Leslie and I attended a workshop yesterday afternoon at City Hall concerning the City of Ventura’s new, proposed “Rental Housing Preservation Program”. Some of the provisions are: 1) A landlord must now have a City issued rental permit (and pay the annual fees of course!); 2) Must include that permit number in all advertising for your rentals; 3) and if you don’t have a permit, violations will “constitute a misdemeanor punishable in the manner provided for by Division 1 of this Code”. Read the rest of this article »

On Saturday I did a visual agent inspection at a home our clients are buying. Normally, Leslie does the agent visual inspection, but she was a bit under the weather, so I did it.  Standing in the shower (where I do a lot of my thinking!) this morning, I reflected it’s good for potential home buyers to understand what a home inspection is all about and the ramifications about stuff an inspector finds (and trust me, they do).

So, what’s a home inspection, why do Leslie and I always insist our buyers pay $ for it, how does a home inspection fit into the big scheme of buying a home, does the seller have to fix all the discovered issues, etc? Read the rest of this article »