The CMU will keep the houses cooler longer in the day and warmer longer at night. 

I've heard of people going 10-25K over ask in a hot market, but in a cooler market,you may only need a $1K or so more to get it.   

If they are moving in between the 1st and the 15th they are required to pay pro-rate plus deposit (no move in special).If they move in between the 16th and the end of the month they are required to pay pro-rate, plus full following month, plus deposit (No move in special).During times of cooler weather or historically slow months in terms of leasing, move-in specials are used as a means to place a tenant quicker without lagging in the pre-qualification area.

I have a house in the desert that gets hot, so I think it simply need A/C since currently we are using portable evaporative coolers.

The elderly you hear die are often in nursing homes or alone at home where no one give a crap about them and they cant take care of themselves....yes it happens...but if you are physically capable of taking some action, the risks are very very tinyI would treat it the same way I would treat it for my own family...... not paying big $$ to fix it as an emergency...... fans, portable AC units, going to the mall or the movies or somewhere cooler for the day....suck it up....life will go on while I get it taken care of as promptly as possible...urgent....but not an emergency in 99.9999% of cases.The portable AC units are the best solution...... will do a decent job while you get the solution to the bigger problem figured out.

The idea was to remove the heat of the sun hitting the walls to keep the insides cooler since heat rises anyway.

We only have another week or two of hot weather then cooler fall weather will be milder .

I have heard some people setting up their heating cooling system to shutoff if a door or window is let open for a certain amount of time.You can also add a temperature offset to make it look like it is a few degrees cooler or warmer than actual since sometimes temp setting is a mental thing.

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Been an owner for 4-5 years, learned quite a few things already, among which is that a commercial kitchen is not something to be made or modified lightly - it has to be properly designed and properly made in order to function well.So I have this retail store of about 1100 sqft that someone wants to take for a small coffee shop with the ability to bake.My question is where do I start searching for someone to design/compute small walk-in cooler, grease trap, vent-a-hood, stove and HVAC on top of that so all this could become useable without anyone getting burned.From my past experience I have local mexican crews who can do any and all of the listed things and they'd do them relatively well except they won;t ever be designed to actually work well together.On the other end of the spectrum I've worked with american general contractors and they tend to cost 2-3 times the Mexican crews and, at least in my case, ended up delivering about same end result (in all fairness it was only kitchen remodeling, not design from ground up; but statement stands valid and I was able to later do almost the same at literally third of the cost).Your expertise is appreciated.