Beyond The Sale
Member updates and information for the NoAZ Assoc. of Realtors.
Beyond The Sale
2026 Arizona REALTORS® President Lisa Paffrath
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Lisa Paffrath, an avid real estate investor and advocate, explains how her leadership roles have given her a unique perspective on the industry, emphasizing the importance of understanding the "big picture" of homeownership and property rights.
Hello. power of professional connection. In this episode, we are joined by Lisa Paffrath, the president and a seasoned broker with over two decades of experience. Let's dive into Beyond the Sale.
Lisa Paffrath:Thank you for having me.
Ventrice McMaster:I know everything about you, but the people listening might not so with a little elevator speech about yourself. Who is Lisa? So welcome Lisa. Great to have you here.
Lisa Paffrath:Oh gosh, came to Arizona about 30 years ago, fell madly in love with Flagstaff, Northern Arizona, and specifically the Grand Canyon, went home and told my husband we were moving Arizona. He thought I was having a nervous breakdown. It took us six years. I've been here 22 years, and it was the best decision I ever made, moving. I love real estate. I didn't do it where I used to live. I wished I had, because my sphere of influence there was huge. But love everything about real estate. I love the industry, the legislative part in leadership. Love my dogs, my kids, my grandkids, my chickens. It's a little bit about me that's
Ventrice McMaster:And I also found out while researching you. You have a real estate license in Hawaii?
Lisa Paffrath:Yes, I have my brother's license.
Ventrice McMaster:I found that that was super crazy. I was like, she's just doing real estate wherever.
Lisa Paffrath:Yeah, so when I go there to chill, I can do real estate.
Ventrice McMaster:Is that really chilling? If you're doing real estate in Hawaii,
Lisa Paffrath:It's so different there than here. It's so much laid back like when I was there last January, I actually sat on floor in the brokerage where I hang my license.
Ventrice McMaster:Oh, really, yeah, it's crazy.
Lisa Paffrath:Yeah, I've showed houses there too already.
Ventrice McMaster:Oh, well, let's rewind, come back to Arizona, as much as I love to be in Hawaii right now. You are currently our Arizona realtor, state president, yes. How did that come to be? How did you get in that leadership role?
Lisa Paffrath:Well, it's funny, because I've always been involved in some type of leadership volunteer. When I was living in Pennsylvania, I was an EMT for 17 years. I was on their board of directors, really involved with Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and also anything having to do with dog rescue. So when I moved here, you know, 17 years of doing that, I needed a break, and I pretty much said, Okay, for the next five years, I'm not doing anything. I just had to take a deep breath, build my business, because this was brand new to me here, and one day Gary Nelson start tapping me on the shoulder. It took him four years for me to say yes, but I started my leadership track right here in northern Arizona. That's great, yeah, and that was it. I was hooked. Because what better way to give back to the industry that I love so much by being involved in leadership, and that was it. And then one thing led to the other. I was on NAR's Leadership Academy the year after I did presidency here in 2017 and then just one thing led to another.
Ventrice McMaster:Does your leadership role impact how major an investor you are when it comes to RAPAC, because I know that you are one of our Association's top investors. Does leadership play a new role in that?
Lisa Paffrath:Absolutely, because when you're on a leadership you're seeing everything that's going on behind the scenes. You know, most Realtors just think that we're selling houses. But when you get involved in leadership, you start understanding the big picture of real estate and what we do again, our three associations, state, local and national, and what we're doing for home ownership and private property rights. So leadership opened my eyes to so much more, especially when it comes to investing in RAPAC, it was like, Oh my gosh, I've been ignoring this for years, and then when I finally realized that, and even now, I'm so passionate about repac because of I'm seeing what it's doing for us, especially on the state level, and housing affordability this year.
Ventrice McMaster:What Does it look like for the average buyer in Flagstaff compared to the volatility we were seeing years ago?
Lisa Paffrath:So that volatility made prices go crazy here at Flagstaff, and they have not gone down. And most people have seen that. And what I've seen, and I've seen this before, in our market, sellers dig their boots into the ground, and there's not much moving sometimes. And it's really because, you know, we have when you look at how many houses are on the market right now in Flagstaff, it's crazy. It's like less than 300 homes, yep. So because of that demand, again, like anything else supply and demand. So most sellers know that there's so much information on the internet now, so much information on social media, that they know what it means to have something that everybody wants. What are you telling your sellers, who are on the fence about selling because they might not be able to buy another home? So like everything else, explain the whole things, explain about interest rates. Like right now, we were expecting this year, the rates to go under 6% not a lot, probably only 5.99% but that's what they were hoping. But now, with the whole climate of what's happening, that's probably going to keep interest rates in the sixes, maybe even close to 7% so if you're a seller that has an interest rate of 2.75% where are you going? But I always explain to a seller, because some sellers have to move for whatever reasons, like I just helped a young family just had baby number three, they had to get out of this two bedroom, one bath home that they were in. Showed them how they could buy down the rate with a lot of the money that they were making from the sale of their home to help them get that rate down, to get into another home, sometimes they have to move, but if there there's no motivation, then it's really hard explaining to a seller. You know, if you're going to leave this house, you're going to have a higher interest rate. So make sure that you have that conversation right up front with them, so that it's not some kind of shock, because we all assume, because we know all of this in real estate, that our client knows it also knows, yeah, and they don't. A lot of them may not, may not be paying any attention to what's going on with that, but for the most part, buyers and sellers are very savvy now because of the information they have available to them online.
Ventrice McMaster:Since we're talking about sellers and buyers, we're seeing inventory levels rise to about a five month supply. Why haven't prices significantly matched our supply with the demand that we currently have is anything happening at the state level to address this ongoing affordability crisis?
Lisa Paffrath:The state has tried, like this year, there were two bills, and Arizona association of realtors supported them that had to address state trust land and housing affordability. It was something that we brought up last year. Tim Beaubien, our legislative director, it's like, we have all this land. Yes, the state uses it for reasons, like for schools and hospitals and infrastructure, and those chunks of state land are sold. Like, for example, in in our county, Coconino County, we only own 11% of the land is privately owned. Yes. So a county the size of Massachusetts, we only own 11% of the land the state as a whole is 7% is privately owned. So when you look at the size of Arizona, start looking at how all of like, for example, we touch the Coconino, the Kaibab, the press kit, if you add up all that acreage, it's 7 million acres. So there's 7 million acres taken right off the market. That's not counting our Native American reservations. It's not counting our national parks, our national monuments. So if you look at Coconino County, most of the land will never, ever touch. One of those things is state trust land. As state trust land is not public land, it's state private land, which is a totally different beast. The state sells off those chunks to raise money, and then they sell it off to the highest bidder. So if I'm a developer, and I want to be able to develop a chunk here in northern Arizona, I can't just say I want to buy this piece of land. I put in what I'm going to do with it, and then I it goes up for auction, and the highest bidder gets it. Okay, so what we went to the state legislation was say, hey, what if they took a chunk and get creative. The state owns it. So whether we did a trust, a land trust, again, like there are some properties here in Flagstaff, do a land trust. So if you take out the cost of the land, housing affordability is reachable, okay, anywhere in a state, especially in Flagstaff, for example. I mean a lot right now is $250,000 if you take that out of the equation, that $700,000 home is now 450 or 500 which is more affordable for the community. Unfortunately, didn't go anywhere. I did learn, though, that the governor can do it an executive command to make something affordable and released to the communities. So Flagstaff would have that right to do then develop, help develop it. I think it's going to take maybe even next year when something new comes up that that's and that. A pretty drastic thing. If you look at it, it may take a couple of years to get to the point where the state legislators then say and more push from the community for it. So I'm hoping it does it, because there's right now we have three pieces of state trust land, that border Flagstaff, that would be absolutely perfect for development. So you know if, if anyone has any kind of relationship with their legislator or councilman, absolutely say, hey, you know, we totally support having this to make housing affordability more realistic in Flagstaff.
Ventrice McMaster:Now, you mentioned that the governor can make this executive right? I'm my millennial self is asking, Can I write a letter to the governor as a member of the public? What can I do to support realtors in this push to have a home ownership for someone like myself?
Lisa Paffrath:Yeah. I mean, that would be amazing if, because the public, you know, our legislators are supposed to listen to us. Yes, they don't always, and a lot of times it's because they don't hear they don't feel the demand or hear it or see it. But when you start having your constituents in your community and your state reaching out to your legislators about this, the governor would be a perfect place to start. And she really listens. She's been amazing with us as a realtor champion. So that would be an amazing gosh, if you've got 5000 millennials to send a letter to say, hey, look, you know, we know this land is here, why aren't we utilizing it like, for example, down in Phoenix, they have what's called community facility districts. We don't have that up here. What is that? So instead of an impact fee going to a buyer, the developer creates this district, and it's like a HOA, but for land utility roads, they put all of that cost into this district that they create, and then every year, forever, I'm paying maybe $100 a month to this district for the impact of building this development. So why couldn't we figure out a way to take that with the cost of the land and spread it out, just like in Mormon Lake, there are so many homes in Mormon Lake that are on national forest leases, they usually give you 99 years on a lease. Oh, wow, okay, called a leasehold. Hawaii is the same way. So it's not uncommon to have that happen where the either the state government or the federal government owns the land. So again, to Mormon Lake, you take out the cost of the land, the house is now affordable,
Ventrice McMaster:Along with the affordability crisis in the 2026, legislative session, I know that zoning and water are two big hot topics in Arizona, what's AAR's hard line in the sand when it comes to balancing new home construction with Arizona's long term water sustainability?
Lisa Paffrath:So we have supported whatever, whatever bills came to the legislation, not only last year this year, because what's happening is the governor put a moratorium on any development if they didn't have the 100 Year short water that has been around for a long time. As long as I've been a realtor, it's always been do you have 100 year water supply? If you didn't, you you weren't really supposed to be building. But no one was enforcing that. It's now being enforced. So a lot of the developments in Phoenix, because they have, of course, more land to do this on water has become a huge problem because those developments didn't have that. So last year, one of the things that came up that we supported was the credits for farmers that had the rights, so whether it was surface water rights or groundwater rights, to be able to sell those credits to developers so they could get the 100 Year assured water supply which Arizona realtor supported. The other thing right now this year is every, I think it's every three to four years, the Colorado River pack with all the states that are part of it, basically sit at a big table and decide who's getting what. And we know the old adage, when you give something up, you usually don't get it back. So of course, California is the biggest user of the water of that pact, and then Nevada. So of course, they always want more and more and more. And where are they taking it from the other states up hill of them. So that's really big that we're supporting this year as well to make sure that we're not losing any of the rights to the water, to the Colorado and whatever we need to do to lobby for that. Because think about it, they take that. That way, right? How is that going to affect housing? So, yeah, so a lot of things going on that with both of those this year.
Ventrice McMaster:What are what's going on with ADUs long term, short term rental? How is that affecting like myself, I would love to buy a home in the town that I grew up in, but with long term investors short term Airbnbs, it kind of makes that hard. And when those investors go to sell that house, well, they want to return. However, that return is now outside of any realm of money that I could possibly pay for a home.
Lisa Paffrath:Yeah. So that gets really sticky, because one of the things that Arizona Realtors is really proud of is protecting private property rights. So what does that mean for me to be allowed to use my land and my home in any way that I want? So that's what we support. So it's hard for us then to support legislation that restricts that Airbnbs okay. So there have been so many bills that have come up in the four years on on as a line officer that is to give the communities the right to restrict So, like what happened in Sedona years ago, Sedona wanted to restrict it because they had a problem with housing for the workforce. Arizona Realtors did not support that, because we support private property rights, so we have to find a happy medium, right? I know the federal government is looking, and NAR is also looking to support of any kind of grants, tax credits, incentives for these companies that have large amounts of Airbnbs, like institutional, to be able to give them some kind of credit to put those properties back on the market. But again, it's all about, you know, it's my house. I know I'm a stickler. You know, it's my land. Don't tell me what I'm going to do with my land. It's my house, you know, like I live in donee Park. I'm on four acres. I could, in reality, split it and put another house for my kids. I have a son here on my two grandkids, they don't have a home. But the right now, the county won't allow that. I can put an adu, right, an accessory dwelling unit, but I can't put another home, even though I live on four acres. What's the difference between an accessory dwelling unit and an actual home? So accessory dwelling unit, the county has all of these regulations, and this is what is also affecting housing. They put all of these rules that get these Brainiac ideas, and because none of us are paying attention, they they impose these regulations. So with an adu, it can't be, it has to be within 100 feet of my house, so no more than 100 feet. It can't be more than 1000 or 1100 square feet. I know they raised it, maybe up to 1100 Okay, so because the whole idea is the county doesn't want you putting another house on it to rent it out, which that's my right to do if I want to do it, yes, so they have all these regulations that restrict it. So that's the difference between an adu like, could my kids live in 100 square foot house with four people? No, absolutely not, right? So that's the part that we really try. So we're trying to change those regulations, like Phoenix right now, they passed that last year. You want to put an adu in your backyard, go for it. You still have to follow the setbacks and the size of the home, but you can do it. And now county is allowing it, but still has all these rules. You know, the rules is what's hurting our market. It really is. So for example, like in Doney Park when I first moved here, well, the first time I looked at land here was a 10 acre minimum, and then they went down to two and a half. Well, the two and a half could, in reality, be one in one quarter. But again, there's that impact that the county doesn't truly look at like, for example, in Williams. Why is there a 10 acre minimum in Williams? We all haul water. So what difference does it make if I'm on an acre lot hauling water, or 10 acres like at some point that has to be looked at.
Ventrice McMaster:You mentioned protecting private property homeowners. What is going on with deed fraud? What is AAR doing to protect the private property owner against deed fraud. I saw it rampant last year.
Lisa Paffrath:Yeah, and it's going to keep getting worse. I was actually on a webinar the other day, what they're expecting with deed fraud, especially because of AI, yes, AI, so again. That's a has to be a cooperative pact between our state and our locals, right? And our county. They did come up. Most of the counties now have, the minute a deed is recorded against your property, get notification. Well, I'm sorry, that's too late. Okay. There's really no way for us other than education right now, and they've had lots of things, because this is not something that just started this year. It's been about five years, especially in the legislative end, what can we do to stop this from happening? And it's got to be education. It's got to be about using the wire fraud advisory. I mean, that is like one of the first forms after the buyer broker agreement that I talked to my buyers about, and it's to the point where it's like, you get anything you call me first, right? Or you call the title company. Don't trust anything you get text, phone or email. It used to be just email. Now it's all of them, yes. So don't, don't call, call before you do anything. Right now, there's a lawsuit, $500,000 this family lost because they weren't educated by their agent, and that's here in Arizona. Okay, so if you educate your client, and I hate to say but put the fear in it. Look, don't send, don't give out personal information. I'm never going to ask you for it. The only one who will ask you for anything personal is going to be the title company. And you want to do that on a security mail or on a phone call, because right now, I mean, think about it. How do we prevent that from happening unless our clients are informed. Another thing I tell my clients, if you're a seller, especially if you have no liens on your property, meaning no mortgage, go to Google Alerts. It's free. Put your address in here every way you can think of. And if you own more than one property, do it for all of them, and the minute your property hits Zillow or realtor.com or on Craigslist because someone's trying to do a rental scam on an empty home that you own, you'll get an alert, and it's free.
Ventrice McMaster:Not everybody has the experience I've had. I've got to experience living breathing, 500 Realtors every single day of my life since I was 18, with the legal and regulatory changes hitting the industry, how has the value and proposition of realtor changed in the eyes of the public with the NAR lawsuit, we've had a campaign here locally just being like, hey, when you're gonna go buy a house, use a realtor. Do you think the value has changed? And if it's changed, what are you doing to be like, I'm not another used car salesman. I'm here to protect you.
Lisa Paffrath:Yeah. So I was actually that webinar that was on the other day, 91% of buyers and sellers are using the real estate professional, which is phenomenal, because you would think, with all the negative publicity that happened almost two years ago, people would say, Well, I'm not using them, but with everything that's going on, one the cost of Homes, the fraud that's out there. No client is comfortable anymore, not using so I've seen nothing but positive outcomes on everything that's going on. Yeah, we had, you know, we were all petrified what was going to happen, but it's all calmed down. We're right back to normal buyer and seller market when it comes to using a realtor. And I think as long as we have the deed fraud issues and housing affordability, people are always going to go to a realtor. You could find so much stuff out online, right? Don't ever use a Zillow estimate, which on most of my Realtors now, or our Realtors, know, but buyers can find a lot of stuff, but still, like I just learned, you know, chat, GBT versus Claude. This can be very inaccurate, and it tends to respond to you the way, like me, I wake up every day the sky is blue and I'm a happy person. So chat is learning on how I ask questions. So it's responding in a positive way all the time, because that's who I am. Claude gives you the actual research data and responds that way. So there's an example of how you can get two different stories. Okay, so now, if I'm researching online the value of homes in flax F Arizona. And I actually just had a client do this, and I was like, floored. They used grok to tell them what their house was worth, and grok told them it was a million dollars more than what my comparative market analysis did. So there's a challenge for. Realtor, right? Yep. So I said to them, Go to Claude and go to Chachi PT and ask that same question. He called me and apologizes 15 minutes later because he got three different answers. Yeah. I says that's why you want to use a professional. And Arizona Realtors has been really, really proactive. We had a whole consumer campaign. It's still available online. It was on their website. We made it available to members and also brokerages and associations to gear it towards their local with their own branding on it, so that the consumer understands that it is probably more important than ever to use a real estate professional when they're buying or selling a home. FSBOs for sale by owner almost gone. Yeah, I know, like, I wouldn't want a whole group of strangers coming in and out of my house in this day and age, right? So FSBOs are most sellers are going to a real estate professional to do that. So I think that, and you know, we also do have an advertising campaign with Arizona realtors that you know, which promotes the realtor brand and what we have to offer. So I think I didn't really see a lot of negativity. Even after that, I had one customer whose cousin in California told her that they didn't have to pay compensation to an agent. And of course, that was misinformation. So again, being able to educate the your client is the most important thing, and now more than ever.
Ventrice McMaster:All right, we've had all the professional questions and all that. Now I'm into the Lisa questions. Now I'm going to preface this question with saying the Tyler Stout vision award recognizes an Arizona Realtor who best exemplifies the Arizona Realtor's vision: "Realtor the best prepared real estate practitioner with the highest standards." 2019, you were awarded this Tyler stout vision award. How did you feel to receive that award?
Lisa Paffrath:I was shockedwhen I got the phone call at the time Patrick Lewis was president. I just happened to be in a car in Oregon with my daughter, and I pick up the phone, and when he said to me, I'm honored to say that I've chosen you for this award, I was like in shock, because what I do in real estate and what I do in leadership is just me my Heart. It was never about getting someplace. It was never about getting more business. It was just like I said earlier, I am so grateful for what real estate has done for me and my family since being here, the people that I've met, the partnerships throughout the country, like this is the best thing I've ever done in my life. I wished I had done it back home in Pennsylvania. So I was just, I was floored, absolutely floored, so and still honored to be one of those recipients.
Ventrice McMaster:And along with being a recipient, you are currently the only Realtor in Arizona that has a master's degree in real estate. How does that academic background change your business? How does that change your approach to boots on the ground sales?
Lisa Paffrath:Well, getting your master's degree, of course, is all about critical thinking. So how you look at stuff, how you analyze and research? I've always been a research nerd to begin with, so having this, I question everything. I don't believe anything that I see in the headline. If someone tells me something, I'm on the internet doing my own research, like someone told me yesterday, a certain brand was being bought out by Zillow, and I'm like, No way in. And sure enough, it was not true. But this is what happens to people, unfortunately, and that taught me to to even go deeper on how I research things and with real estate, like I can't get enough of it, like I would love to be a real estate attorney one day. I love it. I love understanding it, and I'm a fanatic about being right and having the right details, because Nothing's worse, especially when you're in leadership, saying something that's not the case.
Ventrice McMaster:Degree aside, do you think the extra education, the extra push, helped you understand the market a little bit better than you were before you had the degree?
Lisa Paffrath:Absolutely. Yeah, like I said, I was always very nerdy when it came to researching stuff, but this just got me looking even deeper into the whole theory of real estate and why things are the way they are. There's a reason for all of this. It's not like we're just throwing a bunch of balls up in the air and see where they land. Everything is is happening for a reason. You know, just like the real estate market is cyclical, right? We will see an adjustment at some point. We will see interest rates probably go down a bit. We'll never see the twos, threes and fours, those days are gone. So if you've got a consumer waiting for that, that's not going to happen, unfortunately.
Ventrice McMaster:And we had that talk with Lawrence Yoon at our membership rec ackling. What a time to geek out, because he's he. He came with the charts, he came with everything. Being like, if you think you're seeing those twos and throughs like you said, your hearing, yeah, Time Machine is already left.
Lisa Paffrath:And that's what's great about you know, when you look at our state, local and national, that the agents realize the amount of information that we have available. I mean, you could spend all day long just on the state and national websites, learning about all of the things that are affecting real estate, because that just makes you a better realtor. I know when I'm sitting across from my client, I want to be able to have that answer for them. Now you don't, not always going to know every answer, but at least I know where to go to get the answer yes. So and that, to me, is really important.
Ventrice McMaster:Knowing what you know now about real estate, about deed fraud, about Claude, chat GPT, would you start a real estate career today?
Lisa Paffrath:Absolutely this best decision I ever made. Like I said, I wish someone had told that. Said that to me back in Pennsylvania, because I've always been really involved in my community, the relationships with people, and this has changed. It's changed everything. I get all excited when I see a young individual like I was down in compass two weeks ago teaching a class, and met this 24 year old guy who was tired of being home, who started real estate and this guy is knocking it out of the park. He loved people. He loves informing them and like, if you love that this business is for you definitely.
Ventrice McMaster:What would you tell a new member today? What? What's the first thing that they should do once that real estate license is in their hand?
Lisa Paffrath:Get to know NAR dot realtor. Get to know AAR online. Get on NAAR's website. Start paying attention to everything that's out there when it comes to your real estate business, because the more that you know, the better your business is going to be if you start just looking and following that all the tools that you need to be a great agent and to start a new business is there you want to get designations. NAR has so much stuff online. Look into commitment to excellence, which is a free program that absolutely tells you everything about being a well rounded professional in real estate, and it's free.
Ventrice McMaster:And the greatest thing that I love about NAR and the information that they pass along Fair Haven is free, C2EX is free. And it's not beating a dead horse, it's teaching you things that you are somewhat knowledgeable about and being like, there's a step further, there's more that you should know. So I do appreciate our National Association for providing that, and I do appreciate our state association. I
Lisa Paffrath:hate when people say, You know what I'm what am I getting for my dues? And when they say that to me, it's like, don't even go there. What you get for what you pay and to have your own business is almost ridiculous. There is so much information and tools out there for us. There should be no reason for anyone to ever say that. You know, same with Ray PAC. You know our fair share is only $35, $35 to do what NAR and the state and the local can do for you is just unbelievable. Yes, you know, look at what happened during covid. If it wasn't for RAPAC and our legislators going to the state to make us essential workers. My friends in Pennsylvania didn't work for almost two years.
Ventrice McMaster:Oh, wow, really
Lisa Paffrath:They were not allowed New York State, same thing, and you would get a fine if they found out that you were so everything had to be done, either FaceTime or webinar or Zoom call. You could not show a house. So that's what RAPAC does for you.
Ventrice McMaster:And I mean, that's a great plug for me to give to our members. I mean, I didn't even know that. I just knew you guys had the ability to work, which sounds great. Yeah, you guys were essential workers. I mean, there were traveling nurses needing to move doctors, essential people themselves that needed to sell their house and go somewhere else. So I couldn't imagine you talking to a realtor over FaceTime, selling my$500,000 home. Yeah, just through DocuSign and text messages and yeah, I'm glad that our RAPAC dollars were able to do that, and I'm I appreciate you for being a major investor in that. Yeah, thank you. Is there anything you want to say to our members or the public that's possibly listening,
Lisa Paffrath:Just as our members realize they have so many tools and things available to them, and I'm always a phone call away if anyone ever wants to get on the phone to talk about getting involved in leadership. One thing I'm really excited for that I'm going to put a plug. We now have a new broker engagement director with Arizona realtors. So if you're a broker that's listening, would like Shelly Ostrosky is our new broker engagement director. She will come to your office. She'll sit with you, sit with your members. What we're trying to do is make the or, you know, our members, just realize just how much that we have available to them, and the resources and it's all free. Yes, all free.
Ventrice McMaster:A lot of the information I was like, why are you paying for forms the state gives them to you for free?
Lisa Paffrath:Yes, for a lot of things, yeah, yeah.
Ventrice McMaster:So thank you once again, Lisa, it was a pleasure having you here, and hopefully I'll catch you on the street.
Lisa Paffrath:Okay, take care. Bye.
