Love's Real Stories

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

Category: KDV

December 19, 2014

Blue Christmas

Every time I hear “Blue Christmas” by Elvis I think of my wily old mentor KDV, when he tricked me one Christmas season.

“Hey bro, come with me to Shanty Town and help me take a census,” said KDV.

Shanty Town was a group of little run-down houses, more like shacks, on an acre of ground just east of downtown occupied by migrant agricultural workers. KDV had the property listed for sale, and the out-of-town owner never set foot on it. The rent always came every month, though.

“I’ve had this junk-heap listed for over a year, and miracle of all miracles, we have a buyer. The problem is I have to come up with tenant information. You with me, babe?”

We pulled into the property. December rains had pounded the dirt into gooey mud that covered every bit of land the houses didn’t.

“I hate this place,” he said. “Count heads, babe.”

We knocked on the first door. “Buenos días,” said KDV. “Cuantos personas occupado aqui? His Spanish was worse than John Wayne’s. A man in cowboy boots and a t-shirt looked back with fear in his eyes.

Three kids sat quietly on the floor. The place had one chair. “No se,” said the man.

KDV and I appeared so out of place, we could have been from Mars, or worse, the Immigration Department or I.R.S.

Each little house was the same: lots of kids, few possessions, and lots of fear. Nevertheless, we were given tamales and hand-made tortillas as peace offerings. Skinny Christmas trees stood in a couple shacks, and some had a few decorations.

“What a dump,” KDV said at the end of our excursion. I was struck by his lack of empathy.

The next Saturday, KDV asked me again to go with him to Shanty Town, because the buyer wasn’t satisfied with the tenant information. The sale was supposed to close before the year-end.

“It’s the weekend,” he said. “Better chance to catch them all at home.”

We pulled into the mud again. This time KDV opened all his car doors and cranked up the car stereo, blasting out “Blue Christmas” by Elvis.

He jumped out and whipped open the trunk, shouting “Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad!”

The trunk was stuffed with wrapped Christmas presents. On each was written niña, niño, señor, or señorita. There must have been a hundred wrapped gifts: games, crayons, candy, toy guns, balls, you name it. We all laughed and celebrated.

KDV turned to me and shouted over Elvis. “Thought I was the Grinch, didn’t you, babe!”

Yes, I had. “Never forget, babe,” he said, “we gotta make people happy whenever we can; especially kids, and especially at Christmastime!”

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December 4, 2014

Fair Market Value

A little lady shot past me and down the hallway of my open house. She glared at me from time to time as she zoomed from room to room, muttering “heh!” and “bah!”

I caught up to the little lady in the back yard where she stood with fists on hips, scowling as if she were surveying a landscape so foul it could be the County dump.

“Just a regular old house,” she said, “and you’re charging a king’s ransom for it!”

The truth is, the house was a tad over-priced, but that was the seller’s idea, not mine.

“You Realtors keep raising the prices on these houses to where a regular person can’t even buy one!”

I heard the front door slam. I excused myself from the angry little lady, and went back in the house, where I came upon my mentor, the wise and wily KDV.

“Hey, babe,” said KDV, “just checking up your open house. What’s shakin’, grasshopper?”

I told him a lady accused me of raising home prices. I neglected to tell him she was still here at the house.

“Absurd!” said KDV. “Home prices fluctuate with Fair Market Value, and Fair Market Value is like the Mississippi River. Its level rises and falls in response to forces beyond our control, my friend.”

The little lady skittered in and stood behind KDV, unseen by him, with her fists on her hips, scowling. I nodded toward her surreptitiously in an attempt to clue KDV in, but he raged on, unaware of her presence.

“Whoever suggests we as Realtors have such power is simply uninformed. Here, let me wave my magic wand!” he said sarcastically and rhetorically, “Where would you like the price to be today?”

“Show me this person who says Realtors are the cause of rising Real Estate prices, and I will show you someone who sounds like an ignoramus!”

The little lady stomped around from behind KDV. Caught off-guard, he hopped a foot in the air. She stuck her finger in his face and screeched, “You’re a nincompoop!”

She shot back out the front door, muttering.

KDV said, “Oops. That’s the lady you told me about, right?”

“The very one,” I said. His shoulders sagged.

“Rule number 4507, grasshopper: ‘Never shoot your mouth off.’

“Anyway, babe,” he said, “that lady is wrong about Fair Market Value. But she’s right about one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I’m a nincompoop.”

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July 21, 2014

Something Else

Ken DuVall, local Real Estate icon, loved laughing, and knew more jokes than all of us. He was something else.

Ken was teacher and mentor; guide and guru. He said, “Follow me, and then rise to your own level of incompetence.”

The man loved to have fun, but he was serious about doing a good job. He knew more about Real Estate than all of us.

KDV passed away two years ago July 22. His friends quote him and talk about him a lot, but this time of year, memories of him come around a lot more. Memories like KDV smoking one of his hand-rolled specialty-tobacco cigarettes and blowing the smoke out the skylight of his car; lecturing a roomful of people who are doubled-up laughing as he fires off a string of jokes; waving a Real Estate contract in the air saying, “You gotta love the details and technicalities in this business, babe, but above all, you gotta love people. Every client deserves a fair shake, no matter who they are. No resentment! No bitterness!”

KDV was also known as “Hollywood.” He grew up in the Hollywood Hills and was an actor and stuntman in “the picture business.” He flipped motorcycles, jumped from moving car to moving car, and fell from great heights. He dove 100 feet from the top of the Hollywood Dam for one movie stunt.

“Good thing there was no audio for that role,” he said, “or you would have heard me screaming and swearing all the way down. But the gig paid big,” he said.

He spent time on movie sets. He was a gladiator in “Spartacus,” a bad-boy in “Hot Rod Girl;” a jailbird with Elvis in “Jail House Rock.” He hung out with Robert Blake, Steve McQueen, James Dean, Peter Fonda, James Arness, Dennis Hopper, and Robert Mitchum.

KDV was a weekend motorcycle racer. He rode 100-mile endurance races through the desert and paved-track races on the speedway. He flew over jumps, slid through turns, got stomped and rolled, and found his way to the winner’s circle.

KDV’s day-job was sales, always sales, old-school-door-to-door sales. He sold aluminum siding with his dad when he was fifteen years old. He moved on to steam-presses, coffee-makers, intercom systems, T.V. antennas, and insurance. “I’ve spent more time in other people’s living rooms than my own,” he said.

KDV got his Real Estate license in 1963, and it was love at first sale. He sold desert lots in Lake Havasu City, Arizona; mountain lots in Tahoe-Donner here in Northern California; then foothill lots when he managed the Paradise Pines project and fell in love with the area. “I felt like I moved into a Norman Rockwell painting,” he said.

From 1977 until 2012, KDV sold North Valley Real Estate. He was a friend to Realtors, clients, and people off the street. It was worth stopping by his office and suffering his string of rapid-fire jokes to hear his advice and wisdom.

“Remember,” he said, “youth and skill is always overcome by age and treachery.” And: “Experience is important, but luck is essential.” And: “Everyone is entitled to my opinion.”

He also said, “We’re in this life to live it, not just exist. Live with no regrets. And laugh, my friend, laugh.”

Another memory: KDV hoisting a Big Al’s chili dog aloft and exclaiming to anyone and everyone in the place, “Feast your eyes upon this, my friends! Behold the sweet spoils of victory!”

Hollywood Ken DuVall: Something else.

RIP KDV.

 

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June 27, 2014

Hot Time

Summertime heat in the North Valley can be vicious. Especially for people from the Bay Area accustomed to cool breezes by day and cold fog at night.

Jack and Mary Quince, a Bay Area couple, met me at my office one July morning to tour country property. The weatherman predicted temperatures of 105 to 108 degrees.

“Let’s go,” said John, “we have miles to go, right?”

We walked together toward my car in the parking lot and I noticed a station-wagon with a wire cage screening the open back window. A Golden Retriever stared anxiously at us through the mesh.

“That’s Rollie,” said Jack. “It’s okay if we leave him here, right?”

“Uhh…” I said.

A car zipped into the parking lot, made a snappy stop-and –reverse, and slipped backwards into the parking space next to my car.

My wily old mentor, KDV, popped out of the car.

“Morning, babe,” he said.

I made introductions and told KDV I was taking the Quinces out to see country properties.

“Ah. What fools these mortals be,” said KDV. “You do realize it will be so hot today the chickens will be laying hard-boiled eggs? It will be hotter than a two-dollar pistol, my friends.”

Jack and Mary laughed tentatively.

“But take heed!” said KDV. “After the sun goes down, my friends, it’s a midsummer night’s dream.”

KDV nodded toward the station wagon and asked Jack and Mary, “Is that your Retriever?”

Jack told him of the plan to leave Rollie.

“Only if you want to come back and find Rollie cooked like a rotisserie chicken,” said KDV. “In two hours that car will be hotter than Satan’s basement.”

“Let’s just take our car, then,” said Mary.

Four hours later we rolled back into the parking lot in the non-air-conditioned station wagon. The property tour was like a trip through a blast furnace. Jack and Mary sat slouched and wilted. Rollie was a limp rag. I said my good-byes and staggered off with no expectation of seeing them again.

Four days later, to my surprise, Jack and Mary bought a country property.

Forty days later, we closed the sale. I made an evening visit to their new place.

“It was a hot one today,” I said.

“Yes,” said Mary, “but tonight it’s a midsummer night’s dream.”

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April 18, 2014

Assuming

I assumed the man at the back of the property was a hired caretaker. I would soon find out I assumed wrong. He wore overalls and stood in front of a tall weather-worn wooden barn with a steep-sloped roof. He hammered on a long piece of metal between a pair of sawhorses. The man and his work were dwarfed by the big old barn and the barn was dwarfed by a group of giant oak and sycamore trees. Though the sun was high in the sky and it was a bright spring day, only mottled spots of sunshine reached barn and the ground through the canopy of the trees.

I was there to meet a lady I had talked to on the phone the previous day. She told me she had inherited the property from her mother, and was thinking of selling. She told me her mother had passed away a year ago and the place was looked after by a caretaker. I assumed she was the sole heir and she alone was in charge of selling the property. I would soon find out I assumed wrong.

The property was a unique and rare beauty, five acres within the main boundaries of town, bordered on one side by a wild stretch of creek. The surrounding area had been subdivided into neighborhoods and built up years before. This five acre piece was the holdout. The mother had refused buyers’ offers year after year, vowing to raise her kids and live her life out on the property, which she did.

I had parked on the street and walked past the old Craftsman-style family home, and proceeded back toward the barn.

“Morning,” I called to the man at the barn. I told him I was there to meet the owner of the property and discuss selling the property.

“Gonna meet the owner, huh?” he said. “Nice piece of property here. You Real Estate?”

I told him yes, I was “Real Estate” and asked if he took care of the place.

“Oh, I do my part from time to time.” He knew I had misjudged him, and he kept it that way.

“Place like this should go to a family,” he said. “These folks have been here over a hundred years.”

I told him I agreed, and that it would be a shame to see it changed, but unfortunately the most likely buyer was a developer, because of the property’s extremely high value as development ground.

“An appraiser would say,” I told him, “that developing the property would be its ‘highest and best use’.”

“I hate words like ‘highest and best use’,” he said. “Besides, I wouldn’t talk about selling a place like this on a fine day like today.”

A fine day it was. The creek sparkled in the spring sunshine and blue and white flowers waved in the creekside breezes.

“I see you’ve met my brother.” It was the lady I had talked to on the phone. “Our mother left the property to both of us, so my brother will be involved in any talk of selling.”

So the man was the lady’s brother, not the caretaker, and the lady was not the sole heir.

I looked at the brother and he said nothing but shook his head slightly.

I harkened back to the words of my old mentor, KDV: “Never assume. You know what happens you assume?” I knew.

I told the lady, “I don’t think your brother wants to talk to me about selling.”

That time I assumed right.

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