I am a lender who received through a default an airpark in the Reno, NV area. I have been trying unsuccessfully for several months to find a local real estate agent with the expertise to market this project. Can you recommend to me a resource?

“I have a hangar beside my home (Lynden, WA) that I am building. 2000 sq ft with 17′ walls. Looking for ideas other than sheetrock to clad the interior walls. I’m thinking T1-11 on the bottom 8′ then corrugated metal above that. Any photo’s, ideas or places to get ideas. Thanks.”

“The two most important things that make a sod field serviceable are the quality of the sub-grade and the drainage.  My civil engineering company used a similar product for an area of vehicle parking we designed for Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas.  If the Airfield in question has a good draining sub-grade this product should work well.  If however the subgrade is clay the field should be first crowned and graded to quickly remove rainwater before any type of reinforcing is added.  The type of reinforcing shown will be of marginal value if the field is rutted or has soft spots. Your money would be better spent stabilizing the subgrade.  Without more detail I can’t provide any more specific recommendations.”

The company is out of England with a North American office in Toronto, Ontario office. The website has an “airfields” section. Please post your comment below.

Answer from Dave Sclair: You are correct in your assumption that private-owned, public-use airports don’t seem to be affected. Accepting a state grant for improvements might not be a problem either, although before getting into such an agreement it would be highly intelligent to have the agreements checked out for attachments to the FAA.

I am looking for experiences and suggestions pertaining to residential airparks where a developer or individual owns the underlying land of the runway(s), taxiways, roads and other common areas. In my particular instance, the primary Home Owners Association (HOA) is chartered with maintaining these areas and has collectively paid for paving the runway, adding runway lights, grading and fill of graveled areas, etc. Attorneys have told the HOA that they are responsible for safety by this action of maintaining the runway and common areas, and less-so the underlying land owner.

Our underlying land owner is a resident pilot and dues-paying HOA member. However he is reluctant to relinquish his overall control. This has already caused conflicts where residents feel his actions on his land adjacent to the runway (declared right-of-way and easement) create an unsafe aviation condition, but are powerless to change it. The HOA is never consulted beforehand either. In addition, our small airpark with about 25 owners has three separate HOA/covenant boundaries which were determined when each area was sold. The irrigation and trash users are also separate entities.

I have heard some stories that had non-HOA owned underlying land, but the underlying owner had either defaulted on loan or taxes, or sold to another who was less “aviation friendly” and major legal battles have then ensued. Personal tragedy happens every day with unexpected results, so our current owner’s level of cooperation may not always be there.

Although we receive no federal funds, the recent FAA policy change for federally obligated airports and treating any airpark homeowners as “through-the-fence” (TTF) operations is also worrisome. It does not take much imagination to get TSA similarly involved and then worried about those non-vetted pilots living at an airport yet possibly being a potential national security risk. If the HOA owned the underlying land, then residents are no longer TTF.

Since our HOA owns no land and does not pay taxes, it has a limited voice when dealing with county and other government levels too. New taxes and insurance may be small price to pay for increased control with overall airpark land ownership.

So please reply if you have some thoughts or help on the subject of underlying land ownership.

Charlie Masters from Sandy’s Farm Airpark sandysairpark@sportys.com said to contact you.

I live on a modest little airport community 18 mi. north of Tampa FL. called Tampa North Aeropark (X 39). Before this Sub-Prime Mortgage Fiasco hit the fan the market value of my 4 bedroom 3 full-bath country-style hangar home was approximately $440,000. Now I can’t get an appraisal up over $250,000.00. It seems “they” do everything they can to purposely de-value my place. My loan officer told me Bank of America is holding so many foreclosure properties they have de-valued everything in the market so they can unload their inventory.

My biggest hurdle is the COMPS. The Appraisers don’t know how to appraise “Airport Community Homes”, They just don’t see the VALUE of living with your plane on a runway. They want to compare my place with a run-of-the-mill home in the area. More than likely sold real cheap & fast so the seller could get out from under a sub-prime mortgage and/or they lost their employment during this fiasco the Banks caused to the world economy.

My question to you is . . . Do you have knowledge of this happening elsewhere ? If so . . . What is being done to address it ?

Could you direct my path to Real Estate Appraisers that know what they’re doing ? I don’t care if they’re in other states. They might know useful stratigies and have connections that could help me here. This might be an area for your “Living with your Plane” to address at this time.

Answer: Thanks for your letter. I understand your predicament and although it doesn’t help much, there are many others facing similar situations as yours. Unfortunately, during the boom years in the residential home mortgage market some appraisers didn’t do their job properly: they found out what the requested loan was and the resulting appraisal in far too many instances came out high enough to allow the loan. Today, with banks and mortgage firms under a lot of pressure from federal agencies, the appraisers must be much more accurate in their reports.
When you couple the pressure on the appraisers with the slowdown or meltdown in home values, you find appraisals are coming in much lower now than a few years ago. And, as you have discovered, airpark homes are not all that common which makes it difficult for appraisers to come up with legitimate comparable sales. And, most appraisers don’t have the foggiest notion of a residential airpark (just like insurance agents and mortage companies) so that makes the situation doubly perilous.

We have encouraged mortgage lenders and appraisers both to start looking at online sites like Zillow as a source for comps. Zillow maintains an extensive database of home sales and usually you can find sales within a reasonable distance of your property with which to compare square footage, amenities, etc. I encourage appraisers to compare airpark homes with golf course homes as a means of establishing comps. Not an exact science, but neither is the appraisal business.

Click on Resources section of the Living With Your Plane website and you will find a variety of professionals who hopefully can assist you in your efforts.

Please keep us posted on your situation.

“What does ‘Through the Fence’ mean? My local GA field has imposed a fee on through the fence operations. I have always understood that ‘through the fence’ applied to operations taking an aircraft through a gate onto or off of the field. The local GA field appears to wish to impose fees on any business located off field which comes through any gate to do anything. Can you cite me to an authoritative FAA definition?”

Answer: Thru The Fence refers to the practice of moving aircraft to or from an airport located adjacent to the property where an individual or firm has a building or home. Although there often is no actual fence, the term still applies. On Public-owned and Public-use airports this issue sometimes becomes more involved when the airport sponsor accepts federal funding from the FAA.

Many airports charge landing fees, tiedown and hangar fees. If an airport is public owned, the airport commission or other controlling agency can usually assess fair fees for use of the field. Obviously, if the airport is privately owned, the airport owner can charge whatever that owner feels is appropriate.

Airports that have accepted federal funding are required to be open and available to all users on an equal basis and it is usually this requirement that results in fees for off airport individuals or businesses wanting to enter the field to do business in competition with airport tenants who pay rental or other fees.

As I mention above, private fields can operate in whatever manner they wish.

Public owned fields are usually controlled by a local governing authority which sets rules and fees.

Finally, public owned airports that have accepted FAA grants are required to be available to all but assess fees that are equitable for all users.

I hope this helps.

“We own a 7000 foot runway as part of a closed military base. Do you have any links to qualified firms that can advise on the feasibility of an airpark? Thanks!”

Dave responded with:

I would contact BCRA Design, a large, multi-faceted engineering, design, planning firm. Email: jbrown@bcradesign.com or call 253-627-4367. Good luck and keep us posted on how your project develops. You can also search our resources listings.

We had a hearing on August 4th and the ruling from the bench was that the CAP did not “affect” the interest in real property. The defense the City took was that there were no changes with the CAP, they just were now going to enforce what they never enforce before. I do not feel our attorneys did a good job of showing that this was a definite change from the status quo which was the sole defense. Basically, we were out lawyered.

On a brighter note, we do have a full trial scheduled for either November or February. Mediation will only occur if the FAA participates which has a slim and none chance.

The bottom line will be how the City enforces the issue plus the issue of property values. We need to carry on this fight with the FAA since they are the source of the problem and this will be expanded to other regions and my bet is, to other private airports. The logical expansion will be that if you fly to a FAA funded airport from a private airport, you will have to go through some type of screening process.

Brent Blue
Driggs, Idaho