Sellers must take care before videotaping buyers
Q. When we sold our first home several years ago, someone posing as a potential buyer during an open-house event apparently stole a small box of jewelry from our bedroom that contained several valuable rings and necklaces. Now we are selling our current home. Could we set up some small video cameras around the house to help prevent such a theft from happening again?
A. Yes, but you have to meet at least two key requirements.
The first is that you clearly post a sign in front of your home that states that video surveillance is being conducted. Anyone who then enters your home is giving their “implied consent” to being taped, according to lawyers at the National Association of Realtors.
In addition, you need to be careful about the places where you install the cameras. Because the law generally recognizes that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, you can’t put a camera in a bathroom or other private area, even though a potential buyer has provided their implied consent to being taped.
Some states and even counties have adopted more stringent guidelines, so check with a local real estate agent or an attorney for details.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, several agents began allowing only one person or couple at a time to tour their open houses. If you’re using an agent who follows this practice, it should be easy for her to accompany the visitors as they move from one room to the next.
Of course, nothing can beat good ol’ common sense. Sellers should always lock up or hide all the valuables (and prescription medicines) that they can before putting their home up for sale and letting total strangers walk through.
REAL ESTATE TRIVIA
Americans between the age of 22 and 40 account for 37 percent of all home purchases, an NAR study states. Buyers ages 41 to 55 account for 24 percent.
Q. I live in a townhome. Can I deduct on my income-tax return the $173 I pay each month for my homeowners-association dues?
A. No, you cannot deduct the dues because the property is your primary residence.
If you instead were a landlord and rented the townhome to tenants, the monthly fees could be deducted as an “operating expense” to offset some of the rental income that the house generated.
Q. I’m a huge fan of the “Temptation Island” TV show on the USA Network. Where is it filmed?
A. The popular dating show, now in its third season, has always been shot on the Hawaiian island of Maui. But its filming location on the island has always changed: This year, the show is filmed on the semiprivate grounds of the Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort, a luxury hotel set on 15 oceanfront acres.
The site isn’t far from where the pilot episode of the iconic 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” was filmed. But the second and subsequent episodes of that show were shot on the CBS lot in the Los Angeles suburb of Studio City, in part because housing and feeding the show’s cast and production crew in Hawaii during the ’60s would have been too costly.
Q. On a recent family vacation, we drove through Dundee, Wisconsin, and were surprised to see signs that bill the town as the “UFO Capital of the World.” I thought that title belonged to Roswell, New Mexico. What gives?
A. Dundee, an unincorporated community of about 700 in the heart of Wisconsin’s beautiful Kettle Moraine State Forest, stakes its claim based on the thousands of reported UFO sightings in the area over the years.
Folks in nearby Campbellsport host an annual UFO Daze event that draws believers and nonbelievers alike who hope to catch a glimpse of flying saucers. Miles of hillside along scenic Wisconsin 67 are dotted with lighted landing pads that locals have created to invite aliens to drop in.
Officials in Roswell (pop. 48,000) contend that their city is the UFO Capital after the United States Armed Forces allegedly recovered a crashed alien aircraft and its occupants in 1947 and took them to a local military base. Countless more reports about strange objects flying in the sky have been filed since then, and the city is now the home of the nonprofit International UFO Museum and Research Center.
Dundee and Roswell aren’t the only places that seek the UFO crown. For example, residents and visitors in Pine Bush, New York, (pop. 1,700) have reported more than 25,000 sightings of boomerang-shaped unidentified objects flying across their skies since the 1980s.
At least one was videotaped by Navy pilots flying on a training mission in 2015, a tape that was declassified and released by the military to the general public in 2018.
Send questions to David Myers, P.O. Box 4405, Culver City, CA 90231-2960, and we’ll try to respond in a future column.