Episode 11 | PropertyLens Reveals Secrets of Dana Point Home | feat. Martin Ellingsworth
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In This Episode
Hosts: Bob Frady & John Siegman
Guest: Martin Ellingsworth
Property: 32232 Azores Rd, Dana Point, CA 92629
Topics: propertyoftheweek homeinspection danapointrealestate danapointrealestate californiarealestate homeownership insurance wildfirerisk propertylens
Episode Summary
Sun, surf, and...termites? That's right, even idyllic Southern California homes come with their own set of unique challenges! This week on The Property Report, Bob and John invite Martin Ellingsworth, President of Salt Creek Analytics, to shed light on the hidden risks that could impact your dream home in Dana Point. Marty generously offers his own property as a case study, providing a candid homeowner's perspective as they navigate the complexities of wildfire risk, earthquake preparedness, and those pesky termites that love to feast on California homes. This episode is packed with valuable insights for anyone considering buying or selling property in Southern California, or any region with specific environmental and insurance considerations. Discover how PropertyLens empowers you to ask the right questions, understand your risks, and make informed decisions that protect your investment and provide peace of mind.
Key Takeaways
✅ Southern California homes present unique challenges, including termites, wildfire risk, and earthquakes.
✅ Proactive mitigation efforts, like wildfire preparedness and regular termite inspections, are crucial for homeowners.
✅ Consulting with an insurance agent to confirm coverage and understand potential costs is essential before purchasing a property.
Resources
🔹 Zillow
🔹 Try it: Propertylens.com
🔹 Questions? Contact us: support@propertylens.com
Transcript
[00:00:00] Bob Frady: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, ships at sea. Welcome to this week's episode of Property of the Week with PropertyLens. I am Bob Frady, Co-Founder and CEO of PropertyLens with me.
[00:00:20] John Siegman: John Siegman Co-Founder and President of PropertyLens.
[00:00:23] Bob Frady: And this week we have a very special guest. We are thrilled to have Mr. Marty Ellingsworth, President of Salt Creek Analytics as our guest for the week. Marty, welcome to the show.
[00:00:38] Martin Ellingsworth: Thanks for having me, Bob. Thanks for having me, John. Yeah, full disclosure to everyone. We've known each other for a while. and we're even big, even despite that we like each other. So, I'm here to talk about PropertyLens.
[00:00:52] I've seen them at the creative destruction lab. I've seen them, around the industry for more than a decade. And, these guys really know what they're talking about. And today I hope we get to share with you a little bit. About what they're doing.
[00:01:07] Bob Frady: So Marty's the guy we lean on, when we want to know someone in the industry, because whenever we look somebody up who we want to talk to, Martin Ellingsworth a connection.
[00:01:16] I like that. This guy knows every, you know, everybody. Is there anyone in the industry who you don't know?
[00:01:21] Martin Ellingsworth: Probably. I don't know anybody. And at the same time, I'm linked to all of them. 20 years of LinkedIn, you know, we'll get you there. And, I, I've always been a fan of, if you can't.
[00:01:36] Do something for them, help them find someone who can. So I'm a connector at heart.
[00:01:42] Bob Frady: There you go. So what we do normally is when you go to property land, you type in an address, you go through a purchase process, and then your report comes out. We're going to skip that part because it's not all that exciting and Marty has graciously volunteered his own abode, to be analyzed as the property of the week.
[00:02:01] Now, the interesting thing is that this property hasn't been on the market, I believe, since 2011. It looks like when you bought it. So we'll see what it says, you know, for a house that hasn't been on the market. What kind of information do we have?
[00:02:14] Martin Ellingsworth: Minor spoiler alert, you know, we had done a full remodel in 2013, about 10 years ago.
[00:02:21] So some of the things, you know, might be structurally the same and some of them might be, you know, interiorly different.
[00:02:28] Bob Frady: Let's see what happens. So here's your house in Dana point, beautiful Dana point, California. And we'll go in
[00:02:34] Martin Ellingsworth: Oh it looks like a (inaudible)
[00:02:38] Bob Frady: And view the report. Okay. So here's what we do when we get an address, we send out a lot of requests for information.
[00:02:47] Both internally and externally. So we pull together the same pieces of information that insurance companies are using to underwrite your risk or banks are using to evaluate your property. And we put it all together into a report. Now on top of that, we add some AI and some rules to say, pull out some of these highlights because it could be overwhelming looking at all this data.
[00:03:12] And the first thing that we have is the buyer lens. And John, what's the buyer lens showing us today?
[00:03:17] John Siegman: Well, the buyer lens is showing us all of the things that you would want to ask the seller about with regard to the house. So the first thing that you want to know is, those termites. Welcome to Southern California.
[00:03:31] Martin Ellingsworth: Oh man, they are rampant. Termites love this area for the old wood and the new wood. There's a lot of teardown construction, you know, here. A lot of these places were built in the seventies, when we got the place originally and inspected it. Termites everywhere. So. Spot on. Have you had termites at this property?
[00:03:51] Oh yeah. They were, they were here when I got here. Okay. So, okay. Absolutely a thing of the past and future. Yeah, because if you don't keep up, you'll just see a swarm of termites going up the valley and you go, Oh yeah, I guess they're around. Okay.
[00:04:06] Bob Frady: There you go. Termites. Yay. And that's not something that's usually disclosed.
[00:04:11] When you sell a house, it may be in the disclosure language, but this is the kind of stuff you want to ask beforehand. and you may want to say to the seller, Hey, I want to get this place tented before we move in.
[00:04:23] Martin Ellingsworth: And we did that. You should absolutely do that. And, yeah, if it's their termites, they should pay the bill too.
[00:04:28] I would argue, but that's all up to the, you know, negotiation.
[00:04:31] Bob Frady: Let's start your termites, pal. All right. What do we get up next there, John?
[00:04:37] John Siegman: Well, you know, you got a roof. Welcome to Southern California. If it is a tile or concrete roof. It's gonna last a long time. 75 years. So a lot of people, you know, will never end up in Southern California living long enough to replace their roof, but you know, it appears to be in good condition, which is always good. and if you had to replace it, we're looking at, you know, probably about $45,000 to replace the roof.
[00:05:06] Martin Ellingsworth: Yeah, so a lot of the aerial imagery systems get my roof wrong. The guy who built this, was in the military and traveled the world and somehow figured out that cement tiles like they use in Australia are like the thing he wanted here.
[00:05:23] So when we did the remodels, we didn't touch the roof. it's in great shape. It looks weird from the air because it's fashionable to paint those tiles. Who knew? So then, for a while the peat was a little chippy and, and, and rough looking and now it's all settled back down. So, yeah, it, you know, roots in great shape, cement, tiles.
[00:05:46] Yeah, I won't say bulletproof because I don't want anyone shooting my roof, but,
[00:05:52] Bob Frady: That's one risk we don't measure, is your roof been shot off?
[00:05:57] That's not in the evaluation. Southern California roofs in general, tend to be pretty good construction. Not as many issues as you'll find in some other places.
[00:06:06] And this roof looks like it's in great shape.
[00:06:09] Martin Ellingsworth: Yeah. Now, a rental house I had in a house I bought 30 years ago up in Irvine, shake roof, completely scary, like a fire hazard to yourself and others, again. If you get a shake roof, shake it off.
[00:06:27] Bob Frady: So, and we're going down a Taylor Swift rabbit hole, all right, we need as many Taylor Swift quotes as we can in the rest of the show.
[00:06:34] I don't know any, that's the only one I really know. Okay, so it looks like this house is in some, has some exposure to wildfires. Have you had any feedback from your insurance company about mitigation or about insurance?
[00:06:49] Martin Ellingsworth: So, I bought this house, about maybe a dozen years ago. I had it re inspected after my rebuild.
[00:07:00] And I've, I've done some, you know, kind of, fire loss control, you know, discussions where I looked at defensible space and I pulled back trees and I, you know, cleared off the slope. so, me personally, yeah, I've, I've done a lot of that because I'm in the insurance industry and, you know, when I was, working at USAA, who's Currently, my carrier.
[00:07:23] yeah, I worked there in 18 and 19 and worked on these ideas around, you know, imagery from space looking at properties. So I was at a front row seat to what would you do to take a house in a nearby canyon with a lot of wildfire exposure and make it as safe as possible. So, ember guards, clear space, you know, the five foot of freedom type of, don't let anything touch your house.
[00:07:53] I've wrapped the whole house in, like, Cement, you know, walkways, so everything I can do, I've done.
[00:08:00] Bob Frady: See, that's a huge selling point. If you ever did put this house up for sale, you know, California, of course, is on edge about wildfires these days, but all the steps you've taken for mitigation should just increase the value of, of this property versus properties around it, which is, which is.
[00:08:15] Martin Ellingsworth: And also make it easier to underwrite, right?
[00:08:18] Bob Frady: Yeah. Well, easier. That's a, that's a whole nother matter, but yeah. And next it looks like we've got, you know, California is subjected to earthquakes. Have you had any earthquake damage in the property before?
[00:08:32] Martin Ellingsworth: Not that I can tell, but, you know, the wood frame on Stucco is, you know, about as friendly as you can get for an earthquake area.
[00:08:39] It shakes, maybe it cracks, but it does that when it settles anyway. Overall I'd say, nothing here is interesting in earthquakes. We're pretty far from the faults, but, like, like the canyon behind me, you're not. You can't escape an earthquake.
[00:08:57] Bob Frady: Have you had any leaking or cracked pipes in the house?
[00:09:00] Martin Ellingsworth: I have not. But, you know, we did repipe everything, you know, with, I figured I had a 75 or 100 year roof, so I put in 30, 40 year copper pipes. And, you know, I don't plan on having to, like, move out of my house before I pass away.
[00:09:16] Bob Frady: Very nice. Well, hopefully that's not for another 40 years or more.
[00:09:19] Martin Ellingsworth: 50, 60, maybe.
[00:09:22] Bob Frady: Okay. Now, we get into age and condition. John, you want to take this part?
[00:09:27] John Siegman: So, Marty, you moved in. Property is 51 years old. Sewer lines last 40 to 60 years. Have you had any issues? Have you done anything to them?
[00:09:38] Martin Ellingsworth: We did. We replumbed and went all the way out to the street, to the, to the, to the sewer system when I moved in because it's like I don't want to deal with that.
[00:09:48] that house I rented back in Irvine, big sewer problem, you know, entrenching to the street is a mess. So, while the whole place was ripped apart anyway, that was a good time to dig a new line and make sure we didn't have a problem.
[00:10:03] Bob Frady: Again. It goes into the thumbs up column when you're talking about buying this house.
[00:10:10] Martin Ellingsworth: Yeah, but you can't, you don't see that improvement. I mean, it's a, you know, it was a, it was an open trench when it was being done and now it's all filled in and has flowers on top of it.
[00:10:19] Bob Frady: Oh, very nice. Very nice. When was the water heater last replaced? Because the average service life is about 12 years.
[00:10:26] Martin Ellingsworth: At the new one, we went tankless.
[00:10:28] The, so less issues around, water leaks with a tankless. It does more recirculation. for anyone who doesn't have a tankless, you're gonna love it because the hot water stays hot all the time.
[00:10:42] Bob Frady: Mm hmm. Yeah, we got tankless. So here's a funny story about tankless water heater. We have kind of rough water in this area.
[00:10:52] And we're, we're gonna get a whole house filtration system. And the guy measured our water and said, Hey, by the way, did you know that the hardness of this water invalidates the warranty on your tankless water heater system? And then, and then two weeks later, the system failed. And so, so,
[00:11:11] Martin Ellingsworth: Was it, so was your system built in front of or behind the water softener?
[00:11:17] Bob Frady: It's behind the water softener now. Wow.
[00:11:20] Martin Ellingsworth: Now, yeah, so that's, that's the way to go. It's like you, you put in the softener system first and then the tankless after that. So, yeah, you still got to like, you know, purge it once a year. But that's not a big deal.
[00:11:33] Bob Frady: Yep. And, we don't see any solar roofs on the property.
[00:11:37] Martin Ellingsworth: There is an interesting, patio cover. It's, it's, it's aluminum and it sits between the main house roof and the wood patio, overlook, and, it's got, aluminum louvers on it, so you can open it. To the, to the open air, let some light and breeze in, but you know, a lot of the aerial imagery doesn't know what to do with that because it's, it's a weird, you know, piece of roofing, I guess, for a lot of patios, but it, sits over the, the barbecue area, so you can do year round barbecue.
[00:12:11] Bob Frady: Let's call it iconoclastic rather than weird. Ooh,
[00:12:14] Martin Ellingsworth: I like that word.
[00:12:15] Bob Frady: There you go. Now, the whole goal of questions like this is to have a conversation. With the seller or the seller's agent in this case to say, here's all the things I want to know. And after hearing those answers, these are great answers.
[00:12:30] This is a great house if you were going to buy it. So, and then I'd be like, all right, now I want to make an offer because I know that this guy's been taking care of this place and all these concerns are addressed. Or if I'm listing the house, these are the things that people are going to come to the table with and say, Hey, what about all this stuff?
[00:12:47] And you aced the test there, Marty. You did a great job.
[00:12:52] Martin Ellingsworth: So you just saved 27 million dollars and I'll be happy.
[00:12:55] Bob Frady: Yeah, there's, there's a couple of houses in your neighborhood that are going for that much money. but maybe not this one. So then we say, well, let's say you've made an offer on the place.
[00:13:08] You know, what are some of the things that you would tell the inspector to take a special look at, because remember the inspector doesn't work for you, the inspector works for the seller. And so you want to make sure that they answer these specific questions to say, how do we ensure that you're taking a look at the stuff that needs to be done?
[00:13:27] And John, if you were going to hand this to an inspector, what would you tell them to look at?
[00:13:31] John Siegman: Well, pretty much the same thing that we just went through with all of the questions, you want them to get up in the attic and take a look around for termites and they'd also look at the eaves because that's an easy place to find any type of termite damage.
[00:13:44] And if there's a wood fence, you're going to find it there as well. We now know about the roof. So, quite honestly, the inspector might not even know what type of roof this is. Given the unique Australian nature of it. So you'd want to, you know, you may have to hire somebody who actually does roofs if you were truly concerned about the roof condition from the wildfire standpoint, you want to make sure that all the clearance, everything that Marty talked about was taken care of.
[00:14:15] And then, you know, from an earthquake standpoint, all the straps for water heaters and such things like that.
[00:14:21] Martin Ellingsworth: From a livability standpoint, I'd have to say that the thing that's changed in the last 10 years is my cul de sac is a hover point for Amazon and UVS trucks. That didn't happen when I moved in here, but, you know, somehow between getting everything, you know, push button ordered and, like, door to door delivered, it's become a thing.
[00:14:49] Bob Frady: Yeah, and Southern California and Amazon delivery trucks go together like pita butter and jelly. So, they're everywhere. It looks like this place has a fireplace as well. Is that, is that accurate?
[00:15:01] Martin Ellingsworth: It is. We re-plumbed it to put in a fully enclosed furnace. So, it used to be wood burning, now it's gas burning, it is heat producing. but it's an enclosed furnace.
[00:15:14] Bob Frady: Okay. And then finally, the insurance lens, what you need to know about insurance and you know, earthquakes at a, an excluded peril. And the one thing that I would do if I were looking at this house, the first call I would make is to an insurance agent to make sure I can get insured for this property.
[00:15:35] Now USAA is great. You have to be a member, but they're really very aggressive in trying to. Make sure that they're in, that their members get insurers. You know, they go the extra mile to keep insuring you rather than looking for reasons to get rid of you, which is great, but not everyone's on USA.
[00:15:55] So the, the, the first thing I would do is make that call or. If you want to, we can, there's a link down lower in the report that says, check out insurance for this property. So that's the first thing I do here. Earthquakes excluded, and then the rest of it is, you know, relatively straightforward.
[00:16:14] There's a replacement cost. It's probably a little bit more now because you've done some customization to the property, but the land is worth a lot. and that's the, that's the big part of the cost for, for your property.
[00:16:27] Martin Ellingsworth: Well, I think you're a hydrant hunter in past lives. Be nice for you to know that there's a hydrant at the edge of my driveway.
[00:16:36] Bob Frady: You know what? I love houses with the hydrant right there. It's like, just gives me maybe a false sense of comfort, but it's still a sense of comfort. So then we get into the data itself. So here's the real estate data for the property. We'll go, we'll skip all this part. This is the kind of stuff that you can see on a real estate listing.
[00:16:56] it tells you the municipality, it gives you the parcel number, et cetera, et cetera. One of the things that's really interesting about this is I read in the, I read something where you know, a lot of places look like single family houses, but they're actually condos. This is not one of those houses. Yet, when you go for financing, financing a condo is different than financing a single family residence.
[00:17:20] And so one of the things we tell you is, what exactly kind of property is this? And this is a single family residence. Here's the most recent listing details. It's been a long time. 2011, this was last sold. The market value is pretty strong, which is great. Good for you. there's no listing details and no description because we don't go back that far.
[00:17:40] we go back about seven years, for most of our MLS data because really what you're, this is a report that's designed for people who are buying a house that would assume that the house is for sale. Here's some of the ownership changes. It looks like there's been a couple of deed changes, just one really recently.
[00:18:00] Family trust. Yeah, family trust. Here's the property tax, for this location. you can see by year. what the taxes are now, when you sell a house in California, it reassesses to the market value. So this number would be different if you were buying the house, but this is what the property taxes are like.
[00:18:20] Martin Ellingsworth: Yeah. That's, that's why the family trusts too, it's like, if there's a, if there's a probate issue and the kids want to sell it, sell it. But if they want to hold on to it, it's a better way to, you know, not have that accelerated to the real market value.
[00:18:34] Bob Frady: Yep.
[00:18:34] John Siegman: Interesting enough, Marty. Let's not do so, with the changes in the law.
[00:18:41] Oh, no. The house will be reassessed at the time of your untimely demise.
[00:18:46] Martin Ellingsworth: Oh, no. Well, that was, that was old thinking.
[00:18:50] John Siegman: They then have to accept the new basis for the (inaudible)
[00:18:52] Martin Ellingsworth: Oh, well, they're gonna hate that. That's gonna be, you know, push in, 2100 a square foot at the, at the current sales, you know, rates here.
[00:19:02] Bob Frady: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's a real concern, you know, that your mortgage, if you have a mortgage or don't, your mortgage amount generally stays the same. Property taxes and insurers just keep going up. So well, USDA.
[00:19:17] Martin Ellingsworth: Gave us a hefty raise this year, so, they're not immune from break raising, but they didn't threaten to cancel me.
[00:19:24] They just sent me in a bigger bill. Still like to go. so, this is an older picture. I've taken out the two big coral trees that you see blooming over my roof line in the back. The little magnolia in the middle is still there, but it's not, it's not that close to the roof. That's kind of a late afternoon shade throwing that you see.
[00:19:47] Bob Frady: It looks like this picture was as of August 13th. Is it recently that you took those out?
[00:19:52] Martin Ellingsworth: Yeah, in September.
[00:19:54] Bob Frady: Okay, look at that. There we go. And it looks like your roof condition is good. you have a low exposure. there's not a lot of stuff coming out of the sky that could harm that roof in the way that insurance companies look at it.
[00:20:11] Now you can make some arguments about wildfire and embers and all that stuff. And does that add to the risk? And right. It does. Yeah, right now the insurance industry doesn't look at that as much as they should. But it's something that we're considering for the future to make sure we add a little bit of, add a little bit of sauce on for the wildfire risk.
[00:20:31] The minimal tree overhang, its tile roof, hip construction, little bit of standing, but that's no big deal. No weather events in this area, which is really unusual.
[00:20:42] Martin Ellingsworth: That's what everybody pays for.
[00:20:44] John Siegman: That's who it is.
[00:20:46] Bob Frady: Yeah, that's the weather tax that you pay in Southern California.
[00:20:49] Like, you, you'll see places in the mid, in the Midwest, it's like, this is like a laundry list of, of events, but in Southern California, nah, in Southern California, dude, nah, data point. It's excellent. Most excellent. you can go back and look at historical imagery. We've got data going back to all the way to 2016.
[00:21:09] And you can see that that hillside was not nearly as grown in, as it is now in 2016.
[00:21:17] Martin Ellingsworth: So, point on that, if, since you knew I was at Selint, for a couple years, I did an aerial imagery overview of my house in a property, study where I was looking at picture, at, at, you know, data from pictures.
[00:21:33] So, you can see, I think, 2016 to 2022, pictures, and I kind of walked through the ground truth, roof line and trees on property, people thought I had, put in a, a, a filthy pool in my backyard, but all's I'd done is switch to plastic grass. So, it was big and square and green. So it looks like, geez, Marty, pick up your pool.
[00:22:02] Bob Frady: Well, I, are we showing a pool here? I don't think we are.
[00:22:06] Martin Ellingsworth: I don't have a pool, but I did. But the plastic grass looked like one to the AI. You can see on your overlay, there's the, on the, the right side. Yep. It's kind of the natural grass. And then when you swoop by, it's all pretty flat. The new grass is all pretty and flat.
[00:22:23] Bob Frady: Looks like putting green out there. But I know you don't play golf,
[00:22:25] Martin Ellingsworth: so, not really. I mean, nobody calls it golf when I play. You can see I expanded the front driveway by extending a, so I got rid of the ugly grass and put in stone.
[00:22:41] Bob Frady: Ah, there you go.
[00:22:42] Martin Ellingsworth: Got rid of the grass and the stepping stones and put in plastic grass. So it's a, simpler, easier, less termity
[00:22:49] Bob Frady: I think the local utility probably gives you a little kickback for putting in that plastic grass since you're not using water. So, it looks like you did some work on this house about 11 years ago in 2013.
[00:23:03] Martin Ellingsworth: That was the big year.
[00:23:04] Bob Frady: And, you had new windows, doors, a new skylight, new underground plumbing, which would be the sewer, a new meter panel upgrade, you did a remodel, and you did the stucco replacement all around the same time from Leuco Custom Construction. There's no homeowner service history because we don't offer that yet.
[00:23:25] We don't have inspection data. We have the estimated utility costs per month, along with how much solar could be used. Generate or save you that month, you can go net zero on solar if you want, if you really want to, it gives you your provider. If you have to go and get service, we give you a link to that provider.
[00:23:45] if you are considering solar, we give you a link to get a quote. The payback period with federal incentives would be about four years for you. Some people like it, some people don't. So, but it's there, you know, if the
[00:24:00] Martin Ellingsworth: So solar panels are really popular in the neighborhood. I might get a rental. I can add it. I'm waiting for the big breakthrough though. I keep, I keep expecting the, you know, thin film, high output, solar thing to be invented any day now.
[00:24:15] Bob Frady: Let me tell you something, Marty. When I was at Cornell University in 1981. I was an engineering student studying thin film photovoltaics. The breakthrough was just a couple of years away in 1981. And here we are a lot later than 1981. Any minute now, this time for sure. then the risk assessment. So here's your risk. You got earthquakes and wildfires. The area does get droughty sometimes. And you're on a hill, so there's a slight bit of landslide risk as well.
[00:24:52] Any issues with, landslide at the, at the house at all?
[00:24:56] Martin Ellingsworth: Not in this neighborhood, no. Anyone who was watching the news last year at the house on the, on the headlands, maybe two miles from here, a lot of, a lot of coastal subsidence or, or, what's the term for that? Erosion. There you go. Erosion. And, you know, up the street, maybe a mile or two.
[00:25:18] I think the, kind of a built on a berm and you'd seen some subsidence. But here and here in the terraces, it's built on rock. You know, you can't even dig a hole without a pick. So it's, Yeah, firm up, firm up here, but, there are issues around the neighborhood and, and certainly in Southern California generally.
[00:25:37] Bob Frady: The next is flood. There's, you're not in a digital flood zone, either 100 or 500 a year.
[00:25:43] Martin Ellingsworth: 450 feet above sea level, I should be good.
[00:25:47] Bob Frady: Your flood insurance is not required nor recommended for your property. If you wanted to, we'll have a little, we'll have a little button in there that says, If you want to get a flood insurance quote, if you're really paranoid, like, for example, if there was a water tank at the top of the hill and that water tank collapsed, that's a flood and you're stuck with it.
[00:26:09] Martin Ellingsworth: On the other side of the ridgeline, there is a water tank. So, you know, that's, that's very serious about this community. And, you know, anybody downhill from that.
[00:26:22] Bob Frady: Yeah, exactly. So then we've got distances too. You're not in an area. Extreme weather disasters. It just gives you more detail on what we've already laid out there a couple of times.
[00:26:34] Pelican Hill is the closest fault and you're about six and a half miles from it. it'll give you a good shake if you, if, if you do have an event, but you're right. Watching your house wiggle back and forth during an earthquake is always a fun thing to do in Southern California. And other than that, you don't have a lot of weather risks at all.
[00:26:53] And then we've got environmental pollution. termites is the number one, but other than that, there's really nothing there. not, the nearest leaking underground storage tank is a mile away. Oh, excuse me, almost a mile away, down on PCH, no, no meth labs in the neighborhood. That's good news.
[00:27:14] No brownfields, no super funds. and then insurability and claims. This is what we have a service that looks at all the filings and says based upon the square footage of your house. Here's an estimated price. Those numbers may be correct. They may not be correct, but we do express it as a range Here's your replacement cost per square foot. Make sure your schedule is up to.
[00:27:36] Martin Ellingsworth: You know I pay a hundred bucks for this report if I was buying a house
[00:27:40] Bob Frady: That's our goal is is is people do that and this is where we offer you the ability to go out and get an inch
[00:27:47] Martin Ellingsworth: Yeah, well, I love, did you see one so again there? They have a special place in my InsurTech Hall of Fame, the smart people. good products and, great analytics.
[00:28:00] Bob Frady: Yeah, they're very good at what we'll call the cherry picking. You know, the California insurance market is a little bit tough right now. And people do things like switch entire zip codes off, which is ridiculous from an underwriting standpoint. But it's what they do, because it's easy.
[00:28:20] And Kin is like, well, we don't need to use that. We can just use the parcel. And do a really good job at finding those pieces of gold, in the, in the areas that people just sort of shut off.
[00:28:33] Martin Ellingsworth: So many companies still don't use geospatial data, and they still don't even have great address data. So, you know, being able to do something like an accumulation assessment or a proximity to fire line, you know, assessment, distance to coast, you know, you name it.
[00:28:53] Things that would be. Naturally, you or John are out of touch and out of reach to a lot of what you think were sophisticated insurance companies. but, it is what it is. A lot of commercial lines and personal line systems were, you know. Written in the 80s and 90s or before, you know, before the, before the internet, if you can even believe that it's like 1991.
[00:29:23] Bob Frady: Oh, we got a call. I can't remember why. I think it was during COVID and somebody was looking for, C++ programmers. And I'm like, you just call your local municipality. There's probably a bunch of them there because their systems were so old. That was the most recent tool that they had. I think it was C++ It was really old, it was COBOL. They wanted COBOL programmers.
[00:29:56] Yeah, he's a COBOL programmer because so much, so many systems are still written in COBOL.
[00:30:01] Martin Ellingsworth: That's why they don't upgrade because if they break them, the whole thing goes down the drain.
[00:30:07] Bob Frady: Yeah. We don't have any claims in this property because we don't have claims right now in the system.
[00:30:14] then it's good crime, good fire protection. The nearest fire hydrant is less than 250 feet and you have 18 within a thousand. There's a lot of fire hydrants around.
[00:30:25] Martin Ellingsworth: Some of them are 450 feet down the hill though. So it's a. It's something a lot of flat earth assessment, you know, not practical.
[00:30:39] Bob Frady: We do, we do take that into account when we tell you how far the fire station is.
[00:30:45] we'll give you how much, what's the drive distance in miles, to the location. And what's the drive time also. for those locations, then finally the property timeline, where you can start to see all the historical imagery and really not a lot has happened here because there's nothing that you would publicly do.
[00:31:09] So there's the title change, then more imagery, and then you can see all the action started to happen back in 2013. So that is the PropertyLens report. And then you can download it to a PDF, you can send it to your friends, you can, you know, give it to a realtor or whatever.
[00:31:28] Martin Ellingsworth: So, you know, a lot of people can get data from the internet and stick it in a system, Others are, perhaps less good at feeling so comfortable with the quality of the data they pull and how they present it that they wouldn't show it, you know, live demo on a recorded, you know, image like this.
[00:31:49] So, you know, props to you guys. The data is accurate, checks off on everything I know about it. And, you know, someone who wanted to buy this house, should wanna know that too.
[00:32:01] Bob Frady: We like to wrap up our analysis by saying, if you were going to buy this house, based upon the information that you see in this report, what are the top three things that you focus on?
[00:32:16] So let's start with you, John. If you were to buy this house if it were for sale. Based upon the information that you see in the PropertyLens report, what are the top three things you'd be looking for?
[00:32:27] John Siegman: Well, first of all, everything's for sale. If somebody came in and had Marty 6 million, he'd leave him the furniture and be gone tomorrow.
[00:32:34] See? So it's for sale, just not listed. The first thing that I would look at is, of course, the bugs. Alright? Southern California, well known for termites. and ours swarm because, as Marty told you, he can't dig a hole in his yard. So they're not, you can't just walk around looking for mud tunnels like you can in the south.
[00:33:00] You gotta, you gotta actually go exploring. So that'd be number one on my list. Number two on my list would be calling and making sure I can get insurance. It's a hard market in general. It's harder now in California, given a lot of recent circumstances. And you'd want to make sure that you could get it insured that you would not be, not that being with a fair plan is necessarily bad, but it's not necessarily good either.
[00:33:31] So you'd want to make sure that you could get insurance and then the third thing that I would just do is the. HVAC, the water heaters, you know, there was a major redo as shown by the permits and as discussed here, about 12 years ago or so. And so you'd want to, you know, make sure that, Hey, when was the last time the water heater was installed or updated or upgraded?
[00:34:00] Same with the furnace. You know, am I coming to the end of life on those, or has something happened in the interim and I'm good to go? Those would be the things that I'd be looking for.
[00:34:14] Bob Frady: So Marty, based upon this report and the things you know about this property, if it were for sale, what would be the top three things that you would look for at 32232 Azores Road in Dana Point, California?
[00:34:28] Martin Ellingsworth: So, 32232 Azores Road. The thing that you don't get from the report is the view. you know, unobstructed, 280 degrees, mountains to the north with snow in the winter, ocean to the south, protected by the ridgeline above me from the glaring, brutal heat of the afternoon. So that's the reason we decided to live here.
[00:34:57] Even though there's like, besides, maybe AAA Southern California, it's an insurance desert here. So, it's nice. It's difficult for me professionally to still do insurance from here, but it's totally worth the effort. And I would have regretted not doing it. and you know, from the, no surprises.
[00:35:18] I mean, the house was solid when we bought it. It's lucky that we did all of our construction, you know, kind of after the big financial meltdown and, and outside of COVID because, now there's so many people piling into the neighborhood that you can't even find a contractor. So, You know, like better lucky than good on that one, cost of rebuilding right now, through the roof, you can't talk about property right now without talking about the Palisades, fire, tragic, it could happen anywhere, there's a valley here, you know, we worry about those things, and, and just generally in, in California when conditions are ripe, The nutbag arsonists come out and, how do you even do a risk assessment for that?
[00:36:12] it just, you just, you know it's a possibility and you, you try to defend against it.
[00:36:18] Bob Frady: So, if I were looking at it, is it called Ezores or Azores?
[00:36:22] Martin Ellingsworth: It's Azores, like the little islands. So they're
[00:36:26] Bob Frady: Like the islands. Yeah, so I thought.
[00:36:27] Martin Ellingsworth: So, like the islands. So the thing about this community, it's, it's, they're all unique. What we wanted was a one story with three car garage on the cul de sac. So, you know, that it had a view too was just a kicker.
[00:36:43] Bob Frady: Well, you certainly, you scored a view for sure. So, for 32232 Azores Road in Dana Point, here are the three things I would think about, given The PropertyLens report. Number one is, can I get insurance?
[00:36:58] Because of this, and that's something that almost everybody should ask in California. Can I get an insurance quote before you make an offer? Because you got to figure that into the calculus of what it's going to cost to maintain that place, year over year. So number one is wildfire insurance.
[00:37:15] Well, can I get insurance? And then the associated wildfire risk. Number two is the termites. I would probably just. Proactively tent it, on change of hands. but otherwise I'd feel really comfortable knowing that I asked the right questions. You answered them spectacularly well, I'd feel super confident.
[00:37:39] I would sleep better knowing the answer to those questions than I would have just relying on, you know, some agent telling me, Oh, it's just, don't even worry about that. It's like, so to me, you know, we all, we look at these reports a lot and it's always like, Oh my gosh, look at this. To me, it's more about, this is a peace of mind report for this location because it looks fantastic.
[00:38:02] And yeah, you have a couple of big concerns. You know, wildfire insurance and termites and, but otherwise it looks spectacular.
[00:38:09] Martin Ellingsworth: Maybe the last thing, maybe the last thing is the buried utility lines. So, you know, no power poles, you know, no big transoms.
[00:38:20] Bob Frady: You know, for a guy who's not selling his property, it sure sounds like you're pitching pretty heavily about why this property is so awesome.
[00:38:27] Martin Ellingsworth: That's why I'm not moving. It's like the, I've been put in wheelchair height counters so that I can roll up when I'm old. I'm planning ahead, baby. I'm planning ahead.
[00:38:40] Bob Frady: Okay, anything else we want to add before we head out on this little journey?
[00:38:43] Martin Ellingsworth: No, thanks for the extra minutes. edit this down and nobody can like to listen to 40 minutes of us, but it sure was fun.
[00:38:51] Bob Frady: Yeah, they can. Sure they can. Alright, so, first of all, big thank you to our special guest, Martin Ellingsworth. If you, if you need to know someone at insurance, you need to talk to Martin. and for this week's Property of the Week, I'm Bob Frady
[00:39:07] John Siegman: I'm John Siegman,
[00:39:10] Martin Ellingsworth: and I'm Martin Ellingsworth.
[00:39:11] Bob Frady: Thanks for tuning in, and hey, click the subscribe button.
[00:39:15] Do that. It makes us feel better.
