Catching up to the 21st century, part 4...land, finally

The last "Catching up" post ended with us finding out that our favorite piece of Santa Cruz land was potentially for sale. We made an offer to Ben (Karsten's land partner) in November, 2005. He accepted! A series of counteroffers ensued over the next several weeks until a final offer was arrived at. Due to circumstances outside the scope of this blog, we did not close until December of 2006.

One of the items we had to take care of during that long escrow was to modify the Tenancy In Common (TIC) agreement between Karsten and Ben so that it applied to Karsten, Mike and Cindy. We chose to modify the document Karsten and Ben drafted rather than have an attorney draft a new document. All of the items in a boilerplate TIC agreement were already addressed by Karsten and Ben, so we chose to save the attorney fees. There is a risk in this approach that we chose to accept given our good relations with Karsten. The primary advantage of sharing land ownership under a TIC agreement is the reduction in land cost in areas such as California where even raw land prices are astronomical. TIC agreements are becoming more common in the San Francisco Bay area as property prices become unaffordable to more folks.

Flashback to an important missed item in the chronology:

While Cindy was a Trinity Alps ranger in the Summer of 2004, we became attracted to and started searching for a home in the Eureka area. The twin cities of Eureka and Arcata are on a beautiful stretch of coastline in far northern California. The cities are in close proximity to the Trinity Alps Wilderness which is like a smaller, less populated Sierra Nevada range. Arcata is home to Humboldt State University, so there is a nice college town vibe. After a long search, in March 2005, we closed escrow on a nice turn of the century main home with a small rental above the garage. The idea was to rent out this home while working back in the San Francisco Bay area to pay it off. After reducing the mortgage to zero, we would "retire" to Eureka and live in the main home while renting the apartment above the garage for extra income.We spent a rainy week in March cleaning the place and getting it ready to rent. We hired a property management company to oversee the rental. The garage apartment was already rented, and the main home rented quickly.

Once in escrow on the Santa Cruz property, our plans were to build a home and "retire" there. Since I did not enjoy owning a long distance rental property, we wanted to sell the Eureka rental home. The problem was, the Eureka/Arcata real estate market had already started to fall by early 2006. We put the occupied rental up for sale in early 2006 and hoped for the best.

The first half of 2006 went by with no serious offers on the Eureka home. In the fall of 2006, the tenant moved out of the main home. This gave us an opportunity to clean and properly stage the empty main home for sale. We received one unreasonable offer in the fall. Finally, we decided to paint the exterior and make one more big push to sell the home before pulling it off the market. We accepted an offer in late November, 2006. We closed escrow in December, 2006, just weeks apart from closure of the Santa Cruz escrow. Our land search was over! Almost 5 years after falling in love with Santa Cruz on paper, I owned dirt there. Be careful what you wish for.

A word about professionals:

Our real estate agent, Mikki Cardoza, did a great job marketing the property throughout the year in a difficult market. I would highly recommend Mikki if you are looking for real estate in the Eureka/Arcata market. By the way, our real estate agent in Redondo Beach is also excellent. Her name is Paula Oliver, and I would highly recommend her if you need a Southern California real estate agent. Cindy and I represented ourselves for the Santa Cruz land purchase. We had already been through 5 real estate transactions and were familiar with the contracts and process. We downloaded a land purchase agreement from Reveal Systems and prepared it ourselves. This process worked for us and Ben (the seller). We learned that realtors work for their commission. We also learned that the effort was manageable and worth our time for the thousands in commission we saved. In my opinion, the property management service received was not worth the commission I paid. I will never again own a long distance rental. My personality requires more involvement with management activities.

To be continued...

Catching up to the 21st century, part 3...finding our land the 1st time

The last "Catching up" chapter had me getting an offer from Ball Aerospace in Boulder, CO in late 2003. Cindy was concerned about the move to Boulder, so Mike searched for work in northern CA and found a job at Phonic Ear (now Front Row) in Petaluma. We found a nice rental home on the West side with a 4 mile bike/walk to Phonic Ear. It was a turn of the century home redone with a nice open great room and 12 foot ceilings – a foreshadowing of what we would like to design into our “dream home”. We had another garage sale and packed up the remaining stuff again. We hired a mover to take us down to Petaluma towards the end of February, 2004.

During the summer of 2003, Cindy and I tried unsuccessfully to become volunteer backcountry rangers in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park. While on a backpacking trip in the Trinity Alps Wilderness, we ran into Jim Holmes who runs the Trinity Alps Wilderness volunteer program. We told Jim about our inability to become volunteers in Sequoia. He said he would take either of us as volunteers in his program. In early 2004, Cindy took Jim up on the offer. She spent much of the spring in 2004 training and preparing for her summer as a backcountry ranger. She had the time of her life that summer and brought back some beautiful images and memories.

We spent much of the fall in 2004 discussing what to do about settling down. The housing bubble continued to expand in CA. Homes and land seemed to be getting more expensive every day. We searched in and around Petaluma for real estate, but did not find anything that moved us. We were a bit frustrated. Cindy started contract work at Symantec in the fall of 2004. She figured whatever we decided to do next, it would require more money (smart girl).

In December, 2004, the Santa Cruz Cohousing Yahoo group message board had a listing for four approximately 2.5 acre parcels close to downtown Santa Cruz. Cindy and I went down to visit the land and meet the person arranging the deal - Karsten. We fell in love with the 2 sunny parcels. Several parties were interested in purchasing the land. All of the interested folks were eco-friendly freaks like me and Cindy. We attended a meeting with these people a week later and were excited with the prospect of joining a group of like-minded greenies. We started gathering information related to purchasing raw land. The land would not be not cheap, and we were quickly stressing over the pluses and minuses of living in Santa Cruz. When in love, however, rationality goes out the window.

The deal was days away from closing, and all 4 parcels were still not spoken for. I think everyone involved was pretty stressed out. The 2 parcels we were most interested in were already taken, so we asked our green builder friend Estok Menton to visit the land with us to assess the feasibility of building on the remaining 2 parcels. Although the lots were buildable according to Estok, we were not interested enough for the amount of money involved. After sleeping on it a few more days, we backed out. The group eventually found enough buyers and closed the deal.

We spent much of 2005 going through the motions, earning money for some eventual land or home purchase. We were still very interested in Santa Cruz. There was a 2003 article called "healthy cities" in Organic Style magazine. The article references a 1997 report called Rating Guide to Environmentally Healthy Metro Areas. In this report, Santa Cruz ranked 109 of 317 metro areas in the US, and it was the highest rated area in California. Although this report is old, the criteria are thorough and can be searched for current data. I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to research cities in the US.

In the fall of 2005, we contacted Karsten (the guy who arranged the aforementioned land purchase) to see what the real estate market was like in Santa Cruz. Surprisingly, he said that his land partner (Ben) was thinking of selling his share of the land. Karsten and Ben's parcel was the one we liked the most. It was the one on which our builder friend Estok said "This is where I would build my house". We contacted Ben, and he confirmed that he was interested in selling. The land was giving us a second opportunity, and we were not going to let it get away this time.

To be continued...

Portable Sawmill

It was time to turn the logs into rough cut lumber for later use in and around the new home. I hired Dave Smith (831-234-8407) and his portable sawmill to do the job. This type of mill is essentially a large band saw on a linear slide mounted to a trailer for driving most anywhere your vehicle can take you. Dave and his son Everett arrived early on a cool morning in mid December. Here's a pic of them setting up the portable mill.

This sawmill has hydraulic manipulators for positioning and clamping the logs. Dave was an expert user of his mill - it looked like the machine was an extension of his hand. Here's a video of the manipulators in action.

Dave spent the better part of the daylight hours slicing logs up into various thicknesses depending on the type of wood and final expected use. Everett moved every piece off the mill, temporarily stacked it up for later, and got new logs ready to load onto the mill. Here's a pic of the mill making sawdust, a video of the redwood log being cut followed by a pic of a 6x6 redwood post.

The final step is setting the wood up to dry in layers separated by thin pieces of wood called stickers - a process called sticking. Unfortunately, the best drying location and the best location to set up the mill were about 50 feet apart. This meant we had to move all the rough cut wood uphill to the new location, whew. A small level foundation was made from pieces of leftover oak, paving blocks and redwood shims. In the final pic you see Cindy standing next to the stack.

Water moves longitudinally many times faster than radially in trees. Cindy is busy painting the ends of the wood with latex. This reduces the amount of water coming out of the ends resulting in a more uniform drying process. More uniform drying means fewer and smaller cracks in the dried wood. Wood takes about 1 year per inch thickness to dry naturally in the air (more about wood drying). Since most of this wood is about 1 3/4" thick, it will be almost 2 years before it is ready to use.

Dave and Everett did an awesome job with one really cool machine. I would highly recommend calling Dave if you live near Santa Cruz and need some wood milled at your site.

Tree Removal

Keith Omer of Pacific Mountain Tree Service (831-338-7565) cut down Big Oak tree in November, chopped the smaller branches and brush into mulch and cut the medium size branches into firewood. He then used a stump grinder to turn the stump into a fine mulch.

Keith staged the larger logs on the relatively flat spot of ground in front of where the new home will be built. My neighbor had some blackwood acacia trees blow down during a severe storm last winter. Keith pulled these trees out with his portable crane and staged them with the oak logs. Finally, Keith pulled out some redwood logs that had been under a brush pile for several years and staged them with the rest of the logs. The stack of logs is now set up for milling.

Keith did a great job. I would highly recommend Pacific Mountain Tree Service for tree removal and getting logs out of tough places.