Santa Cruz County has enacted legislation to curb vacation rentals in the unincorporated area of Live Oak. This area also contains the world famous surf spot of Pleasure Point. Real Estate here varies from funky cabins to multi-million dollar homes. Don't get the opinion that since there are funky surf cottages, they are cheap. There are some great deals, but price is all relative when you are near the water.

Many love to come the beach to hang out and surf. Families come here as well as young vacationeers, which can lead to partying and some of the problems associated with it.

The county has taken a heavy handed approach to overly regulating this in my opinion. Here is some of the text of the ordinance. California Coastal Homes are in demand and always will be. We all have had problems with rentals where the owners are either unawares of a problem tenant or has an FU attitude. Being a good neighbor begins with respect for your neighborhood.

What is your opinion of neighborhood rental regulation of homes less than 30 days rental?

Pacific Grove Homes

Seduced by the Sea, the Quiet, and the Victorian

I’ll tell you why I moved to my beautiful Pacific Grove home – it was the promise of butterflies. I simply adore them, and when I found out that Pacific Grove serves as their winter migration destination, I had to see them. They winter at the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, where they perch on eucalyptus and pines before heading off in March to lay their eggs and start the beautiful cycle all over again. I arrived in late October and couldn’t take my eyes off the clouds of these orange and black beauties as they fluttered toward their winter home.

When I wasn’t watching butterflies, I was strolling along the beach, listening to the ocean and wading when I dared: it was cold! I was there for a week’s vacation, burned out from work and city life, and Pacific Grove was like another planet, with its modest real estate (no skyscrapers), its vistas (when the fog lifted), and its slower, calmer pace. I was not there to buy a Pacific Grove home – not a condo, not a mansion, but a Victorian home.

Not only is Pacific Grove home to thousands of butterflies, it is also home to more Victorian homes than you can shake a stick at. I’ve wanted one of those old homes for as long as I can remember, and I took quick advantage of an obliging Pacific Grove real estate agent to tour as many as I could.

My agent showed me every sort of Pacific Grove home, from a modest beach home (they do exist!) to manufactured home to some show stopping Pacific Grove real estate that was so beautiful it made my eyes water. I thanked him and went back to my bed and breakfast (a Victorian, naturally) and thought to myself that the only Pacific Grove home I would consider was a Victorian beauty. I had it imagined down to the last detail – a study lined with windows, a friendly porch, painted pale yellow, with a yard full of cypress and a view of the town. I was very specific about my Pacific Grove home, in order to be completely safe from ever having to buy one.

The next day I played tourist. I shinnied into an old wetsuit and tried my hand at surfing. It was amusing for the natives and humbling for me, so I spent the afternoon wading in the tidal pools for shells and bits of driftwood. The next day found me walking about looking at the local arts scene. That afternoon I eschewed all culture and stretched out on the porch of my bed and breakfast with a good read. I was relaxed. Then my real estate agent phoned: he had found my Pacific Grove home, the perfect Victorian, and it was even painted pale yellow.

This was possibly to be my own Pacific Grove Victorian, my very own, perfect Pacific Grove home, It has a cypress tree in the back yard, and a study lined with windows. As I said, I moved to Pacific Grove for the butterflies and they, and the Pacific Grove homes stole my heart.

Watsonville Snow Days

Watsonville kids are in for a treat once again as the Watsonville Snow Days is set for this Friday December 3rd. The event is set to start at 4 and run until 7. The site of the festivities is the town plaza on Main Street by Beach Street. So bring the kids, dressed up for winter, with their gloves and hat as I am sure everyone is going to want to frolic in the snow and maybe build a snowman.

There will be all sorts of things for kids to do: a petting zoo, some arts and crafts activities, and of course snow. Hot chocolate will be served to warm up those cold souls. So dig into your pantry, get a few( at least 2, more is better) cans of food and enjoy. Be sure to bring your camera with a flash as there will be great photo opportunities to get photos and make Christmas cards from them. At least I am sure your relatives would love a card you personally made with a great photo.

Admission is 2 cans of food from your pantry for the Second Harvest Food Bank.

Santa Cruz county still is selling at a reasonable pace. While things are moving along at a reasonable pace values are still the predominant reason for sales. There are some tremendous real estate prices, particularly in condos. The Monterey and Santa Cruz foreclosures are still an active market place with the foreclosure activity in Santa Cruz diminshed in favor of short sales. The Carmel Real Estate market is seeing activity in both ends of the market. To see the latest Carmel foreclosures ( yes they have them too) you will notice it is one that has foreclosures and short sales like most other communities in the nation. Great deals and great interest rates for those ready and well qualified to move forward.

Capitola Art & Wine Festival in Capitola Village

Hi,just wanted to let you know if you are in the area this weekend it looks as though it will be lovely. We are having the Capitola Art & Wine Festival. The event is free, there are some things for the kids to do as well. It should be alot of un. Of course if you want to drink there is a fee, as this is a charitable event, but otherwise it is a free way to enjoy the weekend and maybe pick up a great piece of art of a good bottle of wine. As this is a charitable event, I'll be working somewhere at one of the wine booths on Saturday. Have fun!

If you think this is an area you would like to live in and want to see more Capitola beach homes, stop by the site and see what there is.Have fun at this charitable event for our local schools and kids, senior and local event for the community at large.

Today I was out doing disclosure work at a Scotts Valley mobile home listing and it was 109 degrees. I felt like saying "hello Phonenix" but kept my composure and got a frosty freeze to cool me down. While this is hotter than hades, it does remind me how much people rely on a Scotts Valley realtor for information about neighborhoods, climates and all the related things such as schools and pools. As I drove down towards Wood Cove in the Scotts Valley/Santa Cruz area, the temperature climbed above 112. Wood Cove homes are large with good insulation and tall ceilings. In the hot temperatures the tall ceilings help alot. Remember Victorians all have high ceilings.

While Scotts Valley was hot, and it truly was about 20-25 degress hotter than a normal summer day. It made me marvel as I drove back to Capitola.Homes here by the coast don't have AC, where as in Scotts Valley they do. Scotts Valley is usually about 10-20 degrees hotter than Santa Cruz during the summer.

So when I was heading back to Capitola, the temperature in that 10 mile stretch, dropped to 86. Usually it is in the  70's in Capitola this time of year. The California coastal climate is so influenced by the ocean. So that short drive made it so much more bearable. Hot for most of us in Capitola, but bearable.

As I went further south to Rio Del Mar beach,homes here are noticeably cooler with the temperature about 81. That is hot for Rio Del Mar. Beach breezes are a cooling influence for this lovely community. I don't think I have ever been in a house here in Rio Del mar that had an air conditioner. The temeratures here at Rio Del Mar beach are almost always about 10 degrees cooler than in Santa Cruz, Ca.

So one of the things that I reflected on was that fact as a Santa Cruz real estate broker is how much local knowledge is so essential to our clients. What we find with the Santa Cruz real estate market is that we have lots of different micro climates. Unless you know the area well, you won't know the hot spots or the cool spots.

We were having a discussion earlier about an agent from out of the area wanting to represent a client here. The subject ranged, but the gist of it was, they don't know the area, the nuances, the hidden little neighborhoods and problems, traffic, how can they think they are doing their client a service? There is too much that we local real estate professional learn by living and selling in those neighborhoods. I hate the term expert per se, but I think you get the idea. If you live in a homogeneous community where they have lots of tract housing and if you took the numbers off the houses, you would have no idea where you lived because everything looked the same. Here there is so much diversity of housing. You can't tell from afar what the places to go are, but for me the Rio Del Mar beach area is where I love to go.If you are thinking of a Santa Cruz beach house or better yet and ocean view beach house, give me a call at 831-818-7524. Have a cool one.:) Gregg

Capitola is one of those places that once you visit, kind of gets under your skin in a good way. The Capitola Begonia Festival is one of those events that makes the place all the more endearing. The Capitola, California town has a nice seaside esplanade with a nice beach in front, some surfing and fishing from the pier.

While there are many things to do, the Begonia Festival is one of the fun and pretty things to do over the Labor Day Weekend. There are a number of things to do that weekend. The sandcastle competition, fishing derby are among some of them. Many people own homes in Capitola. This community event is alot of fun, but be sure to find parking and feed the meters, otherwise this could be a memorable event for the wrong reasons. To see where you can find Begonia Festival parking or to look at Capitola homes, check this out.

People forget in our urban world, that the fun things in life are often the simple ones. Remember walking to the local duck pond  to feed the ducks or biking to the store to buy candy? I remember those sort of things. Not alot was involved, get on your sneakers and walk till you got there. Get on your bike, have your coins or soda bottle you were returning for change and getting more candy. Back then we didn't have all the processed foods, high fructose ( sugar) corn syrup in everything and lots of bad stuff. We really didn't know the good and bad, in part because we didn't have the food and snack industry to a science. Now it is scientific fact we are obese, but we can change that with better diet, and exercise.

If you were hungry you ate an apple or orange or banana. If you were thirsty you drank milk or water or maybe OJ. So part of the reason kids weren't so fat back then is they exercised. So one of the things we need to do is to get back to the basics of good eating, having fun, and exercising.

So if you are looking for a Capitola beach home that you can walk from to see the music on Capitola beach, this is a good home for that. Located in the Jewel Box, it is about a 20 minute walk to the beach. Get some exercise, fresh air and have fun listening to music.

This is what you would see if you were a client of www.cacoastalhome.com

The Capitola Music happens on Wednesdays from 6-8PM. It is a fun way to meet up with friends after work, have some fun, a picnic at the beach, and a great way to end a days work. Walk back home when you are done and you will have had fun, and exercise. Great place to have the kids unwind too, and get some exercise. Call us at 831-818-7524 to help you find the home that has things they and you can walk to. Leave the car behind.

Santa Cruz real estate has always been an enigma for most investors. It does generally not have the metrics that one would find on your duplexes and 10 plexes in san San Jose or Portland. Real Estate is one of those things that for an investor is a cashflow return, versus what they could get, leaving their money in a CD.

So, sure you can look at homes in the Santa Cruz MLS system to see if any make sense, but most come to Santa Cruz because it is beautiful and is close to larger metropolitan areas. With much demand the prices go up. So here is the catch from investing in a Rio Del Mar beach house to a condo. If the given area of the investment commands high rental costs, then the value usually is supported in income. It it is not supported in income, then value is supported by market demand. So a straight investment has a relationship between rents and value. That in turn is supporte by the income level of the local population. This can be skewed by factors such as a large university, where you have an inflow of wealth via the parents, which is not usually the case in most rental markets.

The Santa Cruz ocean view homes are a different market place as they are usually over 1 million dollars.A Pleasure Point vacation home is a rarity on the water because there are a relative few in this county. Most of the ocean view homes in Santa Cruz have the street between them and water. Also most of them are on the bluffs as there is not much beach in Santa Cruz.

So if you consider a condo, you need to consider one that has weekly rentals, while a home can be rented at will. Take for instance an  Rio Del Mar oceanview condo. Those will generally be available for weekly rental and will normally, depending on supply and demand the market place have values between $700,000 and $ 1,000,000. If you were to consider the same view and location, a home will generally cost between $2,000,000-$5,000,000. So a relative difference that is hard to justify just as an investment.

Most of the Rio Del Mar beach homes face the sand, with a few sand fronting. Those command the most money usually because of the relative scarcity, and because they are generally able to sleep 8-10. That is something where you get a couple of families together and you have a vacation that is relatively reasonable. If you are interested in looking at Santa Cruz ocean view homes, or Pleasure Point oceanfront homes, give me a call at 831-818-7524. Gregg

You know I was recently at 3054 Pleasure Point Drive,Santa Cruz, checking it out for someone as a rental. Santa Cruz beach houses sometimes do well as as a dual function. Part investment, and part fun. Many Santa Cruz beach property owners prefer to keep them as second homes, and who could argue with that? Just seeing someone out there having fun on a paddle board or surfing, and knowing you can have a spot to park, and go any time you want, who wouldn't want to make that choice?

There are other reasons that you might want to rent out a place like this, such as having some income to pay taxes or for future upgrades that you may want to do to the place. Any way you cut it, a Santa Cruz beach house is a place that will memories for all who stay there or live there.Contact Gregg at 831-818-7524 for a private showing or more information on this $2.6M home.