With second home buyers out of the market right now, many owners of properties in our second home/resort market are opting to cover their costs by renting. Of course, many people own homes and condos here as investment, taking advantage of our area as a vacation destination. But for a lot of other people, they simply owned single family homes for their own use, to enjoy on sporadic weekends or for entire seasons and are entering the rental market for the first time.
Well, the members of the Golden Isles Association of REALTORS® recently were sent a friendly reminder from the Glynn County Community Development in regards to the ‘proliferation of single family vacation rental properties‘ and I suppose it’s with good reason. They cite that:
These are being advertised as having a capacity in terms of the number of guests accommodated, but that number may exceed the capacity established by zoning limitations.
In vacation rental speak, we look at how many people can sleep in a given property. Say you have a three bedroom house in which you have a king size bed in one bedroom, a queen in another, and one twin bed and a bunkbed in the 3rd. You also have a full-size pull out sofa in the family room. That house might be advertised as ‘sleeping 9′ and three couples with their combined three children sign on to rent the house for two weeks. The problem here is that the house is zoned residential and is meant to be occupied by one family only. In most cases, a three bedroom house would be zoned for a family of five or six: parents in one room, up to two children of the same sex in the next room and up to two children of the same sex in the other. By three non-related families occupying this house, they are violating the local zoning ordinance.
Dwelling units are defined as being intended for occupancy by one family. A family is defined as including any number of people who are related by blood or marriage, but limits to five (5) the number of people who are not related by blood or marriage. To clarify, if three people who are related by blood or marriage occupy a dwelling unit together with three other people who are related by blood or marriage, but the two groups are not related to each other, the definition of family is NOT met and the situation constitutes a violation of the Zoning Ordinance.
So if you’re a property owner in this or any vacation market, keep in mind that you many be violating local zoning ordinances. Don’t say you haven’t been warned! For more information, contact the Glynn County Community Development office at 912-554-7428.
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Tagged as:
glynn county,
occupancy limits,
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by Midi on November 20, 2009
Looking back over 2009 so far, you can see some interesting trends in what is selling in the Golden Isles. I took a peek at mainland Brunswick and broke the sales figures down to seller controlled sales and other entity controlled sale (such as banks, asset management co, relocation) and the trend sort of tells a story…
Take a look at this graph:
Over this past year, the mainland areas of Glynn County has closed anywhere from 21 to 52 homes. Yes, that’s way down from 2008, but such is the market. Of those sales, as you can see, the year started almost neck in neck with regular (that is to say, Seller controlled) to Corporate controlled sales (meaning banks, relocation companies etc.).
You might notice, however, that as the year wore on, the number of corporate controlled sales dropped from running about 48% to levels more in the 30% range of overall sales. What does this mean? It probably means that the Federal First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit impacted general sales, improving regular seller controlled sales. I also think that the drop in seller controlled sales in November so far may be indicative of the holiday season’s approach and the extension of the Tax Credit into next year. The pressure is off for now, leaving the bargain hunting investors to pick up the foreclosure deals where they can find them.
The other thing to note here is that there is a directly proportional relationship to price points. All the national statistics have reported that re-sale home prices have gone up steadily over the last three quarters. Well, this sort of goes hand in hand with my graph. I noticed in my analysis of the Brunswick market that the lower the home price range I was looking in, the better the odds that they would be mostly foreclosures. As I moved into homes in the $200+ range, foreclosure rates dropped and then $400+ were very rare (although there were some out there!). So as first timers bought regular homes, they stayed in the higher ranges of home prices… if this is the case, this might explain increases elsewhere.
Based on that, I can see how the foreclosure sale dominated market would make it seem as if home prices in general are down – but what I noticed around here in the Golden Isles is that a good chunk of the homes under foreclosure and owned by the banks are already in a lower price range to begin with. It’s not as if $250K homes are selling for $70K… it’s more like a proliferation of $90K homes selling for $70K bringing overall housing sales figures down. There are just more of those foreclosures than there are of the $400K foreclosures, so the numbers will be skewed that way. Get it?
It’s amazing what the numbers can tell you… Stay tuned for more as I delve into the Island side of things!
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by Midi on October 30, 2009
Watching the Atlanta local news and there was a story that caught my attention. But before I get to that… a little background: Recently, an agent told me that a home her company manages for rental showed up on Craigslist for rent at a really low price. Their own contract with the owner required them to ask much higher. She asked me if this could possibly be a scam.
This is a common scam on Craiglist and it is wide spread. We assumed that it had to do with luring unsuspecting tenants into wanting to rent this home but in my mind, which works off the premise that things work on the whole in rational ways, the ideal of this scam working was just really bizarre. I mean, who would hand over money for a rental home without seeing it? Apparently people do, otherwise this scam wouldn’t be out there…
Well, in Atlanta, they’ve just arrested a woman who had posted a home on Craigslist she didn’t own for rent and took deposits for this home from all the callers who were interested. The tenants showed up at the house thinking they were going to move in and found instead a bunch of other ‘suckers’ (for lack of a better word) standing around thinking they were moving in as well. As you can imagine, mayhem ensued.
So this scam works on the gullibility of people, their willingness to rent a home they have not even seen, and equally, their willingness to hand over money for such a property to complete strangers. I suppose it’s the ‘steal of a deal’ concept the scammers rely on. People respond to perceived ‘bargains’ in different ways. Old adages and clichés exist for a reason…
1) Trust but verify
2) Caveat Emptor
3) If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!
And of course, #4: A fool and his money are soon parted
Craigslist has been under a lot of scrutiny lately regarding ‘other’ types of listings, but in their defense here for real estate, they actually do have a large link at the top of their Rental Page on ‘Avoiding Scams’ and it clearly tells you never to hand money over to someone you have not met, among other common sense things.
So my shameless plug for the real estate industry is this: Working through a real estate company gives you some protection. A licensed real estate broker working as a property manager has a slew of laws and guidelines under which he must operate, the least being honesty, fairness and the above board handling of money. They are also held to strict advertising guidelines. Working with a property manager, there is a better sense that you are not just handing over money to some random stranger who happens to have a key to the house. You know you are dealing with an agent of the owner and everything is on the ‘up and up.’
Of course, check out the Broker first and make sure he’s legit. How? Ask for his Brokerage ID and check it out at the Georgia Real Estate Commission’s site! Remember adage #1: Trust but Verify!
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Tagged as:
craigslist rental scams,
real estate scams
