This Month in Real Estate (March)

This Month in Real Estate: July

Rolling Hills The Early Years: June

The Early Years – Sheriffs Posse, Los Angeles County

In the early days of Los Angeles, the Sheriff had a group of men he could call upon him to help him in capturing highwaymen, murderers, and desperados. The men of the posse were all mounted because the bandits would escape to the outlying country and had to be caught by men on horseback.

By 1940, the Sheriff’s Posse was primarily a social organization. It was composed of a group of expert horsemen – you’ve seen them ride many times in the Tournament of Roses Parade.

The Sheriffs Posse probably reached the height of its prestige in 1930-1940 under Sheriff Eugene W. Biscaluiz. It was a large group of men, and occasionally they would go to some of the large ranchos around Southern California for rides. All of it was for fun – they would trailer their horses to the rancho headquarters that they were going to, and saddle up their favorite horse with a western work saddle, equipped with lariat, etc., and go off for a ride of miles and miles, and end up having a barbecue and then going home.

Just after the hay was harvested, in the late summer of 1940, the Palos Verdes Corporation invited the Sheriff’s Posse to come to Rolling Hills and ride over our 12,000 acres, and be the guests of the Palos Verdes Corporation, and enjoy themselves.

They all assembled at Ken Buggy’s Rolling Hills Riding Stables, unloaded their horses and saddled up with western saddles and equipment. From the assembly point, they rode across fields until they came to Rancho Elastico. It was a beautiful, clear, sparkling Autumn day – and dry. So, by the time they got to my ranchito they were all ready for a drink.

I had arranged to have a bar set up on a pickup truck. It was all equipped with liquid refreshments that a Sheriff’s Posse would like. After a round of drinks, the children’s ringtail monkey, who was a great household pet and who really ruled the roost, showed up. He had been in the habit, when we had guests, of stealing a sip from the Old Fashioned glasses – and here was his golden opportunity.

The riders thought it was funny as heck that a monkey would like liquor. After a drink or two, Adolph, which the children thought was a fine name for a monkey, climbed to the top of the tallest eucalyptus and then would leap high in the air to the neighboring black acacia tree – but he rapidly got to the point where, on account of being a little the worse for liquor, he would miss the upper limbs of the tree and come tumbling down and just barely catch himself. He did this over and over. That monkey really had a head by the time the Posse rode on to the next stop.

From Rancho Elastico the Posse rode down the Long Valley until they came to a stack of straw. This year we had threshed the barley rather than baling it, and where the Peninsula Center is at the present time was a huge stack of fluffy, loose, barley straw. They were all feeling pretty good – it was a nice, warm day. They got to riding around and around and around the stack of straw. Then every once in awhile, one of the riders would get very hilarious and he would his horse straight into the straw, which was very loose, and the horse would stumble and fall down, and the rider would fall off – and the only way the could get the rider and horse back onto firm ground again would be to lasso them and drag them out. And that is one version of what you might call “horsing around”

By 1:00 pm everybody was starving, and ready for a good meal, and they had a good meal. We had employed caterers to barbecue the food. They barbecued a steer, and it was ready by the time the boys got there. There were all kinds of Mexican dishes – lots of frijoles, tamales, and green salad — anything they wanted. There was plenty of beer, plenty of coffee, and plenty of fun.

From there the Posse rode down Georgeff Canyon back to the Rolling Hills Riding Stables, where they unsaddled, put their horses in the trailers, and returned to their homes.

Excerpt from: Rolling Hills: The Early Years by A.E. Hanson

Rancho Palos Verdes Newsletter

This month in Real Estate: March

This Month in Real Estate: December

Choosing a Listing Price

Picking a Listing Price can be extremely stressful, what you think your home is worth might not be what the Market thinks your home is worth. A Real Estate Agent will give you their expert opinion, but make sure they explain the current market trends and have enough information to back it up.

Dangers of Overpricing

Broker- and buyer-interest is at its highest when a home is first put on the market — and that interest will remain high for about four weeks. But if a property is priced too high during this crucial period, it won’t attract the right buyers. Once that momentum is lost, it’s difficult to recover.

• By overpricing your home, you create the need to reduce the price at a later time in order to compete with the listings that are really in your price range.
• If you’re interviewing several Realtors to choose a listing agent, you may be tempted to pick the sales professional who suggests the highest price for your property. But sellers, like buyers, need to beware. The Realtor who provides the best comparative market analysis and explanation of how your home should be priced will be more likely to sell your home quicker and for a higher price than someone who tells you only what you want to hear.

Look at Comps

Talk to a Realtor and have them find Comparable homes,that are on the market and homes that have recently sold, also known as a Comparative Market Analysis . Your asking price should be within 10 percent of the average sold price in your neighborhood.

Realtors will evaluate three factors: comparing your home to others that have recently sold, others currently listed and adjustments needed for extraordinary improvements.

Although home improvements can increase the value of your property, it is more likely these upgrades will simply help the home to sell faster than the others without similar renovations. This concept is sometimes difficult for sellers to understand. They feel that if they spent a certain amount on a home improvement, they should be able to recoup that cost by tacking it on to the sales price. But unfortunately, that’s not always the case. According to Home Remodeling Magazine, very few home improvements return 100% of the investment, and that percentage of return declines as the years go by.

Upgrades are important, but buyers may not share the owners’ enthusiasm for — nor agree with — the owners’ perceived value of the improvements. And if a buyer doesn’t see the value, then there is no value.

A professional analysis of the market, will take all of this into consideration as well as analyze the price other homes have actually sold for, not just the asking price — there can be a sizable difference. The most common mistake sellers make when pricing their property is to only consider the asking prices of other properties. Remember, a list price does not suggest market value of a home. It is simply the “asking price” or “dream sheet” of another seller. Its relevance may, however, be in how you position your home with the others on the market.

Other Factors:

• Time of year — Ah, spring. Spring is considered the best season to sell a home since families are trying to get situated before the start of the next school year; however, fall is a close second since it comes right after the quiet days of summer when most people are away on vacation. Winter is usually the worst season — especially in areas where it snows — but also because of the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s holidays when people’s minds are on socializing, not buying or selling a home.
• Interest rates — If rates are reasonable, it seems everyone is in the market for a home. But, if interest rates start to climb or they do not seem reasonable, you’ll see less action on the street.
• Inventory — In Economics 101, we were taught the basics of supply and demand. This theory laid the foundation of what drives costs, and so it goes with real estate. If your home is one of 20 in the neighborhood that’s for sale, you will have a hard time getting your price since the supply is great and the demand may not be so great. However, if it’s a hot market and you have a home in a great neighborhood, chances are you will get your asking price and maybe even more. Scope out the neighborhood to see if inventory is high or low. (And ask a real estate agent.)

Rolling Hills Newsletter: October

If you missed our Rolling Hills Newsletter for October, don’t worry we’ve got it all here for you!

The People of Rolling Hills

Excerpt from Rolling Hills: The Early Years by A.E. Hanson

 

“From the porch of Rancho Elastico I looked out over the Los Angeles basin and I knew that there were thousands and thousands of people who would like some fresh air, who would like to look down on the plains, who would like some elbow room.

One buyer was Mr. Done E. Williams, a businessman in Wilmington who had been, several years previously, one of Howard Jones’ football stars at the University of Southern California. He was about 30 years old, his wife about two years younger; they had two small girls, and were a typical, salt-of-the-earth, American family. Their home was started in March 1936.

The next buyer was a completely different sort of person, Ham B. Johns, insurance broker in Long Beach. I can remember as clearly as if it were yesterday, Ham Johns riding up to Rancho Elastico and hunting me up in the early spring of 1935. He was riding his favorite sorrel horse. He had on western riding pants over fancy, tooled cowboy boots, a black, velveteen shirt, a high white Stetson hat, the kind we used to call a ten-gallon hate, he had large Spanish spurs, a silver bit and silver rings on his reins, and some silver on his saddle. He was a member of the Long Beach Mounted Police and Major in the Victor McLaughlin Mounted Troops.

I got on my $50.00 horse, which in comparison to his looked like a second-hand model T, and we rode down to the Rolling Hills Gatehouse, and he selected his ranchito. He didn’t have one thin dime, but he had a tremendous desire to have a place in Rolling Hills, god bless him. We eventually got paid –we had to take out a lot of insurance with him though. His home was started in March, 1936.

Ham Johns and Don Williams were typical of the two types of people to whom Rolling Hills appealed – one was the family man with small children, and tremendously interested in gardening. He didn’t give a snap of his fingers about a horse – and I didn’t know if Don Williams had ever been on a horse. Ham Johns was the exact opposite; he was keen about horses, parades, roping, and rodeos. I don’t think he ever planted a plant, although Mrs. Johns had a small, modest garden.

The people who first purchased in Rolling Hills were the people who made it a vibrant, pulsing community. They had a number of things in common, such as wanting to have a better environment for their family – a place for their children to grow up in, a place of fresh air – and they all had deep feeling for growing things, whether it was children, plants, a baby calf, a new-born colt, a baby lamb. That was one of the ties they all had in common.

By the Spring of 1937 we had a sufficient number of families living in Rolling Hills so that we were becoming a community. The men were executives in corporations or in business for themselves. The men would average probably 35 years of age; the women were somewhat younger. The families would have from one to three children.

Rolling Hills was unique in that it was not a suburb, but a brand new village. It was about 5 miles to the stores and post office at Malaga Cove, and about an equal distance to San Pedro and Torrance.”

Excerpt from Rolling Hills: The Early Years by A.E. Hanson Page 52-53.

 

This Month in Real Estate: September

When is Disclosure too Little, too Much or Just Right?

Real estate agents walk a fine line regarding disclosure in meeting their fiduciary responsibility to their clients. The question is when is disclosure too little, too much or just right? The truth is that there are no absolute answers, just common sense practices that an agent can follow to best serve their client and protect themselves.

We recently took a look at the C.L.U.E. report which has been available for approximately the last 8 or 9 years. Re-Insider finds this report to be a great example of the variety of information that can find its way into today’s real estate transactions.

The first question that should always be looked at when vetting disclosure information is, is there a legal requirement in the California Civil Code for a particular disclosure of information? If there is, for example the NHDS or TDS in most residential transfers, then it has to be in the disclosure information to the buyer.

But what about non legally required reports, C.L.U.E. being a good example? In the case of C.L.U.E. reports being provided, this grew simply from CAR adding a question to their SSD form which was then incorporated into the SPQ on page one. This is a form that has grown over the years to 10 questions in which a seller is advised, by CAR, to disclose to a prospective buyer of their residential property. The question on the CAR SPQ regarding insurance claims is simply “Insurance claims affecting the property in the last five years”— answer to be given as simply yes or no.

So how did the additional information contained in a C.L.U.E. report, not requested or required, come into use and does it potentially pose a liability to the agent? The quick answer to the first question for coming into use is money. What was once a simple yes or no answer from the seller is now a $19 + report that companies make money selling into the transaction.

As far as the question of liability to the agent, if the additional information in the C.L.U.E. report has a mistake in it, as happens from time to time and causes some of the problems discussed in the previous article, then who takes responsibility? The most common response from agents is the company that sold the report to me of course. But as it turns out this is not necessarily the case.

Why you ask? The C.L.U.E. report comes with no guarantee or indemnification from LexisNexus, the company that produces the report. The resellers, usually disclosure companies, all have a third party exclusion in their limits of liability that state they are not responsible for mistakes in information provided to them from outside sources.

This can leave the real estate agent or brokerage financially responsible for the C.L.U.E. report if there is a problem. The message in this for agents, using C.L.U.E. reports in this case, is to look at your disclosure procedures with an eye towards not only meeting your fiduciary duties to your clients, but managing your own risk. With that in mind, with the case of C.L.U.E. reports the best answer may be to use the CAR SSD form.

What do you think of this situation? Are you in favor of regulating disclosure companies?

 

RE Insider read more here:

http://re-insider.com/2014/07/23/when-is-disclosure-too-little-too-much-or-just-right/