[EJ]

I locked a 30yr at 3.24% yesterday with no costs. That was a 0.376% reduction for me. Thanks to Home Loan Sheldon (long-time occasional Piggington contributor HLS)! I just saved a few years of mortgage payments. Had considered going with a 15 or 20 year, but not much spread, so kept my options open with the 30yr.

[EJ]

Just curious … why pay the second installment now? I always wait until April 10, the last day without penalty. Is there any advantage to pay early?

[EJ]

Thanks for the responses, we have WICR on contract. I’ll report back once completed.

@Hobie – The leak was due to waterproofing system delaminating from metal flashing at edges of porch. There are no drains to clog, the water drains off the side of the deck over the flashing and into gutters.

@gzz – if something goes wrong with WICR, I’ll send a DM to request your suggestion. thanks!

[EJ]

I don’t think this is over. It is still illegal to have short term rentals in residential neighborhoods. I hope they start to enforce it.

My understanding is that it was rescinded to prevent waiting to 2020 for a vote to decide. AND, the only reason this went to a ballot vote is because paid signature collectors gathered enough signatures to force the vote (using very deceptive tactics, that I experienced first-hand).

I hope the city council comes up with something, but I worry that a couple years will pass and we get nowhere, and then wish we had the vote in 2020. I think they need to make an exception for MB, since the STVR’s are so prominent. Maybe if they had, there would not have been so much push-back. But please stay out of OB and other areas with the mini-hotels, it is completely inappropriate and illegal in residential neighborhoods.

I am confident if a similar measure ever goes to ballot, the folks at the beach are not going to allow the mini-hotels to operate. It is very unpopular with the residents and the correlation to increasing home prices and rents is very clear.

The proponents of STVR’s claim to want freedom in their property rights, but there is a big difference between commercial and residential property zones. What about the rights of people who purchased a home in a residential zone that are now dealing with commercial enterprises next door. Where is the line drawn? Sounds like some folks think mini-hotels are ok? How about backyard restaurants in residential areas (the people in the mini-hotels need to eat after all)? How about a strip club? Can I fill up my yard with RV’s and rent those out? Can I offer my backyard as a landfill to a chemical company?

I think there is a compromise that can be made to allow people some freedom to rent their homes, but limits the influence of large out of town investors who only care about the bottom line. The out of town investors have no incentive to protect our communities. If STVR’s are left unchecked, I suspect most of the beach areas would eventually end up like MB, where people can only afford to stay there for 1 week per year and very few local residents are living there year round.

[EJ]

I would be interested to hear other peoples ideas for how to regulate the vacation rentals.

Sounds like we have some people that feel they should not be regulated at all, which is one idea.

I provided an idea above.

We had Faulkner’s proposal to limit to 2 STVR properties per owner (with some nuances), no restrictions on amount of time per year that could be rented or if it needs to be owner occupied. This would still allow out of town folks to buy STVR’s in SD.

We have Bry’s proposal, which limits to STVR to primary residence and only part of the year. A granny flat on same property as primary residence can be ST rented year round. This effectively prevents out of town investors from buying properties and turning them into STVR. This proposal was recently passed by city council vote.

Any other ideas?

[EJ]

As a long time resident, I would think you would want to keep your neighborhood zoned as residential. Enforcing existing zoning laws is not “trying to take away rights of every property owner in San Diego”. I feel the opposite, people skirting laws by illegally running STVR are taking away my rights to a residential zoned property that I purchased.

gzz, what would your recommendation for STVR rentals be? Mine recommendation would have been to limit the number of STVR per neighborhood and make operators get licensed and pay fees. The limit would be set so that OB never gets to the point where 44% of homes are STVR’s, like MB, but more like %5 or less. However, I am happy with the recent decision to keep our residential neighborhoods for the actual residents, and this solution probably requires less regulation than what I suggested.

PS: I despise regulation and big government in general, but I do believe zoning laws should be enforced and any changes to them taken seriously. The unregulated STVR market was getting out of hand.

[EJ]

Do you live at the beach? If yes, you are ok with mini-hotels operating next door?

I am guessing the answer to both questions is no. I have seen you post about OB real estate, so I suspect you own some properties that are rented as STVR (illegally). The residential zoning laws are clear about transient occupancy, it is not allowed. For many years, due to the technology, the zoning laws have been skirted by “home sharing”. The “home sharing” has been thoroughly abused to the point where houses and condos in residential zones are turning over occupants ever few days, year-round. If you took the risk of buying a home in a residential area and running it as a hotel because zoning laws were not enforced, that was your decision. Don’t expect the laws to change now, and you should have foreseen some sort of regulation coming.

WRT MB, I suspect some consideration will be made for those that were paying the transient occupancy tax before the new AirBnB ban. For those that bought homes in MB (or other beaches) residential areas and planned to run them as hotels illegally, I do not feel bad. Believe it or not, a decade or so ago there was still a lot of residents in MB. Even a school!

WRT hurting property values, the beach area prices were getting inflated because people were making purchase price decision based on operating them as illegal STVR’s which pencil out to much higher cap rates. I am ok with prices normalizing to what the local population will bear. I own in OB and have thought about going the STVR route, but I couldn’t do it to our neighbors and was adverse to the risk of entering an unregulated STVR market. Now that the policy has been clarified, I hope it is enforced appropriately, I may consider a granny flat AirBnB with confidence that I am operating within the law.

I am sure you are right, people will still try to skirt the law, but that is not my thing. Probably the people that are most likely to operate their STVR underground in the future are the same ones that bought residences expecting to be able to operate them as hotels, when clearly the zoning did not allow it.

Just my $0.02 …

[EJ]

I also recommend HLS. He did my purchase loan (even though I did not have an agent) and 3 refi’s for me over the the last 7 years. After the initial purchase, he kept an eye on rates for me and would contact me when I could get no-cost refi with 1/4 point reduction in rate.

HLS … I will be contacting you in about a year for another purchase 🙂

[EJ]

I share a car with my wife. We supplement with Uber and Lyft, as well as riding bikes. $14,211 buys a lot of rides! For us, the cost of rides per month is much less than a car payment (or opportunity cost of a lump sum), so it was an easy choice. Plus, parking is tight in our ‘hood, so helps with that too. We live near the beach and typically are not going very far, so cost per ride is usually the minimum fair ($5.75 for either). If I recall correctly, you are in east lizardia, so you might need to factor in more expensive rides.

[EJ]

[quote=spdrun]Nope. No stock market bubbles to dwarf previous bubbles since 1995. Nothing here to see. 1987 was considered a bad crash, and it was mild compared to early 2000s and 2008.

If we’d followed the trendline from the 80s through mid 90s, we’d be at about S&P 1000 now without two major recessionary shocks.

As far as real-estate “recovering” from a defence bubble in the early 80s, “recovery” implies that it was fairly priced in the early 80s. And that the re-pricing after the defence bubble burst was a disease, not strong medicine.[/quote]

Same plot on log scale. Since growth targets are a percentage, this more appropriate for comparison to the past. A straight line would be constant growth.

[img_assist|nid=19301|title=|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=500|height=200]

[EJ]

[quote=jstoesz]Who can figure out what is going on with the carpet inset in this picture. This may not be the worst picture ever, but the house is pretty darn garish.
[/quote]

Putting green!

Or maybe it should be called a putting brown in this case 🙂

[EJ]

I clicked on this thread hoping to read about some B-ball … oh well, back to work

[EJ]

@SDR – thanks for the comments. I wish I had thought to ask for a list of repairs as you suggested. To say I am pissed at the inspector would be an understatement, it seems obvious to me now, had I known what to look for.

[EJ]

I am not saying I expect to do no maintenance but the repair is sub-standard (I do not want to get into details, but trust me, the repair work is poor). More importantly, wrt damages, I was sold a house that was valued as not having flood history, when in reality there was a flood history, hence reduced value. The Realtor, who was legally obligated to serve my interests, covered up the problem and lied to me. I think this is illegal and am wondering if I should pursue him in court.

I appreciate all the discussion. thanks!

[EJ]

@UR – thanks for the referrals, if I go that route I will definitely contact them. I will PM you first to see if you want me to credit your real name with the referral.

@patb – I am not sure the damages are completely mitigated. I fear I will need to do more work on the french drains which is a huge pain. Yes, I would have bid lower, or more likely, backed out altogether had I known about the previous flooding. Drainage problems are not easily corrected, it may flood again if we reach a greater rainfall rate. I will never really know and it will always be on the back of my mind.

In general, I really like the house. I am glad the neighbors are not making meth. However, I feel like laws meant to protect me were broken in the selling process. You are right, it is probably easier to just forget about the disclosure issue and move on. Does that mean it is the right thing to do? I don’t think it benefits anyone except for crooks to knowingly let crimes go unpunished.

[Author]

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