CC&R Corner, June 2009

For Rent
by Will Bullington, CC&R Compliance Officer, LSPOA
With a bad housing market and our country in financial chaos, we are seeing a large influx in rentals in our community. Many of these rentals have been “below the surface” but with the price dropping, many people that don’t normally live in an area like Lake Shastina can afford to live here. Since last summer I have been dealing with complaints about rental properties: loud music, parties, garbage blowing all over the neighborhood, too many cars parked all over the lot, and the coup d’ grace was two assaults with deadly weapons.

Home owners that live here want to know, “what are you doing about it?” Most of the problems we and the local police are dealing with are young people that have roommates, sharing the cost of the housing. We are required by the CC&Rs to know that you are renting your property, to whom, and you are required to give the renters a copy of the CC&Rs (even on a disk). The Association has authority to discipline tenants and to evict them. The legal costs of doing this are the responsibility of the owner.

Our sub-division is zoned and designated by the CC&Rs as “single family residential.” This means you are not supposed to rent out a home to two, three, four tenants. That’s what brings us two, three, and then four vehicles and double that when they have friends over. That’s what brings us loud parties like a bad “girls gone wild meets animal house” movie. How bad can it get? How about renters going after golfers with a baseball bat, renters attacking a citizen with a sword, renters bashing a citizen’s face in with a rock, renters coming out after public works employees with a bat, and renters having so many parties, over so long a time, that the entire street came in and signed complaints.

This situation is a nationwide issue. So many homeowners associations are dealing with it that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a homeowners association that passed rental restriction rules. They ruled that a homeowners association can restrict how many rentals are allowed, what type, etc. Our current rules need to be enforced and that is just what our Board wants done. The situations described in this article occurred quickly over a very brief period of time. For a long time there was only an occasional problem with a renter, but this was almost always handled informally and quickly. The question of vacation rentals has come up also. This is where someone rents their home out for less than 30 days, usually for a weekend. Sometimes it is just a family and other times it is three or four golfing buddies. Very rare that there is any complaints and it makes a tidy sum of tax dollars for the County though a transient tax. It is interesting that the transient tax purpose is to offset the impact on road repair and emergency services to the community providing it. I guess we’ll have to ask the Board of Supervisors if they want to send some transient tax dollars to Lake Shastina.

The problem is being addressed. The bad guys are in jail, problem tenants are moving out, public works is repairing the roads, and we are enforcing our rules. We let our guard down and learned our lessons.

Bragging Rights

This is our grandson Truman Braslaw, at his senior prom last Saturday. His date is Rachael, his "steady" (do they say that still?), a sophomore at the same high school Truman will graduate from next month in Piedmont, right next to Berkeley in the East Bay.

He is as intelligent as he is handsome and has been accepted by several universities including Cal Poly and UC San Diego. But he has chosen instead to spend a year teaching English in Senegal, Africa. Not the with the Peace Corps but some private organization that sends young people into villages to educate children. Some kid, eh?

Oh, and did I forget to mention that Truman is also charming. He is very family-oriented and was brought up to be polite and thoughtful. Very refreshing these days. When he visits (he drives all the way himself now) he invariably offers to help cook, wash dishes, and of course, drive. He is bringing his sister Quincy now for holidays and she now has her driving permit so of course Grampy has to give her driving lessons (see "Driving Miss Quincy" in the archive).

Here's the best part though; how many 18 year-old kids actually CHOOSE to visit their grandparents on their own?

Truman and two friends are driving up after school this Friday for a Memorial Day bike tour of Highway 3. We're going to drop them at Walmart and pick them up in Weaverville next Tuesday. They will use our bikes and camp out three nights along the way, two of them along the west shore of Trinity Lake.

Sally and I of course are nervous wrecks. That's a distance of at least 1,000 miles and all we have to connect with them is Tru's vague promise to call on his cell phone "every now and then". I wanted to follow in a chase car with spare parts and emergency supplies but that idea did not get very far.

We're going shopping tomorrow after we pick up the bikes from Fifth Season where they are getting the first real tune-up since we bought them. I'm not sure but three 18 year-olds should be able to put away a sizeable breakfast Saturday before we head out so we're thinking three dozen eggs, 5 lbs. bacon, a couple gallons of OJ, and a couple dozen bagels. I don't see how they can possibly carry enough food for three days on the road. Seems like a refrigerated 18 wheeler might be appropriate chase vehicle for this crew.

Truman is by the way a killer at ping pong. He beats me every now and then but I have to be sure he doesn't get too cocky so I'll train with the table folded half up for a couple of weeks before he gets here so's to be able to "whip" him maybe 21-18 after which I'm laid up for days in recovery.

But the point is he's sure to want a go Friday night and with my luck his pals will be good, too. That translates to a midnight bedtime which won't even put a dent into an 18 year-old's energy level at 8 the next morning. It would take several paragraphs to describe what it does to us, however.

So there you have it....bragging rights. I wish our other two children were planning families so we'd have more grandkids like ths one but that's a topic for another article.

Working at Home

Notice how relaxed and suave this home worker appears___fresh cup of coffee, stylish sweater, sleek laptop. The lure of making $200 per hour stuffing envelopes (they always add "up to") has been around forever but the internet has made working at home not only possible but in some cases smarter than commuting to an office.

Take our industry for example. Some agents are beginning to center their work time at home rather than doing "floor time" as we call it at the broker's retail office downtown. There at home, uninterrupted by jangling phones and waves of conversation the home worker can really focus on tasks and handle clients in the ideal one-on-one manner that customers uniformly prefer.

But there is another business advantage to having agents working at home covering a specific geographical area; people usually know their 'hoods and have the connections to get things done. Years living in a certain area provides the knowledge that buyers and sellers need in this confusing world.

So in many markets real estate offices are becoming a central hub staffed by people trained specifically to meet and greet walk-in clients or callers and direct them to either an agent on call who can come in to the office and work with them, or increasingly to the home office of an agent in the neighborhood the client is shopping.

Here the internet comes in again because many buyers have already done the shopping on sites like Realtor.com so when they walk in the door they usually have a list of homes that they would like to see already printed out. In other words they don't just walk in as in "walk in off the street"; they've been in touch with the agent for some time and a meeting has been pre-arranged well in advance.

Sally and I are fortunate to have a broker who appreciates this trend and I feel the quality of our lifestyle has improved because we work at home. Contrary to what you might think (and very unlike the model in the picture) it is NOT kicked back, though. We find ourselves putting in more hours and more odd hours than expected.

You see, we're on call 24/7/365 by choice. Customers call on holidays and in the middle of dinner. People will knock on our door too, without calling ahead. So it's very different than going to an office; you aren't taking work home after work, you're living with it. I always felt like I was duplicating my job, having a desk at the office and a homework place at home. In fact I had two computers mostly for that reason and was always struggling to stay coordinated with the two work places.

But working at home is not for everyone. A 9 to 5 job has its advantages if it's the type of work you can LEAVE at work. Real estate isn't and moreover bringing it home means the home itself is now on display so we find ourselves cleaning up more often than (especially me) one normally would. It's like having to be ready for company all the time.

Tele-commuting I guess is coming. Plenty of industries are looking at it and it certainly deserves a look from our perspective.

The Blank Space on my Desk

What an interesting thing. We live on our PC's not for entertainment, but the internet is our connection with our real estate business world. Without email and the MLS we are out of action.

So the other day my monitor died. After fruitless attempts to revive it I called the local repair stores and narrowed the problem down to the AC converter, that little black device on the power cord between the wall outlet and the monitor which converts 110 volt AC power to 12 volt DC which the monitor runs on. The tech put a volt meter to it an it was delivering about 9-1/2 volts DC, not enough to do the job.

So we ordered a new one which will be here anytime now but the point of this story is how odd it feels to sit at my desk and stare at . . . nothing. It is a reality check to realize how useless computers are without a monitor. And how helpless we are without them. Seems obvious but turn yours off and try to "function".

Of course it's different if you depend on them for a paycheck as we do. We don't do movies, music, or Facebook. It's all nuts and bolts business software and it feels really bizarre to not be able to see it, that is.

But help is due any day. The converter should be in tomorrow. If I don't get the call though I think the withdrawal symptoms will get worse . . .

Some Real Estate Stats for Lake Shastina

As I reported in an earlier post business seems to be picking up for all of us in the real estate business. We are getting calls from other offices to show our listings, we are showing listings from other offices, and yes, we're even writing offers. I am not going to say anything about trends here because I am simply not qualified to speak on that, but the phone is ringing a lot more than it has over the past year.

Here are some numbers to illustrate: our office (Coldwell Banker, Scott Valley Real Estate) sold $2,260,000 worth of homes since January. There are 30 real estate offices in Siskiyou County and that makes us # 2 in dollar volume which totaled $18,944,775 just so far this year.

2004 was the peak, when 558 homes sold county-wide. It has slid downward steadily since then to about half___267 in 2008. Average sold prices though topped out in 2005at $278,171 and are down to an average of $231,764 in 2008.

So, volume is down nearly half but prices not nearly as much. However, this is for the whole county and does not line up 100% with what we are seeing here in Lake Shastina. Here we are watching the inventory of unsold homes slowly sink back to a manageable level. This morning it stands at 81, down from a high last fall of 105. Of course in the 2004-2005 peak years it was around 50 on any given day and that's when buyers were making full-price offers.

So there are still too many homes on the market. This is evident to us through our property managment practice, too. Many sellers get frustrated and move their homes into rental to generate some cash so the 80 figure is not entirely trustworthy. Add to that mistrust the fact that some homes are in default or outright foreclosure.

The point is we get buyers asking for these and unless the bank or the owner also put them on our local multiple listing service, we don't see them. We have noticed an uptick in bargain hunters though, compared with prior years. People who might not otherwise be able to afford a home are making aggressive offers that sometimes fly but it is interesting to note that the effort takes much longer than when the market was more balanced.

The secret seems to be homework___if you are planning to invest, do as much upfront as you can. Get your funding in hand. Research the area you hope to buy in. Explore what is for sale with a licensed Realtor. Ask for sale comps, not just what is for sale because what actually sells is the reality check. All too many sellers fail to realize that little step.

Movie Recommendation

The movie was called "Enron; The Smartest Guys in the Room" and we got it from Netflix. It is a documentary and unravels in sad detail how corporate greed led to (at the time) the largest bankruptcy in history.

It was rated "R" by the way and I thought gee, that's odd for a documentary. And it didn't say why either, like graphic violence, strong language, etc. as I've seen on other films. There was some colorful language in the taped phone calls to be sure but nothing like "Goodfellas". By the end though I think I figured out why Hollywood felt it should be restricted from children without their parents present: the "R" is because it's about corrupt business practices and dirty politics.

You see Enron, like any smart company, had or bought friends in Washington and in all localities where its operations would benefit from governmental help. This extended right into the Bush White House and the film had embarrassing photos and audio clips of a grinning President patting the CEO on the back.

Jeffery Skilling was Bernie Madhoff 18 years ago and built an empire based on the same evil principles. He lied, he cheated, he manipulated his way into the Fortune 500 and most of all he and Kenneth Lay promoted this package as the company's corporate policy.

By the time they were exposed by a whistle-blower the floor traders who essentially ran the company were bragging to each other on recorded phone calls about how they engineered the energy crisis in California. One call urged a power plant supplying the state to find an excuse to shut down for a time to drive up the price of electricity while another cried "burn, baby burn!" when a wildfire forced a power company to reduce the power load on its high voltage lines.

The well-respected accounting firm of Arthur Anderson it turns out had "cooked" Enron's books and successfully fooled Wall Street, the government, and Enron's stockholders that things were better than they really were.

Of course we are jaded now and this tale would not shock anyone. The economic downturn has suggested that greed has become the corporate culture of our world. Hedging, lying, stealing, concealing, bribing____all and more of these practices were exposed in the behavior of the big banks and investment companies. And we still gave them money. "We" being an interesting term now.

As one wag said in so many words, but why should we be surprised? Empires rose and fell because of all of these behaviors. Perhaps, he went on to say, perhaps people are just like that. Maybe it's just a matter of scale and publicity . . . bigger scandals and more press coverage make todays expose's seem more shocking when in fact they may be the routine way of doing business now.

I guess if he's right that we just need to get used to it. Survival of the fittest so to speak. Everybody on their own and may the best win. Darwin in the 21st century. But I'm not ready to go there yet. Surely honest, hard-working politicians and corporate heads outnumber these crooked few.

Don't they?

The Grabber

I have a weak back that gets sore if I'm bent over for any length of time. Which is what is required if you have to double over and pick things up repeatedly. We have lots of pine cones on the lawn and falling in our newly-planted garden and you can twist an ankle or fall if you step on one.

So I plan to carry a pail in one hand and use a grabber with the other so as to minimize the wear and tear. Like the guy in the picture, although I don't plan to wear a badge or funny-looking shorts.

Enter age denial, stage right in wifely form. "It makes you look old" she says.
I am old my darling, I just turned 69 I reply. Besides, it's for my back. Surely you don't want me to hurt my back again, do you?

"Oh don't be silly, how can picking up things hurt your back?" I mumble the last incident which I think put me in traction and she says "But it didn't require surgery, did it?"

Getting back on my feet I said, Look at all that dirt I'm wheelbarrowing into YOUR garden, my little butterfly. That takes a toll on my back too, you know.

"But using THAT THING makes you look like those people in jumpsuits you see along the highway for heaven's sake. Besides, exercise is good for you.

I'm certain that phrase will eventually be on my tombstone. I can't count the number of times when cardiac arrest was just around the corner because I'm being urged forward with those charming words. Sally used to say them to Andrew our aging sheltie too, until the vet told us he had heart disease. Boy, did she feel bad about having dragged him around after that.

So I tried logic, probably not one of my better decisions. I said, Precious, I can gather MORE pine cones in LESS time thereby giving me more time to do chores for you. "Chores?!?" she says. "You. Doing. Chores. For. Me?" She has this way with words.

The only way I "won" this round (ed. note: "winning" is relative in the context of spousal disagreements) is because I was returning about 40 bucks' worth of stuff to the store at the time. Since the grabber was $19.95 I cried See? We just MADE 20 bucks by getting this!