PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE C raig K irkpatrick
A Stroll Down Memory Lane… Are the Good Days Behind Us?
I
t’s an honor and a privilege to be your new AAOC President. I want to give a big thanks to your Board of Directors for selecting me to serve in such a lofty position! I will be following in the large shoes of Nicholas Dunlap who was an outstanding President and is a leader in our industry. Thanks Nicholas for your service! I’ve had a long history with AAOC dating back to the early 1980’s and have seen our business change in many ways. Hence the subtitle: “Are the good days behind us”? Or are they ahead of us? I remember in the early to mid 80’s when investors we represented purchased a large property in Tustin for the unheard of price of $50,000 per unit. How much are your units worth today? I also remember the “experts” predicting
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Apartment News
that upwards of 10,000 new units would have to be built to keep up with the expected population growth. However the population in the OC exploded during that period from approximately 2M people to currently just over 3M people—or 50%! I don’t know how many units were built during that time, but it’s safe to say the number is fewer than 10,000 annually and not enough to keep up with this growth. Rents as we know have also risen dramatically since those early days to the point that the idea of rent control in Orange County gets thrown around by legislators and media alike. Moreover, rent control has been an issue AAOC and others had to strongly oppose and probably will have to fight against in the future. So are the good days behind us or are they indeed
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January 2017
ahead of us? To be continued… 2017 is shaping up to be another exciting year; Steve Duringer will speak to a full house at the January Membership meeting while Rent Control is tentatively scheduled for the February meeting. We will be adding content to the Legacy program to educate and address concerns that second and third generations might have about entering this business. And of course there’s our Trade Show in March. And that only covers the first quarter! Craig has been in the rental housing industry since 1981. He currently lives in San Clemente with his wife and enjoys traveling around the world.