Wednesday morning I had the opportunity to drive the longest six miles in Arizona to Estrella Mountain Ranch for a listing appointment. What makes this particular stretch of road the longest six miles in the state? Perspective and little else.

Just as the moon on the horizon only appears bigger than the moon in mid-sky because of the visual landmarks in the frame of reference (a true phenomenon, incidentally - view a newly-risen moon through a paper-towel roll and you'll see for yourself), the six miles connecting Estrella Mountain Ranch to the remainder of Goodyear and by extension the Phoenix metropolitan area seems far longer than they really are.

The primary cause is the Estrella Mountain Preserve, though which the Estrella Parkway runs. From the Salt River on there is virtually nothing but wide open spaces leading to the Estrella Mountains themselves. Throw in the lack of commercial development along the Estrella Parkway from Yuma south to the entrance to Estrella Mountain ranch, and a peaceful six-mile drive suddenly feels much longer.

And this isn't my opinion, incidentally. Time and again I have had clients who otherwise loved the homes and amenities in Estrella Mountain Ranch bemoan the "distance" from the interstate, even as they look at subdivisions more remote either to the north or to the west. Even setting the trip odometer isn't sufficient to overcome this perceived distance.

The shame of it all is at the end of the parkway, you will find the proverbial gold at the end of the rainbow - a unique master-planned community with one-of-a-kind amenities including a marina, waterslide and community center. There is golf and there are exercise rooms. And there are mountain views galore, the kind of views many within the main part of the metropolitan area of paying significantly more to enjoy.

So how do you defeat perceptions such as these? With a steady, healthy dose of reality. The value is there. The amenities are amazing. Just keep an eye on the odometer, see how short the distance really is, and you'll find your own private diamond in the desert rough.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes

I had toyed with the idea of individual property pages for my listings once upon a time but surrendered for a number of reasons, most technical and involving the scripts my sites runs. Without getting into details, it was rather cumbersome to add a new page to the system every time I had a new listing; until I found a shorter method, one that preferably allowed me to use the property address as part of the URL as a subdomain, I was going to let the blog page suffice.

Tonight I finally finished the template for the new-and-improved listing page, using my listing at 18378 W. Paseo. I'm going to populate the links at the bottom of the page over the next couple of days - of all the technology I do have, the one thing I don't have is a reliable PDF creator and that's the one thing I need. But the overall style and look will remain consistent.

These also ought to work well for the search engines. Even the simple blog page served it's purpose, at least on Yahoo.

Check out the page when you have a chance and let me know what you're think. As with everything on the Internet, it's a work in progress.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes