The Broker's Record

Santa Cruz’s Pink Man Gone Missing

May 07, 2008

If you’ve spent any amount of time in Santa Cruz, you’ve probably seen this bumper sticker: Keep Santa Cruz Weird. And perhaps nothing epitomizes the weird of Santa Cruz like Robert, the pink umbrella man. But now, suddenly, Robert has gone missing!

Imagine my dismay when I browsed over to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and saw this front page news:

[From Pacific Avenue staple seems to have disappeared - Santa Cruz Sentinel]

SANTA CRUZ - A Santa Cruz icon, the pink umbrella man, seems to have vanished from Pacific Avenue.

Shop owners and frequent patrons say they have not seen Robert Steffen, an unofficial symbol of downtown - who strolls, quite slowly, from one end of Pacific Avenue to the other while wearing a pink dress and boa and carrying an umbrella - for weeks or even months.

Now, if you happened to have stumbled upon this blog and you’re not from around here, at this point you might laugh nervously and quickly close the browser window. Or maybe, you’re researching Santa Cruz as a place to, say, spend your golden years or raise your children in a safe and nurturing left-leaning community - and you’ve just decided that hey, Santa Cruz isn’t for you.

For all you locals out there, even those of you who think Robert was kind of weird (an understatement?) - probably a part of you is going to miss him. I know I will. I used to love walking down Pacific Avenue with some friends or family from out of town and pointing out Robert - kind of like how I like to point out a deer or something when hiking in Nisene Marks Park - saying with hushed urgency, “Hey, look! See that? Cool, huh?”.

If you read the article, it seems that folks think he’ll be back. Apparently, he hasn’t really left, he just isn’t sportin’ his pimpin’ threads, and is probably working on transmorgifying himself again. I hope so!

It should be noted that Missing Robert wasn’t the only thing on the front page today. Check this out:

[From UCSC stem cell program gets $7.2M grant - Santa Cruz Sentinel]

UC Santa Cruz has received a $7.2 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to fund a new stem cell research center on campus, the university announced Wednesday.

Naturally, this kind of news gets second billing, even though it arguably may be much more significant for the community. Unless the community is Santa Cruz. It seems we’re more preoccupied about keepin’ it weird than treating, preventing and curing disease. I love this crazy town.

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Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 8:17pm
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Santa Cruz Real Estate - Let’s Talk Politics!

May 06, 2008

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s election season. Change is in the air - of course, it might all just get blown away and we’ll be back to the same-ol’, same-ol’ we’ve come to know and love for generations.

I got a nice e-mail from my friends at the California Association of Realtors today. It seems they want to put a stop to AB 2678, which would require “energy audits” every time a property is sold, to make sure that it is energy efficient. Maybe that sounds like a good idea to you - heck, who is against energy efficiency?

The question isn’t if we want our homes to be energy efficient. The question is, what is the best way to achieve that? There are all kinds of blog entries and articles on the internet discussing the pros and cons of this. Naturally, the C.A.R. is opposed to any such legislation. Here is what they have to say:

AB 2678 will require a state agency to set up a process to require point-of-sale energy efficiency audits that will cost up to $400 and ultimately will require point-of-sale energy efficiency retrofits that may cost THOUSANDS of dollars. While C.A.R. has no objection to increasing energy efficiency, AB 2678 will be both dangerous to the real estate market and grossly ineffective. Here’s why AB 2678 is a bad idea:

-AB 2678 will hurt your business. Heaping costly requirements on all sales will slow every residential AND commercial transaction, further weakening the real estate market and the economy.

-Point-of-sale approaches take too long. Research shows that only 22% of the properties most in need of energy efficiency retrofits will actually be sold by 2020. AB 2678 will be grossly ineffective in achieving its goals.

-AB 2678 will hurt housing affordability. The mandatory audit and retrofit requirements ultimately created could add THOUSANDS of dollars to every transaction. And every $1,000 increase in the price of a home disqualifies 26,600 families from owning.

Good points, good points. Personally, even though I’m a dues-paying member, I don’t fall for the C.A.R. argument hook, line, and sinker on every issue. There are many costs incurred by sellers and buyers in the purchase of real property - why not add this one to the list? It sure would be a boon to window and insulation salesmen. Might they be the folks who have sponsored this legislation? I’d be interested to see where the PAC money behind this one came from.

Now, there’s not much you can do about AB 2678 aside from writing your state representative. Maybe have a picnic lunch up at the Capitol in Sacramento while holding up a placard, pro or con. But there are a couple of measures on the ballot you might want to know about, Proposition 98 and 99.

To be honest, I haven’t studied either one of these in great detail, but they are both nominally about eminent domain. But the topic did come up at our office meeting this morning. It seems that Proposition 98 has a sneaky back-door to abolish rent control:

The provisions of this Act shall become effective on the day following the election

(”effective date”); except that any statute, charter provision, ordinance, or

regulation by a public agency enacted prior to January 1,2007, that limits the price

a rental property owner may charge a tenant to occupy a residential rental unit

(”unit”) or mobile home space (”space”) may remain in effect as to such unit or

space after the effective date for so long as, but only so long as, at least one of the

tenants of such unit or space as of the effective date (”qualified tenant”) continues

to live in such unit or space as his or her principal place of residence.

Those dirty dogs! I’m conflicted about rent control, personally - in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be necessary or desirable, but the fact is, this world is far from idea, and rent control does have its place - this is much better left up to individual localities, I think, rather than having some kind of sneaky tactics to get the voters to approve getting rid of rent control this way. So I’m going to have to say No on Proposition 98.

Proposition 99, on the other hand, sounds like a good one. It stops the government from using Eminent Domain to take property from people so that it can be sold to, say, Wal-Mart so they can “enhance the economic development of a community” or some such. I’m all for enhancing economic development, but private property rights are a fundamental part of the American system, and this bill just seems plain anti-American. Or it seems patently American, if you’re from that point of view. So it’s looking like I’m Yes on 99.

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Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 7:32pm
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Grateful Dead archives now call Santa Cruz home

May 03, 2008

Santa Cruz is kind of famous. For a town (and county) this small, the area is known by a disproportionately large number of people. Maybe it’s the beaches, the world-class surfing, the towering redwood trees. Maybe they know our fine university, made famous for having no grades, pot-smoking hippies, and now, the final resting place for the Grateful Dead archives.

Doubtless, there has been much gritting-of-teeth in some parts of the community about this one. “This is just what we need,” I can hear ‘em saying. Because, contrary to popular belief, Santa Cruz really isn’t a hippie town. It may be neo-Bohemian as Bob Weir says it is, but not too many folks are dead sure what exactly neo-Bohemianism is. On the other hand, most people think they know a dirty hippie when they see one, and more than a handful can probably say they’ve seen at least one or two in Santa Cruz.

For every resident that is appalled by linking Santa Cruz any further with the patchouli set (my colleague Mike Crain comes readily to mind), there is, I am sure, at least one other person who is totally stoked that the Dead archives have come to town. And I feel compelled here to point out that it’s not just drugged-out slack-jawed stoner types who groove to the Grateful Dead. In fact, who is helping to put these archives together? To quote the San Jose Mercury News:

A blue-chip team including several Silicon Valley-based fans - among them venture capitalist and musician Roger McNamee - will oversee a $2 million fundraising campaign for the archive. Seagate Technology CEO Bill Watkins has volunteered technical support.

I’m afraid you’re going to have to count me in with the folks who think this is a good thing. I don’t really know about the scholarship aspects of cataloging Grateful Dead fan letters, or what’s to be gleaned by studying the first contract the Dead signed to record an album or two for Warner Brothers. But my feeling is that it will further cement Santa Cruz as something of a mecca for live music. And in an era when music piracy is just so easy and prevalent, I suspect that playing actual shows will be an increasingly important revenue source for musicians.

Perhaps you don’t know, but for such a small town, Santa Cruz has a very healthy live music scene. Front and center, we have the Catalyst Club, which has been host to innumerable concerts by many leading performers. I don’t know that the Grateful Dead ever played there (but apparently they did put on a pretty good show in Watsonville), but I’ve seen many amazing musicians at the Catalyst - Los Lobos, Flogging Molly, Leo Kotke, Burning Spear, to name but a few. And beyond the Catalyst, there’s Moe’s Alley, and let’s not forget the Kuumbwa Jazz Center. And for special events, there’s always the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, which is the first (and one of only two times) place I saw Phish.

To me, it’s simple. Preserving the Grateful Dead archives here at UC Santa Cruz is just one more sign that Santa Cruz has got it goin’ on. A vibrant live music scene may not provide the kind of jobs that they got over there in Silicon Valley, but I think it really is one of the key aspects of the community that make this a very special place to live.

Edit: I can’t believe this, but I forgot to mention the Santa Cruz Blues Festival and the KPIG Fat Fry - two other yearly events which bring world famous, top-notch musicians to a beautiful Aptos Village Park. Hallelujiah and Amen!

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Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 10:15pm
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California Median Price down 29% in March, down 20.9% in Santa Cruz

April 30, 2008

This news is a few days old, so maybe you heard about it. Somehow, I missed this one, I’m a few days behind in reading the real estate news. But check out this news from C.A.R., the California Association of Realtors:

[From the California Association of Realtors - median home price fell 29 percent in March ]

Home sales decreased 24.5 percent in March in California compared with the same period a year ago, while the median price of an existing home fell 29 percent, the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (C.A.R.) reported today.

It’s a pretty interesting article, with lots of numbers to pick apart. Some areas are actually seeing median price increases - they provide a separate link with March 2008 home prices for various California cities and counties. According to C.A.R., home prices are down in Santa Cruz county by 20.9% And I know what you’re thinking - blame Watsonville. My broker did, at our weekly office meeting. The C.A.R. data says otherwise - the only city it breaks out in Santa Cruz county is the City of Santa Cruz, where it reports that median home prices have dropped 17.9% since March 2007.

I prefer to look at this as a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. The bad news is that if you need or want to sell your house, C.A.R. has just provided ample proof (again) of what you might have maybe thought: now is not the time to sell your home. Also, you might want to make sure your home equity line is still available, because your lender may get wise to the fact that you probably have a lot less home equity than you thought you did.

The good news, of course, is that lower prices creates a lot of buying opportunity that simply hasn’t been around for years and years. Many people who have been shut out of the market or who have been sitting on the sidelines are now seeing that their day may come. The Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy put out a report in February 2008 about rising affordability of California homes. According to that report, we are still far away from being an “affordable” place to live, but that’s the price of Paradise.

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Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 8:29am
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Real estate lawsuits - your ticket to real estate riches

April 26, 2008

I just closed escrow as the buyer’s agent on a REO property - that is, the house had been foreclosed on, and the bank owned it. When a bank is selling a property (or, typically, it’s an asset management company that sells the property for the investor, marketed on the MLS using the services of a Realtor), there are few disclosures made about the property - because, of course, the owner of the property is an investment firm in Abu Dhabi or the pension fund for a plastic toy factory in Shenzhen, China - and what, really, could such an owner know about the property?

Exactly. So when you’re buying a property from the bank, you really have to be extra diligent in your investigations of the property. In this particular case, we stumbled onto some significant material facts that had not been disclosed to us by the seller - which is not surprising, because I’m sure the seller didn’t know. The buyer and I were at the property measuring the rooms or something, and one of the neighbors came over to have a chat. “Do you know about the lawsuit?” she asked.

“Lawsuit? What lawsuit?” I replied. That is what you really like when you are starting to wrap up your investigation of a property - to hear that there had been a lawsuit. “Oh, don’t worry,” she said, “it’s all been settled now.” She went on to say that there had been, in effect, a property line adjustment, and the subject property (the one I was helping my client to buy) had relinquished some “useless” land behind the garage in exchange for some use of some of the neighboring ’s land, which was a non-exclusive easement benefiting the subject property but had been used for years and years exclusively by the former owners.

Fair enough, and any such lot line adjustment would, naturally, appear on the title report. The problem was, we had not been given a title report yet, although I had requested a copy about a week prior. As often happens with the purchase of an REO property, the title & escrow company is some out-of-town outfit, often from L.A. I immediately contacted them, and said, hey, we really really need our title report, now. It took them several days before they actually coughed up a title report.

I forgot to mention - this neighboring parcel - it’s a vacant lot, and it’s for sale. At some point during all this, I had talked to the listing agent for this parcel, and he said he’d heard about the lawsuit, and said he heard that there were some un-recorded grant deeds lying around, but didn’t really know much about it and would check with the owner and get back to me.

I didn’t sit idly by, though. I went on to the county recorder’s office and looked to see if I could find any grant deeds and such that would be required in the event of a lot line adjustment. I couldn’t find any - but then, I’m not a professional title researcher. After a few days, the title report showed up, and…

No mention of any lot line adjustment. The property lines matched precisely the tax assessor’s map which I had already downloaded from First American Title’s beloved Fastweb system. Hmmm. So where, then, was this supposed land swap? What had the neighbor been talking about?

In a burst of inspired genius, I found my way on to the superior court’s web site - it turns out, you can search the case history index on-line. Ahh, voila. I did in fact find that there had been a court case between the former owner of the subject property and the current owner of the vacant lot. Unfortunately, you can’t actually view the case records on-line, you need to schlep yourself over to the courthouse and ask to see the records in person.

So I did. A pretty thick file, actually - two volumes, one of which they had to dredge up from the basement. The lawsuit was brought by the owners of the vacant lot, suing the owners of the subject property (again, the one I was helping my client to buy) for encroaching upon their land, using the non-exclusive easement in an exclusive manner. The judge never made a ruling, but rather, it was settled in a conference.

The result of the settlement was that this lot-line adjustment was to be drawn up, deeds signed, a new fence to be built, etc. The new fence had been built, actually. But where were those pesky deeds?

I contacted the vacant parcel’s listing agent again and told him what I had found down at the courthouse, and he said, “Well, I talked to the seller, and she invites you to call her, she’ll explain everything.” He gave me her number, so I gave her a ring. She’s a very nice lady, and even though this lawsuit and lot-line imbroglio had been hugely taxing for her, she was as pleasant as can be and very helpful.

She explained that yes, per the settlement, she had hired a land-user planner, had surveys done, grant deeds drawn up, got all the signatures in place, had done everything you’d need to do to get a lot-line adjustment done and then, supposedly…the city lost the application to do the lot line adjustment. It just vanished, and the process died. She kindly gave me copies of all the deeds and surveys and everything, and wished me well.

Upon keen examination of the provided documents, my client noted a salient detail: the land behind the garage was being given to the neighbor’s parcel, but the easement that was being encroached on was not being grated to the subject property - it was changing from a non-exclusive easement to an exclusive easement. That’s not the same thing as being granted - in effect, then, the subject’s lot size would be decreasing by about 10%.

To make a long story short, after a week or so of hemming and hawing and talking it over with various parties concerned, we made a devil’s pact with the bank - we would take the property as-is, and proceed to close immediately, if the seller (”the bank”) would drop the price by about 10%. The bank took this offer, and my client proceeded to swiftly close on the purchase of the property - the catch is, this lot line adjustment is now in his hands.

There are all kinds of interesting angels to explore here, like those grant deeds - so far as I know (and of course, I’m not a lawyer!) a signed and notarized grant deed is legal, even if it is never recorded. That’s one big reason why you have title insurance, in case someone shows up down the road with a legal, un-recorded grant deed and says “Hey, uh, actually, your house? That’s mine.”

Another legal angle is the addendum I had the buyer sign where the agrees not to sue anybody (like me, or the seller, or the seller’s agent) for any reason related to boundaries and easements and adjusting or failing to adjust the lot lines. How would that one hold up in court? Hopefully I’ll never need to find out.

My client ended up buying this property at a very good price, thanks to a hard-fought, bitter lawsuit. There are many paths to real estate riches, and this particular bath was bumpy and winding, but my client is going to get there, just the same.

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Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 10:32am
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