Just out of curiosity, what does the Conservation Committee guy do?
The state has a law called “310 CMR 10.00: Wetlands Protection Act Regulations”, which is 250 pages of rules concerning everything you can and can’t do with a certain distance to any wetlands, which includes beaches, coastal shores, river banks, ponds, marshes, swamps, whatever.
Here it is, if you are a masochist:
https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2016/08/vy/310cmr10a.pdf
In addition, the town of Falmouth has it’s own set of regulations(“FWR 10.00 FALMOUTH CONSERVATION COMMISSION Falmouth Wetland Regulations”), which run to 180 or so pages:
https://ecode360.com/attachment/FA1385/FA1385-FWR.pdf
The conservation agent’s job is to enforce all of these regulations, and make recommendations to the Commission about things people want to do.
In our case, we want to take a bunch of trees down, and trim a bunch of others. All land within 100 feet of the coastal bank (which is basically the 100 year flood line) is under their jurisdiction, which covers pretty much our entire property. So we have to put together a plan of what we want to do, file it with the state and the local conservation commission (along with a $116 fee of course), and then the agent comes out to inspect the property and recommend to the Commission what you will be allowed to do, and they vote on it.
The Commission has a reputation as a bunch of tree-hugging eco-nazis, so it is unlikely they will let us do everything we want, but we’ll see. My quarter-acre of paradise has almost 70 trees on it, it’s crazy compared to my neighbors who have nice lawns and all that. They hate hate HATE lawns though, so they won’t let us just cut them all down and plant grass. And we will almost certainly not be allowed to remove the ones along the water blocking our view, although we can ask. We might be allowed to trim some of them.
The penalties for violating the rules or doing work without approval can be fairly draconian - up to $350 per day in fines until you undo what you illegally did, and if you cut down a tree illegally they can make you replant one of the same size. Imagine having to bring in a 10" in diameter tree… huge bucks.
You might think, well how would they ever know if you cut a tree down, we’ve been told that they’ve started using aerial photos and comparing them with previous years’ photos, looking for changes in the tree canopy. Computers can automate this. And there’s always that neighbor who is willing to rat you out.
NRE - we have a similar thing going on here. I feel your pain. Fortunately, “insignificant” trees are fair game. So the first thing we did was to get rid of a few such garbage trees before they even had a chance to grow any further. 
Got it. I didn’t know you had submitted a request to make changes. I thought they just arbitrarily showed up whenever someone purchased a house, clipboard in hand of course!!
Inspection
I’m going to inspect a small house that just came up for sale in Pt Loma. It is listed by crazy agent that plays games with listings, prices and pulling things on and off the market. He knows I am out looking and he has purposely listed this small house at a low price to create a multiple offer situation. He has it advertised as an investor/flipper special. Do you think he would call me and try to hype it up? No… he’s too full of himself. A good agent would call the local investors and try to get their business.
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Looks cute from the outside.
ummm…cb, what’s that weird, huge, brown dome thing across the street?? Is it really a house? I’d hate to look at that every day…
Looks cute with good potential. It will be interesting to see what you think it should sell for. I expect the listing agent will play games with your offer, of course.
Gee…they sure did go all out on the pictures…NOT! Four pictures? No kitchen, no bathrooms…
Or am I looking at the wrong listing??
You’re looking at the right house.
It’s probably obvious it’ll be a complete gut job so why bother with pictures.
Looks promising.
Inspection Results
The house is a 1940s house with some cute character inside. The Seller wasted time painting the whole exterior of the house, but there are stucco issues and it will need to be repaired. There are old asbestos pipes in the attic and the garage which were probably the original furnace and garage water heater exhaust pipes. They are not too dangerous, they are the cement type pipes.
There were 3 different groups going through the house while we were crawling into the crawlspace and attic. I made sure to say “Oh… ASBESTOS pipes” as loud as I could while peering into the attic
There was a back porch on the house that a prior owner enclosed (probably not in the original 833 square feet). Unfortunately, the foundation wasn’t tied in and the porch portion of the house is separating. Doesn’t matter to me because I am going to tear off the back of the house and add a nice family room and master suite in the back. Bedrooms are small, kitchen is small… everything is small. But, I think if it is opened up and I can emphasize the little bit of character it could be a cute family house.
I worked my numbers off of a potential selling price of about $850,000. The house right next door is similar style and shape, at 1,220 square feet with a pool. It was for sale for over 90 days at $899k. When they dropped their price to $879k it went into contract. Agent took terrible pictures and it is dark inside with a dark kitchen, etc. But it was probably updated about 10-15 years ago.
Yes, there is a strange round house across the street.
The dome house also has a landscape painted on its garage door!
The flip house sure is tiny.
There’s another tiny house for sale on the next block that shows the exact same church steeple picture. http://www.sdlookup.com/Pictures-170055183 I had no idea The Authors were high enough to see over to the ocean (all the streets in that neighborhood are named after authors).
Hey - the Rosecroft Estate dropped its price again! http://www.sdlookup.com/MLS-160011524-530_Silvergate_Ave_San_Diego_CA_92106
^'m sorry to sound like a snob, but at only $351 per sq ft that place would be considered a bargain up here!
Same listing agent for both properties. He’s obviously just using same pictures and didn’t even bother to take interior photos
Don’t you almost wish you could use a pseudonym when putting in an offer with this jerky agent!
Well,
Sent in my offer last night about 6pm. No word back, not even a confirmation that he received my offer. Wake up this morning to see that the property already went Pending into Contract. Not sure why he didn’t just tell me they were already accepting an offer when I spoke to him at 4pm.
Onward and upward… I just cannot figure out a strategy for how to deal with this particular agent.
What an ass.
he wants both ends of the deal, AND wants the highest $$. And its a sellers market in SD right now.
I’m afraid that with your financial limitations, vrs people who are relocating to SD and have lots of $$ to burn-like many long time residents from the Bay Area who are moving south to retire, as SD is one of the few Counties left in Calif where property tax rates can be transferred, - you’re likely to be out of luck beating out high bidders for one of his listings… :-L