Love's Real Stories

Answering all the real estate questions you never knew you had.

Category: Coronavirus

October 14, 2020

Rebuild

“There must not be much action up in Paradise, huh? What with the Covid shut-down and everything,” said my brother-in-law at our Fourth of July get-together, over on the Coast.

“Well, it’s surprising,” I said, “the building lots are selling, and over a thousand Building Permit applications are in. Houses are going up.”

True. Lots are selling, but a good portion of the lots in Paradise aren’t for sale. A good portion of those Building Permit applications are from Paradise fire victims not selling their lots. They are determined to restart. And some fire victims who left the North State area, or left California entirely, are returning.

“I’m just dumb enough to go back,” said Richard, a Paradise construction guy who’s been living in the West Valley. “I never did like it down in Chico. It’s okay out here where I’m at, but it’s not Paradise. My lot up there is a mess. The trees are all gone, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and rebuild. Back to my roots, if you know what I mean.”

An Agent In my office said, “I’m working with three clients who moved away after losing their homes in Paradise and have decided to move back. They are selling the homes they bought right after the Camp Fire. Two of them are selling at a loss. All three plan on rebuilding.”

One of those clients happened to have called me about a month ago, left me a voice mail. 

“My husband and I knew the old Paradise Cowboy, Lee, you wrote about, who got knocked out, and laid flat down in the ditch while his house burned and his dogs died, too. A friend of ours sent us that article. We cried. And then we laughed. What was it he said? ‘I’m just a little older than the hills, but I can still ride bulls.’ And, ‘I’m a hard-headed old cowboy. We take it as it comes.’ That tough old dude made it. And he was determined to rebuild.” Her husband chimed in: “We moved out here to Idaho, but it’s not home. Home is Paradise. We’re coming back. After we heard Lee died, a year after he survived that damn fire, we decided we needed to come home.” The guy was choking up.

I talked to Deb, our supermarket checker who lost her house in Paradise and moved to Oregon right after the fire. Deb returned from Oregon last year, saying, “The grass might look greener somewhere else, and we have plenty to complain about here, but this is the best place to live. This is home.” It’s been a long road for Deb, moving around, dealing with fire insurance, figuring out how to rebuild, whether it’s worth it, where to call home. This day she told me she had just bought a house in Glenn County. 

“So, I guess you’ve decided to live there,” I said. 

“Oh no,” said Deb, “I’m determined to get back to Paradise. It’s beautiful. I want to be home, on my property. I know it won’t be the same, but I’m going back. I love that area!”

She’s not the only one.

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June 24, 2020

ZOOM

“If there is a silver lining in all of this Coronavirus shut-down, its Zoom,” said Evelyn. She was speaking to me from inside a two-inch square box on my computer screen, a participant in our Zoom meeting. The computer screen was filled with 20 square boxes of the same size. Each box contains one person, or more like the torso of one person. Each person is miniature, alive and in color. The person’s name is printed on the bottom edge of the box so you know who they are. They talk to you, and you talk to them, no matter how far away they may physically be. The Zoom scene is a bizarre scene, unless you happen to be a jaded techie, perhaps unimpressed by technological advances such as Zoom. 

For someone like me, a Zoom meeting harkens back to Dick Tracy comics. Dick Tracy and his cohorts wore wristwatches with a screen in which you could see, hear, and talk to another human being, live and in color. A wild concept at the time, and as unfathomable as the Star Trek transporter, you know the one: “Beam me up, Scotty.” The Dick Tracy wristwatch, as seen in those old-time comic books, is now a reality, as seen in Zoom. It cannot be long before we are willingly disintegrating our bodies in one location and reconfiguring them in another location miles or even light-years away, in an instant, as seen in Star Trek.

“Even though we’re all remote, we can still work with each other,” continued Evelyn. “Zoom came just in time. It’s the ultimate in social-distancing.”

The popularity of Zoom has escalated with the arrival of the Coronavirus Event and has become the go-to method for group meetings. It’s a part of the ‘New Normal’.

“True, true!” said Barb. The outlines of Barb’s square box lit up electronic-yellow as she spoke, darkened when she stopped. The box lit up again, as she said, “But I’m getting Zoomed out. Meetings, meetings, meetings! My family is driving me crazy, too. They all want to Zoom all the time now!”

“I have a question about the Coronavirus Addendum to the Contract,” said Lisa as her square lit up. “Are we to…….”

Another box lit up as Jeff began to speak, interfering with Lisa: “Should we supply our Buyers with rubber gloves when we show…” “Hey, good morning!” said Ken, joining the meeting and interfering with Jeff and Lisa. Another box lit up, squawking and squealing, drowning out all others. It was a box with no name, and no video. We couldn’t see anyone in the box. It was a new participant joining the meeting, possibly with bad equipment, or perhaps they were running their fingernails down a blackboard for fun.

“Mute! Mute! Mute!” screamed participants. “Mute him, Doug, mute him!” said others.
I was the ‘Host’ of the meeting, so I had the power to mute any or all participants. I frantically searched for the right place at the bottom of my screen to click ‘Mute All Participants.’ Chaos ensued in the Zoom meeting. Boxes flashed on and off sporadically across the screen. The noise was like an elephant stampede, or a stadium full of soccer fans blowing their screeching Vuvuzelas, those long plastic horns of which I could not remember the name until I just Googled “soccer horns.”

At last, I succeeded in muting all participants. Beautiful silence.

“Okay,” I said, “when you want to speak you can unmute yourself and…” Alas, I had not unmuted myself. I was a silent talking head. My mouth was moving, but no sound.

“Unmute! Unmute! You need to Unmute!” came the screams from the little boxes, as they unmuted themselves and yelled at me.

And so it goes in Zoom meetings. Won’t it be great to get back to the Old Normal?

 

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May 21, 2020

The Force

There is a new phrase in our Real Estate contracts, “Force Majeure,” meaning an Irresistible Force or Act of God or Uncontrollable Event. “Force Majeure” was added to our contracts to specifically address the Coronavirus Pandemic. A Buyer or Seller may now cancel a contract, if they are negatively impacted by the Coronavirus, such as losing a job, or the inability to move, or they become ill.

We must travel cautiously through this Coronavirus-stricken world. 

My wife and I certainly did, as we ventured out to look at a piece of Real Estate. We packed our face masks and rubber gloves, the newly required gear for touring homes. Our mission was to preview a certain property on behalf our friends, Tom and Gahlia, who live in Sonoma County wine country. 

Tom and Gahlia, for years now, have been talking about retiring and moving onto country property up here in the Northstate foothills, hence the reason for our preview. The property in question is off Highway 70 past Concow, about a 45-minute drive out of the Valley from Chico. You hang a right onto Big Bend Road and wind out into the hills, catching glimpses now and then of the North Fork of the Feather River a thousand feet below. Somewhere down there is Pulga, the origin of the Camp Fire, 20 miles or more from the town of Paradise, which burned down in the Camp Fire.

We were excited to take a drive, an adventure it seemed, our first of any distance other than to the grocery store since the beginning of the Pandemic. The dogs were excited, too, wagging their tails and smiling in the back of the truck. We pulled into a fast food joint and treated ourselves and the dogs to a meal on the road.

We took the long way and climbed up the Skyway through Paradise to get a look at the progress of the rebuild of that beautiful foothill town. It’s coming along. Houses are going up. But it was Sunday during a Pandemic, so the place was quiet. We talked about the Camp Fire, the lost homes, the destruction of Paradise. 

The Camp Fire, like the Coronavirus, is an example of “Force Majeure.” An Irresistible Force. An Uncontrollable Event.

I could see that our twisting and winding drive, uphill, downhill, swerving through the foothills was not agreeing with my wife. She was smiling no more. By the time we pulled off Highway 70 onto Big Bend Road she was writhing and groaning. The fast-food was the culprit. It hit her hard. In the gut.

We pulled off onto a side road marked with a “Road Closed” sign. I’m sorry to say I left my wife at the truck to deal with her sickness, and I took the dogs for a walk along this empty country road. Hey, it was at her request, okay?

The dogs—Dodge, Bear, and Mesa—were in heaven. A clear, gurgling stream ran down below the roadside. Mesa, the floppy young Pyrenees/Lab, slid and rolled down the steep embankment into the water. Dodge, the Pointer, and Bear, the Lab/Pitt, watched skeptically from the road.

We came to a curve in the road where the stream was more easily accessible. The dogs splashed in the water. My wife arrived, feeling better, and we sat beside the stream, surrounded by lush, leafy, fresh growth. Ferns and berries and stands of young trees covered the landscape like a thick blanket, all green and new. Flowers of blue, yellow, orange, and white shone through the underbrush and covered the hillsides. Looming above this lushness were huge, scorched, dead skeletons of trees, the remnants of a destroyed mature forest, recent victims of the Camp Fire. The scorch marks, reaching twenty to thirty feet up the trunks of these lifeless poles, were clear evidence that we now sat in a former inferno of raging, boiling flames of the Camp Fire that had destroyed this entire ravine.

My wife and I and our three dogs rest quietly here beside this stream as our world is struggling with the “Force Majeure” of the Coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, we are observing the signs of another example of “Force Majeure,” the Camp Fire. 

As we observe the growth of the fresh new trees, flowers, ferns, and grasses bursting forth on this former burn scar, we realize we are witnessing a rebirth, new life, another example of an Irresistible Force, an Uncontrollable Event, an Act of God. It is the “Force Majeure” of Mother Nature.

By the way, the preview of the property was great. A well-built log home on beautiful acreage, beside another gurgling stream. I hope our dear friends Tom and Gahlia get here in time to buy it. But like I say, they’ve been talking about moving for years.

It may take another example of “Force Majeure.”

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May 21, 2020

No Conflict

In the aftermath of the column I wrote about my buddy Brino, the ace Contractor, mandolin-playing, instrument-building, member of the band, great guy, with whom I claimed to be in conflict; I received a lot of feedback from the readers of this fine paper. The overall slant of the feedback is that the readers do not seem to think my job in Real Estate is as big a deal as I make it out to be. That I, in fact, come off as a whiner.

I’m thinking I’ve written one too many columns about my self-perceived, self-important plight of going to work every day throughout this Covid-19 pandemic, locked in my office in a darkened building, on a mission to heroically guide the Essential Business of Real Estate through these turbulent and troubled times, while other people, namely my Buddy Brino, are sheltering in place, comfortably watching the movies of their choice. In that last column, I portrayed Brino as some lazy slacker, and me as the only guy who ever had to go to work.

One lady, Donna, left me a voice mail, pretty much telling me I’m blowing things out of proportion: “Thanks for all the information about the Real Estate market. It is evident you’re tied up all the time, dealing with all those complicated forms and contracts you keep hollering about. Hard times for you, I guess. But my daughter and son-in-law just bought a house, and it wasn’t hard at all. Their Real Estate agent took them to the house, they walked around, wrote an offer, and bought it. Not all that complicated. The only difference in the whole thing is that they wore face masks. Not as bad as you tell it. Anyway, don’t work too hard.”

A comment by a Realtor friend of mine went along the same lines as Donna’s voice mail. He said, “Dude, by the gist of your columns you write in the paper, you would think you’re in some secret undisclosed location working for the FBI on top-secret files. Or in some laboratory somewhere curing cancer. Hey, it’s just Real Estate, right? You ought to lighten up a little.”

Another guy, Bob, left a soft-spoken voice mail, which was very complimentary, but I think he perceived me to be fragile because of all my whining. He said, “I just wanna comment on your articles you have in the E-R on Fridays. I appreciate your efforts.  Hey, are you gonna be able to keep it up? You hang in there. Okay? I wanna wish you a happy day.”

In that column about Brino, I wrote, “If Brino would put down the mandolin long enough to listen, and pull his eyes away from his home movie screen long enough to focus, I would show him the picture of the Real Estate business and tell him about my job.” 

See, I made Brino out to be some guy who sits around on his couch all day playing his mandolin and watching the movies of his choice. Now, maybe he has done that during this pandemic. But he also works hard, has always worked hard, has earned a life of semi-retirement and still goes out and helps people with projects, bids jobs, does jobs, and has a sterling reputation as an all-around excellent human being. He’s also a great musician and makes beautiful musical instruments. And he plays lots of instruments, too, not just the mandolin. Like I said in that last column, I should hate him.

Brino left me a sarcastic voice mail the day after the column appeared in the paper: “Hey, Doug, I’m putting down my mandolin long enough to call you. Call me back.”

I did call him back, and my buddy Brino hit me with his sense of humor. He can take a joke. But he also zinged me for zinging him.

The truth is in an email I received from another reader, Mrs. Albert, who wrote, “That was a good one about your conflict with that mandolin playing friend of yours. But you sound like you need a vacation.” 

She went on to talk about her friends from Paradise who are looking for homes in Nevada. Then she said:

“Another thing about that column and your friend. You’re just jealous.”

Zing.

 

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May 7, 2020

Corona Conflict

I have a conflict with my music-playing buddy, Brino, a band-member. It’s a conflict caused by the Coronavirus.

Brino is a long-time Contractor and a hard-working son-of-a-gun. He’s a front-line hero in a crisis, and he’s always been there to help people in their time of need. You should have seen him after the Camp Fire jump into construction mode and provide housing for family and friends. For free.

But, see, Brino is situated in his life where he can shelter in place, as required, and survive on his own dime, as a result of a lifetime of hard work. 

So, lately he emails me videos and he texts me suggestions for movies to watch. He sent me a link to a website full of old classic Humphrey Bogart movies and lots of foreign films with subtitles.

“Oh, man,” he says, “those old foreign films are great. Check ‘em out, man, I think you’d really like ‘em. I turn those movies on, and I sit and play my mandolin. I don’t need to listen much, because it’s mostly subtitles, or classics I know anyway.” 

Therein lies the conflict. My life right now is not sheltering in place, watching movies of my choice, keeping up my musical chops. I wish.

My life? I’m crazy busy with Real Estate, despite the Coronavirus shut down. I’ve been at work every day throughout this pandemic event, figuring out how we’re supposed to operate with Buyers and Sellers in a world of social-distancing and constant sanitizing. 

To give Brino some consideration here, I also told him I’m mostly by myself all day in a two-story darkened office building with only a handful of people around. So, I can understand how he might think, “Hey, if you’re in a darkened building all day, and no one is around, how in the world could you be busy at all, much less crazy busy?”

If he would put down the mandolin long enough to listen, and pull his eyes away from his home movie screen long enough to focus, I would show him the picture of the Real Estate business and tell him about my job. 

“Hey, Brino,” I would say, “we’ve been declared an Essential Business under the Governor’s Stay-at-Home Order, so we are working hard, even though we are staying apart. We’ve built new rules on how we’re supposed to do this job of Real Estate, like:

One) We wrote up a 30-page Best Practices Guidelines for Real Estate which calls for working electronically only, if possible, showing a property to a Buyer by video through Zoom or Facetime. But if a Seller agrees to allow a Buyer to come to their house for a real-life showing, the Best Practices advise the use of protective gear, allow no more than three people in a house at the same time, specify the six-feet rule of social distancing, and require Buyers to view the property online first and sign forms declaring they are not sick, have no fever, and have not associated with sick people within 14 days.

Two) We made contract forms that Sellers and Buyers sign before a Buyer enters a home. Sellers are to sanitize the property after the Buyer goes through. No joke, and we take it seriously. Listing Agents provide a welcome basket in the home for Buyers, with face masks, rubber gloves, hand sanitizer, antiseptic wipes, and plastic booties.

Three) Every property showing and sale is approached with extreme caution. We micro-manage every step of every client, inspector, appraiser, repair person, until close.

The result is, we are still doing business- very carefully- and we can’t miss a detail. We must keep everyone healthy and safe. This is serious stuff.

So, I’m working. Every day. All day. But really, no conflict with Brino. He is the greatest guy. I love him. Besides being the best Contractor you could call, he builds musical instruments and plays them like a pro. Any conflict between us is more like a difference in the Coronavirus lifestyle. He gets to hang out more than I do. A lot more. I should hate him. Do I sound jealous?

Don’t get me wrong. I love my work, no matter how crazy busy. And I’m not exactly a first-responder, healthcare worker, or grocery store worker, the true heroes of this pandemic. I’m lucky to be working at all through this shut-down.

But one of these days, when things settle down, I’ll take my turn. I’ll click on that movie website link Brino sent me. I’ll watch Treasure of the Sierra Madre while playing Deep River Blues on my guitar. Sitting on my couch. 

 

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