Today's General Membership meeting had excellent food and beverages provided by the always generous  Lisa Justason of LandAmerica Home Warranty and NHDs. http://www.landamhomewarranty.com/  or call 1 800 443 5599.

The meeting was led by Jackie Patrick of Shasta Homes Realty-Premiere Properties

Our mortgage minute by Cathy Gromacki  of Mission Hills Mortgage was mostly about our low interest rate window of opportunity. Low rates and low prices, what could be better?  Well, better might be a 203k loan on a property in need of repair or remodeling. Oscar Acosta, also of Mission Hills, informs us that the 203k loan is much faster to close than most people think, at 30-45 days, and he has the knowledge to help your client obtain this very favorable loan.

Cathy reminded everyone that Mission Hills was hosting a seminar on Thursday about personality types. This is similar to many programs offered to corporations and others that defines people by their preferences and tendencies, and examines how best to interact between different types. In this program, the types are identified by color, so it should be an interesting program. And offered to the membership at no cost, so thanks!

Barry Savage delivered a 10 minute review of TANC. We won't go into detail here, except to note that whether or not the program goes forward, the impact of the proposal  has already struck.  If you have a proposed line going over your property, you are impacted now. Although this project is planned for the future, and is years away (if ever), it affects real estate plans to buy or sell TODAY. Until there is a final decision, ALL the mapped areas are under a cloud. And you need to disclose that material fact all to buyers and sellers alike. It's affecting hundreds of people in our area right now, and amounts to millions in property valuation effects. It really is a huge issue. We've arranged to have Barry's talk available to you as audio on our podcast page HERE.

Our featured guests today were the Directors, just returned from Legislative Days in Sacramento, bringing us all the latest news and changes from CAR and more. President Mary Spence talked about reducing your risk exposure in the current selling environment, especially important if you are a de-facto property manager as an REO listing agent. Also of interest is the ongoing controversy surrounding updating CC&Rs to remove discriminatory language. Tom Whitacre updated us all on calREDD and FlexMLS. Also the new licensing disclosure requirements, and some very big changes to MLS policy on citations and fines. Then, Greg Lloyd discussed Pro Standards topics. I was surprised to hear the Pro Standards negative take on using third party Short Sale "experts" or negotiator companies, as an abrogation of your fiduciary duty. Interesting and thought provoking stuff.  And he mentions proposals to increase tax credits for folks to buy REOs so as to blow out that statewide inventory more quickly.  Jean Hall talked about some of the legislative initiatives and Red Alert updates. Finally, Brad Garbutt updated everyone on the current state market economics. He also brought us up to speed on the proposed septic regs, and followed up with a review of the new Winforms/ZipForms system. We'll be seeing some very interesting changes to that program, and to many of our forms, so standby. Also, he made mention of the possible fate of the Williamson Act. Again, we've arranged to have their remarks available to you as a podcast at our podcast page HERE. The audio can be easily played on computer or handheld device, and is about an hour in length.

You can't ask questions at a podcast, so be sure to make plans to attend these meeting planned for July:

July 1  Kent Dagg  Agree Homes

July 8  Sherriff Tom Bosenko  Personal Safety

July 15  Superintendant of Schools

July 22  Winforms Training

July 30  Panel of Experts Short Sales and REOs  

If you enjoy reading these posts and hearing the podcasts, please comment at the link below, or at least let one of the directors know your thoughts. Skip Murphy