We're just starting to hum on our new UrbanVertical blog. Please check it out! PhxCityLiving, the blog on Phoenix's emerging urban lifestyle, continues to expand it's coverage and will soon be on a new, flashier, site (ok, ok, once I get everything else done). Durnford Group's main website has been dusted off and updated and will soon carry expanded MLS search tools, new articles, and a massive amount of new Phoenix urban lifestyle links. But our launch of UrbanVertical | the site is delayed just a few more weeks while all of the data and pictures are finally compiled. These projects of ours always develop in bizarre ways and take on some manic life of their own, so I'm just doing my best to keep up and not get harmed along the way. Remember, UrbanVertical will be your "go to" place for urban Phoenix's lofts, condos, & townhomes. We'll be covering all the juicy projects: new, old, under-construction, and some still just pretty pictures on paper. We'll make things that much easier to find your perfect urban living style. So again, thanks for your patience and remember: like the tortoise, we're the ones you can trust to finish what we started (but, trust me, my facial skin is so much better off than this dudes!).

If it can happen there...........

In a reaction to the tragic Minneapolis bridge collapse, Gov. Janet Napolitano has called for a state review of bridges in Arizona. The Arizona Department of Transportation is expected to have an initial survey of high-traffic bridges completed by September 7, 2007. And while this is the correct measure to take you wonder how America will deal with the long-term costs of an aging infrastructure if no preventative and corrective measures are taken soon.

The incredible growing cranes. Here's the answer we all want to know!

Cranes are everywhere. In fact, the Phoenix Business Journal is now carrying an article relating the struggle of construction firms trying to find available tower cranes to keep them on their building schedules. The site of these fragile looking towers are de rigeur in Phoenix now that commercial and residential highrises, in various states of completion, are dotting the Phoenix landscape. So we think we understand the basics: man in little box on side of triangular metal trellis moving little knobs and sticks to make things go up, down, and hopefully somewhere near the small nervous man waving the orange flag. And in the beginning, other cranes must have started the entire process by piecing together the tower crane like some version of my 3-year old son's Tinkertoys on steroids. But how, we all secretly ask, do these cranes grow? Does an outcast crew from the wrestling federation lift up the bottom to add another section? Does Harry Potter and his buddies moonlight and cross the globe "wanding" the cranes up each successive floor? I had to know, and so shall you. Read on or forever be stupidly amazed at the magical bean known as the tower crane.

From HowStuffWorks - the real deal on crane technology:
How tower cranes work.
How do cranes move up each floor?