The luxury Pacaso home at 1131 Las Alturas Road in Santa Barbara has sparked a controversy over housing and neighborhood compatability. Now, one of the owners who spoke to Noozhawk says there’s a lot of misunderstanding and misperception about Pacaso and the fractional ownership situation.
“We love Santa Barbara,” owner Doug Brien said. “We’ve talked about moving there one day.”
Brien owns 1/8th of the Pacaso home with his wife, Shanti. They have three children, and their two daughters attend UCSB. They bought a portion of the Pacaso home so they could visit their daughters and enjoy Santa Barbara as a second home.
Brien said he tried several times to buy a $1.5 million house in Santa Barbara, but he was outbid every time. The Pacaso concept allowed him to buy a home for part of the year. He urged the critics to rethink how they look at the concept of fractional ownership because it might actually be helping the housing situation.
“In theory, all eight of those, in a world that doesn’t have a Pacaso, might have bought a vacation home and taken eight houses off the market,” Brien said. “The way we are doing it is a more responsible way.”
Brien said he and his family spent Mother’s Day at the home and described the discouraging feeling they experienced driving to their home and seeing “No Pacaso” signs along the street.
Neighbor Don Vogt and his wife, Carolyn, have been among the neighbors upset about the Pacaso model, which sells fractional interests to out-of-towners looking for a second home. Those fractional owners have the right to stay overnight at the home for up to 44 days a year, but not more than 14 in a row. Unlike a timeshare, the owners own a piece of the home and are not just buying time at the location.
Vogt said in The Riviera Association newsletter and told Noozhawk that a party at the Las Alturas house turned into a “booming techno-rock party lasting into the night.”
Brien said it was his family who threw that party, for his daughter’s 21st birthday. Brien acknowledged that the music was loud, but that it stopped before the 9 p.m. noise ordinance curfew.
“The music was off by 8:30 p.m. and everyone was gone by 9 p.m.,” Brien said.
He said he didn’t appreciate the Vogts entering his home that night to complain about the loud music. Carolyn Vogt told Noozhawk that they had to listen to the pounding sounds for four hours prior. In an email to Noozhawk, Vogt said a caterer directed Carolyn into the house. He said the front door was wide open and the living room had no lights on.
He said she asked someone where the owner was and she was directed to the back patio. He said the owner and Carolyn were shouting at each other “since the music was deafening.” The conversation then moved to the outside front door.
Brien acknowledged that he wished things got off to a better start with the Vogts, but that they were never given a chance to introduce themselves and that the Vogts yelled at him.
“We are upstanding citizens,” Brien said.
Brien, a real estate investor based in Oakland, said he understands the affordable housing problem, but the answer is to create more supply. He also said there’s no law against people owning second homes.
“Santa Barbara is a beautiful place,” he said. “People like to spend leisure time there.”
Everyone owns a piece of the home so they are invested in the community, even if they aren’t present year-round, he said.
“I own the real estate,” he said. “If it appreciates, I get 1/8th of the appreciation.
“It is super unfortunate that we got off on the wrong foot with that neighbor.”
Brien said he plans to have an open house when his family is at the Las Alturas home again in August, and that the family would like to meet the neighbors.
The Vogts told Noozhawk that they are not interested in meeting with him.
“We don’t want to be friends with him,” Don Vogt said. “We don’t want to know him.”
Don Vogt said Pacaso is just trying to “monetize single-family homes.”
“These are not people who have involvement in the neighborhood,” Vogt said.
The couple are talking to the city attorney about the legality of the Pacaso situation.
Santa Barbara City Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon has major concerns about the fractional ownership home in her district.
“Fractional ownership is a dangerous slippery slope for our local housing crisis,” Sneddon said. “This model removes livable homes from the market for families and residents who want to work, go to school and live here as part of the community. It is a risk for both hillside neighborhoods that are experiencing dead zones with empty homes, and more dense neighborhoods on the Eastside and Westside where there is growing pressure to sell and leave. We need to do what we can to keep our local communities intact.”
Pacaso was founded by former Zillow executives. The company creates a property LLC for each home, finds and vets co-owners, and handles all of the sales details. At closing, the co-owners enjoy 100% ownership of the home, and Pacaso does not retain any shares.
A Pacaso spokesman said the company helps aggregate second-home demand into fewer, “top-tier luxury homes,” reducing competition for single-family homes. The average Pacaso home costs six times more than the average second home and seven times more than the average primary home, the spokesman said, adding that they look forward to talking to Santa Barbara city officials.
Brien said his family loves the Pacaso home like a primary home.
“We own a piece of it, and we think of it as our neighborhood,” Brien said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.