This Month in Real Estate (March)
Tag: Luxury Homes
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
This Month in Real Estate: May
This month in Real Estate: March
Steps to Buying A Home
Step 1: Decide to Buy
The decision to purchase your first home is one of the biggest and best choices you could ever make. After all, a home is the largest – and most emotional – investment most people will face in their lifetime. So, how do you know if it’s the right time for you to buy?
There is never a wrong time to buy the right home. The key is finding the right buy and taking the time to carefully evaluate your finances.
A home purchase is an important step that can provide many advantages. Purchasing your own home is a great investment that can deliver several financial benefits – equity build up, value appreciation, automatic savings plan – not to mention a new sense of pride!
Start looking at your options today. You don’t have to know everything. Your Keller Williams agent is ready to help you through every step of the process.
Step 2: Hire Your Agent
When you’re looking for a real estate professional to help you, know that above all else, good agents put their clients first. This is your dream, and your agent is your advocate to help you make your dream come true.
A great real estate agent will:
- Educate you about the current conditions of the market.
- Analyze what you want and what you need in your next home.
- Co-ordinate the work of other needed professionals throughout the process.
- Guide you to homes that fit your criteria and budget.
- Negotiate on your behalf to get you the best deal possible.
- Check and double-check paperwork and deadlines.
- Inform and discuss with you, and suggest solutions to solve any problems that may arise.To make the financing process as painless as possible, ask your agent to introduce you to the preferred financing consultant. This professional will work with you and your agent to make sure the financial aspect of your home purchase is stress free.
Step 3: Secure Financing
To make the financing process as painless as possible, ask your agent to introduce you to the preferred financing consultant. This professional will work with you and your agent to make sure the financial aspect of your home purchase is stress free.
What will the consultant do for you?
- Review your current financials.
- Discuss the options available to you during the home purchasing process.
- Guide you to an appropriate price point.
- Negotiate on your behalf to get you the best deal – price, interest rates, loan approval.
- Keep you informed and updated of the entire financial process throughout your purchase.
Step 4: Find Your Home
So you’ve met with your trusted advisors, and now you’re ready to begin your search. But how or where do you start? There are a lot of homes out there, and diving in without a guide can become overwhelming and confusing. Your Keller Williams agent will help you more accurately pinpoint homes that fit your criteria. The right home will meet all your important needs, and as many of your additional wants as possible.
Some questions you might ask yourself include:
- What amenities are crucial for you and your family?
- How much space do you need and why?
- Which is more critical: location or size?
- Would you be interested in a fixer-upper?
- How important is home value appreciation?
- Is neighborhood stability a priority?
- Is accessibility to main routes a priority?
- What features are not negotiable in your new property?
You’ll learn as you look at homes, your priorities will probably adjust along the way.
Step 5: Make an Offer
Once you’ve found a home you love, the next step is deciding on a price. It’s important to remember that a home is an investment. Your agent can give you information on other properties in the neighborhood to help you ensure you make an informed decision when it comes to price. Look to your agent to explain and guide you through the offer process.
Some things to consider when deciding on the best price point are:
- List price – Start with the price point that the home is listed at. This will give you a base when looking at the home’s value.
- Market Analysis – Your agent will give you an idea of comparable home values in the neighborhood to help you decide if the price point is on par.
- Improvements – Your agent can give you a list of improvements made to the home and help you determine its market value.
Step 6: Perform Due Diligence
Your agent will provide you with improvements and challenges within your home. This way you’ll know what you are getting into before you complete the purchase.
Knowing what work has and has not been done to your home is important information to have in the buying process. While updates can increase your home value, damages can take money out of your pocket. Your main concern is the possibility of structural damage, which can come from water, shifting ground or poor construction.
Very often a problem appears to be big, but can be fixed with very little effort and not a huge budget.
Step 7: Close
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Once you’ve determined a price point you’re comfortable with, you’re in the “home” stretch! But, in order to ensure that you don’t put the property purchase at risk, you have a couple responsibilities that you’ll need to keep in mind:
- Staying in control of your credit and finances – Do not make any large purchases during this time. It’s important to keep your financials steady throughout the buying process. Talk to your financial consultant for guidance.
- Keeping in touch with your agent and financial consultant – It’s important to stay in constant communication with your Keller Williams agent and financial guide during this process. Be sure to return all phone calls and complete paperwork promptly. Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Your team is there to help you!
Step 8: Protect Your Investment
Congratulations, and welcome home! The home-buying process is complete, which means it’s time for your maintenance plan! It’s now your responsibility, and in your best financial interest, to protect your investment for years to come. Performing routine maintenance on your home’s systems is always more affordable than having to fix big problems later. Be sure to watch for signs of leaks, damage and wear.
And remember, just because the sale is complete, your relationship with your Keller Williams agent doesn’t need to end! After you buy, your agent can still help you – providing information on the real estate market, finding contractors and repair services, and even tracking your home’s current value.
Happy home-owning!
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/
The Making of Williamsburg Lane
“Country Life with City Conveniences”
In Case you missed our Bi-monthly Rolling Hills Newsletter, here is the article we posted on our front page, in continuation of our History of Rolling Hills we decided to make this month all about the street Williamsburg Lane, which has a lot of history & where we happen to have one of our listings for sale on Williamsburg Lane. This street has so much charm & exquisite architecture that can still be seen today. The following is taken from the book Rolling Hills: The Early Years by A.E. Hanson
“ Williamsburg Lane, Virginia was the outgrowth of a number of visits I made to the Eastern seacoast. As a landscape architect, I was fascinated by what the Rockefeller family was doing to restore the original old, southern-colonial city of Williamsburg, Virginia. At one time, Williamsburg was the State capitol of Virginia.
To an architect and to a landscape architect, Williamsburg is seventh heaven. It is living history, and I wish every American family with teen-aged children could have the opportunity to travel to Williamsburg and see how America really started.
In Williamsburg, Virginia I fell in love with the housing of the craftsmen, villagers, and shopkeepers who lived there prior to the American Revolution. The design of these homes was Georgian. They were very small cottages, and were fine in detail. I thought what fun it would be to do a whole lane in Rolling Hills patterned after the small houses of Williamsburg.
Homes on Williamsburg Lane, Rolling Hills were going for sale for under $9000, what a steal & great investment.
When I returned to Rolling Hills I couldn’t get that idea of my mind. What fun it would be to build a village lane with all the homes made of wood, painted white – and I knew I would like to live in any one of the homes that I had in mind.
I contacted Paul Williams, (he had a particular talent in designing fine Georgian home for very wealthy clients) and suggested that he design an entire lane of homes for me – fourteen, to be exact. The land that I had chosen was just to the west of Acacia Road, on a ridge.
Financially, it was a very successful project, and anyone looking at the original advertisements shown in the counter book at the City Hall of Rolling Hills can see how great a bargain it turned out to be. One could buy an acre of land, a beautiful little house, landscaped with full-grown olive trees – all for $8,750.00. It was quite a bargain, and people bought them.”
PAGE 76. Excerpt from, Rolling Hills: The Early Years by A.E. Hanson
This photo shows the three original houses on Williamsburg Lane
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