It's 2013!

Many of us long-time North Central residents lost a great friend in December–Neal Sheiner. Neal would have been happy because he reunited many of his friends at his service who had not seen each other in a little while.
Neil was an architect by trade but served on the Fiesta Bowl committee for well over 20 years, was a past president of Silent Witness and was a long-time member of the RAMMS Board which over sees youth activities in our area. I served with Neal for six years on the Ramms board and I have one  funny story involving him. When Chuck Whetstine, Mark Hester and I coached girls sixth- eighth-grade softball, Neal was the uniform contact, something he did for more than 10 years. We
chose for our team the University of South Carolina because I went to college nearby and the nickname was the Gamecocks. The coaches quickly learned after the first game, when the girls would cheer 1-2-3 GO COCKS every inning, that this school's name was not going to work and I had Neal switch to another school's uniform.
Neal will be missed by many of us and I especially want to reach out to Marla, Julie Kirschner, and Neal’s two children, AJ and Sam. Godspeed, my friend.
The funny thing at the reception was that many of us dads/coaches were still upset losing games to each other in games that were played more than 10 years ago. None of us like to lose and we are still scarred!! Neal brought us together for the Ramms reunion. John Ashton, your family still owes my team ice cream when we kicked your wife's team in the championship seven years ago. Kim is a sore loser.
I want to welcome a new store to our neighborhood, Nene Unique Home and Gifts store located at 6042 N. 16th Street (just north of Bethany Home Road). It really is a cool store and adds to the ambience of the 16th/Bethany Home corridor. It is owned by longtime KEZ radio host Beth
McDonald, who was part of the Beth and Bill show for 20 years. Beth is in her 22nd year at the station. The store is managed by Beth's sister and North Central resident, Kelley Mc-Neil..The store reminds me of Vignettes, which was located on 7th Street and Colter for many years. Lets welcome NeNe to our 'HOOD.
I mentioned in December how appreciative I am of my friends and clients for allowing me to list 114 homes in 2012 and to sell 104 homes. The market is slowly coming back to life and the ugly foreclosures have disappeared. There will still be short sales for the next three to five years but home values in our area are finally getting better. I know some of you are hearing that homes are increasing in value 20 percent or more but that is in the outlying areas that were down almost 80 percent. I do have four totally remodeled homes coming on the market in the first quarter of 2013 by Magee Builders who have created some masterpieces in the past year in North Central and almost single handily are increasing our neighborhood values.
Finally, I want to thanks the 100 agents who have joined me at HomeSmart, located at 5225 N. Central Ave. Ste. 104, over the past 18 months and have helped us become North Central's top producing real estate company. We have the Valley’s top-performing agents in our office and we will continue to work hard and gain your trust. Our group has well over 10 years average experience and we all live in North Central or the surrounding areas. We also have Spanish- and Vietnamese-speaking agents in our group. In a slow economy, we just expanded our office and we have two vacancies. Give us a call and we’ll give you our marketing expertise.

Have a great 2013!!

Bobby Lieb
 Bobby Lieb
Associate Broker
HomeSmart Elite Group
602-761-4646 (office)
602-376-1341 (mobile)
boblieb@aol.com