that will do it for us for now. thanks for joining me this weekend. i will see you again next time. >> i'm bob massi. for 35 years, i've been practicing law and living in las vegas, ground zero for the american real-estate crisis. but it wasn't just vegas that was hit hard. lives were destroyed from coast to coast as the economy tanked. now, it's a different story. the american dream is back. and nowhere is that more clear than the grand canyon state of arizona. so we headed from the strip to the desert to show you how to explore the new landscape and live the american dream. i'm gonna help real people who are facing some major problems, explain the bold plans that are changing how americans live, and take you behind the gates of properties you have to see to believe.

at the end of the show, i'll give you critical tips you need to know in the massi memo, because information is power and the property man has got you covered. [ woman vocalizing ] thanks for joining us. i'm bob massi. if you've ever looked around your house and thought, "you know what? i need to downsize," well, you're not alone. but more and more, well, people are taking that to the extreme. tiny houses -- i'm talking 95 to about 170 square feet -- are becoming more popular. there's even movies and tv shows about them. >> the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, it's all included in that small square footage that, for most people, is the size of their master bedroom. >> they're usually mounted on 20-to 27-foot trailers and can be towed pretty much anywhere. some call it a fad. some call it a movement. but it seems clear that many of those deciding to live tiny,

well, they're doing it as a direct result of the housing meltdown. they just don't want to spend their money on things like mortgages and be saddled with debt anymore. mario soto lost his home in the financial collapse. >> i lost everything. i put almost $300,000 down payment, taxes, insurance, mortgage, everything, and it was gone. >> he began paying off his debts and started over, but didn't want to go down that same path again. >> i realized, well, what if that happens again? that was $300,000 i'll never see again. someone else got it. but not me. >> he decided he wanted to build a tiny home. his last construction project? a birdhouse in fourth grade. >> about a week later, it fell apart. >> but he reached out to the tumbleweed tiny house company, and they helped him build his own. now, on the tumbleweed website, you can order already-built tiny homes, or you could start from scratch. >> the minute i saw one of their tiny houses, i said, "this is it. i'm doing it." >> tumbleweed provides the floor plans, options for just about anything

you could think of to make it uniquely yours. >> the plans have details of every piece of material you need. it was a learning process. but my house hasn't fallen down yet. so i think i did a pretty good job. >> mario, let's go see your tiny house, buddy. >> let's go check it out. come on. let's do it. welcome to my house. >> thank you. okay, so show me around. >> i have a pretty cool kitchen. we have a nice sink right over there. cook soups. range hood, stainless steel. >> big sink. >> it's a big sink. this kettle gets the heat that is naturally being generated. and instead of it going to waste, it's converting that heat into electricity. >> from the outside, it might not look very high-tech. but inside, it's a different story. >> my phone allows me to open my front door, control my air conditioner, actually run my tv. i have air sensors in here that sense the air quality, humidity, and the temperature. >> mario says his saltwater batteries can power his home for 20 years

before they need to be replaced. it looks like a bunch of batteries, like from a golf cart. >> they are actually similar in the sense at they ovide power. once i get solar panels, which ll be on the oside behind me, i won't have to worry about power. 100% i will be off the grid. >> and then a place to sleep. >> a place to sleep. gotta sleep up there. >> bunk bed. >> my tv, because you gotta have a tv. >> 55-inch. >> when i'm cooking, i like to watch a good movie. or maybe i'm listening to music. i can actually swivel it out. >> so what's underneath the bunk here? >> it's a really nice mirror. >> and behind the mirror? >> there's a lot of things. let me show you. so all i do... open it up. this washer and dryer, it's ventless, gasless. >> where do you take your shower or your bath? >> check this out. roll it back. now i have my shower hidden in the back. pull it right back in. and there we go. >> all the amenities of home, my friend. >> all the amenities of home. >> but many tiny house owners, you know, they're running into a big problem.

there's no place to put them. >> arizona and, uh, many other states aren't regulated for such small dwellings. >> zoning laws vary from place to place. but many cities and towns have things like minimum size requirements for homes. >> and these tiny homes do not qualify. >> that could make finding a spot for your tiny house very difficult. >> even the rv parks turn them away because they're not technically motor vehicles. uh, so they can't find anywhere to plant them. >> sarah was living in louisiana when she saw a documentary about tiny houses. >> i knew a friend who was in carpentry. the next day, we went and bought an auto flatbed trailer. >> she bought some supplies, enlisted some friends to help, and started building. >> we didn't really have any plans drawn up. we just knew the idea of what we wanted to build. um, we wanted it to look like an old acadian-style house representing home. >> so this was actually -- became a passion of yours? >> it did, yeah. yeah. i really -- i enjoyed waking up and spending hours on it

and going to sleep exhausted, like, cuts and sawdust. and it was great. >> so this is sort of an extension of where you came from? >> this is my house from home. it's the blueprint. so a large part of the house is the kitchen because, um, i need -- i love to cook. and so the propane stove and it actually works. i probably fill the propane tanks up every few months, and it costs about $40 to do that. the water works and the hot water works. i think that's really important to see because every piece of this was, like, hard to do. >> sarah found some land to put her house on and was assured by the realtors that it would be the perfect fit. but the city, of course, disagreed. >> i bought a piece of property in south phoenix and, um, put the house on it. then i went to the city to get the permit. and they wouldn't give it to me. initially, they said the house was too small. and we had looked at the universal building codes. and it was -- it was fine. >> how many square feet is this? >> 160.

but it's probably like 110 walking space. the city said that i couldn't, um, live in my own house on my own property because it needed a foundation. it couldn't be on wheels. they wanted me to take a crane, lift the house up, take the house off the trailer, which they didn't understand was, uh, built on the house. >> there's so few people involved in the tiny home movement that they don't really have a lot of power to regulate, um, pushing the state to have places where they can zone them. >> i was trying to sell it. and then, um, someone graciously offered me their backyard. and so that's -- that's how i'm able to live in it and enjoy it. >> how many people have you had in here at one time? >> i think we had about, like, 30, i'm gonna say. >> 30 people in a tiny house? >> mm-hmm. so it doesn't hinder you from having guests. everyone has to be comfortable real quick. >> still to come on "the property man," i'm standing in someone's backyard right now. yep. this is a backyard pool. and the story of how it got here is wild. plus, there'a lot you need

to know before buying or installing a pool of any size. i'll tell you what's up next. [ woman vocalizing ]

but i'm not standing still... and with godaddy, i've made my ideas real. ♪ ♪

i made my own way, now it's time to make yours. ♪ ♪ everything is working, working, just like it should ♪

♪ >> welcome back. i'm bob massi, the property man. across the united states, there are more than 10 million residential pools. most of them don't look like this one. but i'm gonna tell you what you need to know if you're considering installing a pool of any size or if you're thinking about buying a property with a pool. but first, if you want to talk about pools in arizona, you turn to red rock contractors, run by rick chafey and brett blauvelt. the folks at red rock design and build some of the most insane pools you could ever imagine. >> we recently worked on a project. we had a pool up on the roof, back of the house. actually has got a acrylic panels. you can look out and see into the backyard.

all glass tile. just gorgeous. got a couple in hawaii we're doing where you can look out onto the 18th golf course and out to the ocean. um, we've done some really cool edge details where we, uh, bring the water up to the deck level. >> ♪ ♪ ain't nothin' but a party goin' on in here ♪ >> i'm not standing at some resort. this is a residential backyard pool, believe it or not. how did this all come about? >> uh, like any other residential backyard pool, we got called to come look at a project. it's an outdoor oasis and -- and it's almost a water park. you know, it can be a studio at night where you can have the biggest party you've ever had. or it can be a kids' play pool for, you know, 100 kids. >> there's a 60-foot tube waterslide. >> it starts at the top of that waterfall, comes down through it. has a couple, uh, skylights in the top to let a little bit of light in. >> 15 different fire features and more than $250,000 worth of controlled lighting and automation. >> waterfalls, water slides, cantilevered sun decks. basically what you'd find in a resort or even a club in las vegas. >> while the pool deck and the walls, they're made up of 8,000

square feet of limestone. >> some of the features of the backyard were inspired by las vegas themselves. the water walls at aria are now part of this backyard. we kind of recreated that in the setting that's the right size for here. and we've got a lazy river that goes around, uh, rock waterfalls that we can jump off. got barstools in the pool. we've got cooler built in, serving center. >> the sound, video, and lighting system rivals any bar or nightclub. >> we got three large tvs above us that face all the pool areas. so you can be out on the sun decks and actually can see all you want to see for tv. >> there's another tv here also. >> absolutely. out of the back of our bar, we bring up another tv. >> that's crazy, man. >> so, once it gets at the top, we can turn this and actually face any part of the pool. >> ♪ ain't nothin' but a party goin' on in here ♪ >> it's controlled by 17 pumps that combine to more than 75 horsepower. we've talked a lot on the show about energy-efficient homes and things like that. when you do something like that, can you make it efficient from a maintenance perspective? >> absolutely.

i mean, there's three parts of that. one is making sure the design can be efficient. this, obviously, when everything's running, there's nothing efficient about this. we're running huge pumps, lots of water. but we only run them when we need 'em. so we're only using these when we want them. but during the normal operations, we use energy-efficient pumps, very large plumbing sizes so the hydraulics are superefficient. >> walking up the bridge over the lazy river. i mean, this is crazy. how many times you go through different designs? >> i mean, on a -- even on a simple-as-this bridge, we probably designed four or five or six different models of a bridge. we have amazing software programs. so we're able to put most of this in photorealistic design and come up with being able to see this in the customer's eyes from any perspective. >> it took about 600 tons of boulders, nearly 1,000 yards of concrete, and 9 months of construction for the red rock team to create this oasis. >> so now that we're at the top of the heap here, i mean, i'm looking to see how large these boulders are, man. these -- you had to bring these in by cranes? >> uh, by cranes and by trucks. i mean, the boulder behind you is probably about the size of a cadillac, about 25, 30 tons.

so we're talking a massive amount of weight. >> how did you place them? >> it's somewhat of an artwork to place them. you've got a massive crane that takes four or five spotters, three or four guys working to set the rocks to get it all right. we were here 30 days with a crane just placing boulders. >> but what was here before? >> this was a grassy knoll. the owner built a basement h of that dirt in theally,a bu backyard, and just had a nice sloping hill in his backyard. and so we took that from there, ripped it all out, and started building out way up. we're about 550, 600 tons of boulders on the job. there is hundreds of yards of concrete. you know, an average backyard pool, 30 to 50 yards of concrete. it should have probably taken a year and a half. we were out here about 9 1/2 months. >> wow. >> but we were fast-tracking really hard. on any given day, we probably had 70 to 100 guys working on this job. >> obviously, the palm trees would be brought in by crane, also. >> we actually went to l.a. and chose those palm trees ourselves, picked 'em off the mountain, then had them trimmed and brought so we could get matching pairs in the right size. we obviously wanted you, when you came back here, to be awed as you entered the project. and that's part of what pools do for properties, right? it's the curb appeal. when you walk into this house,

it's kind of hard to walk back here and not go, "wow." >> now, clearly, you and i are not gonna be putting something like this in our backyard anytime soon. but there's a lot you can learn from experts like rick before doing any kind of pool project or buying a house that has a pool. we've got that information for you up next. [ woman vocalizing ] ♪

>> welcome back. i'm bob massi. i'm standing in an unbelievable backyard pool designed by red rock contractors out here in arizona. now this one is a bit outside of most folks' budget. but no matter what your budget is, there is a lot to think about when it comes to pools. the average cost of putting in an in-ground pool

is about $39,000. but that is just the upfront cost. maintenance, upkeep, and repairs are usually not cheap. >> with any pool, there can be value or there can problems. if it's constructed well, your maintenance can be minimized quite a bit. but many pool projects are poorly designed, very inefficient, and -- and can start to deteriorate very quickly and be very expensive downhe road. >> rick's wife, linda, is thewner of southwest image realty. >> a lot of first-time pool owners will not really understand what a pool involves, the maintenance, how it affects your electric bills. >> one question i get a lot is, "will a pool increase my home's value?" the answer, as usual -- it depends. there are a lot of factors, including where you live. >> a lot of times, it's more about overall outdoor living, which very common in arizona. >> mike christensen owns peak one builders. they design and build custom homes with pools and spas. >> i'm not sure i buy in to the theory that if you put a pool in, it actually increases the value of your home.

>> it's tough to say. um, if you probably would have seen this backyard before, you probably would change that statement. but i think it's really dependent on the property. >> well, if i put a $40,000 pool in my backyard, it's not gonna add $40,000. >> right. >> if you spend $40,000, it might add $20,000. but that's really not what they're after. they're after that family fun time. >> a pool is not an investment. it is a lifestyle. there is considerable cost and sometimes aggravation involved. so what you need to be thinking about is your family's enjoyment. >> trying to create an environment that can kind of meet multiple needs. so you can be there and not swim. you can also be swimming. the kids can be playing. but the adults can be hanging out somewhere else. and just get everybody in the backyard to stay at home. >> you hear a lot of horror stories about pool contractors. >> ask for references. uh, make sure he's licensed and bonded, um, and insured. it's extremely important, no different than the inside of the house. >> if you decide to install a pool, think about placement, shape, size, and how it will fit with the rest of your home.

>> when you walk in, it needs to feel like it should be there. and it can't overcome you or be a little postage stamp, either. >> bigger is not always better. >> a majority of people really think too large. and -- and until we actually finish the pool, it doesn't seem like it's big enough sometimes. but when you do it right, when you walk in the backyard and -- and really draws you back in here and makes you want to be a part of this yard. >> when potentially buying a property with a pool, you've got to dig a little deeper than normal. ask a lot of questions. do you look for the repair history of the pool? >> it's actually required that they disclose what they know about the pool. you know, there's some times we still have some flipped properties going on where the owner might not know anything about the history of the pool. that's a really good time to get a special pool inspection done. >> don't forget about insurance costs. a pool increases your liability. and you want to make sure you're fully covered. when it cos to maintaining your pool, it's critical to have a company that knows what they're doing. >> it's one of those markets that's very easy to get into. it's actually easy to stay even if you're not good. you want to look for guys that have spent some time

on education, that understand the operations, the efficiency, the hydraulics. and then get some references, talk to who you want to hire. don't go for the lowest dollar. you're gonna live with this for years and years and years. >> the good news? as technology improves, costs come down and things are becoming more efficient. >> energy efficiency is very key right now with pools. >> a lot of people are getting more educated, too, on what makes plumbing systems efficient. and that comes down to pipe sizing and the hydraulics brought by that. >> a variable speed pump's, uh, extremely important. you do get rebates from the power companies for those. and then the led lighting, which consumes very little, uh, power. >> so even just by changing the pump alone from an older 5- or 10-year-old pump can drop the price of operating the pool 60% to 80%. >> when done right, a pool is not just a hole in the ground filled with water. it should be a key part of an entire outdoor living environment. and when we come back, we've got the massi memo with a lot of tips, so stick around.

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♪ >> welcome back. i'm b ssi, the property man. and it's time for the massi memo. people always want to know if a pool will increase a home's value. and that depends on many factors, as with everything. it's in the eye of the beholder. some buyers want a pool and look at it as an asset. some only see expenses

and headaches and will avoid them like the plague. you really have to base your decision on how it will affect your life. if it's going to bring enjoyment and relaxation to your family, then it's usually worth the expense. if you're buying a property with a pool, find out as much as you can about the condition, the maintenance cost, and repair history. find out if it's going to affect your insurance costs. and don't get caught underinsured. okay, time to answer some viewer mail. anita from valencia, california, writes... well, first of all, as it relates to h.a.r.p. ii, h.a.r.p. ii and h.a.r.p. i was prior to, as you said, 2009.

all i can tell you is the theory behind it is they believe people from 2009 forward knew enough about the real-estate crisis and feel that that's the operative time, 2009 and before. it is not fair. and i wish they would just abolish that and let people refinance their loans like someone like you who's keeping it current. as it relates to other programs, call a mortgage broker that's competent. and the reason i say that is they're always changing programs, federal programs and internal programs of certain lenders. and maybe they will be able to help you. you have to stay on top of it because there are always programs available that may fit your needs. thank you for the mail. that's all the time we have for today. be sure to send me your property stories, questions, or pictures of your property bloopers. send them to... and don't forget to check us out on facebook and twitter. there's also plenty more

information and videos on our website... i'll see you next week. [ woman vocalizing ] >> on a cool spring evening in north carolina... [ tires screech, crash ] ...a car crash kills a renowned coin collector. he's carrying the crown jewel of his collection. but is it really one of the rarest and most valuable coins in the world or a clever fake? >> i just imagine she's sitting there saying to me, "they say i'm not real. what do you think?" >> half a century passes before the man's heirs -- and the public -- learn the truth about his precious cargo. >> we sat there on pins and needles, and then the numbers started climbing. [ door creaks ] [ wind howls ] [ thunder rumbles ] [ bird caws ]