WHEN A home sells, it's news. The same thing is true for commercial property, vacant land and other types of real property.
Real estate sales are news for many reasons. Meanwhile, our job is to report the news, and we try to do it thoroughly.
While home sales are newsworthy, California law also provides that they are public, in that recorded deeds, along with the tax records that go with them, are available at the county courthouse and online at many websites. Therefore, the Carmel Pine Cone regularly reports all Monterey Peninsula real estate sales shown on recorded deeds. We will not omit a sale for any reason.
Under very limited circumstances, we will omit the name of a real estate buyer or seller shown on a recorded deed:
• When that person is a judge, prosecutor or police officer, or other public official whose duties might make them a target of retribution by a criminal.
• When the buyer or seller is protected by a current restraining order.
Those are the only circumstances under which we will hide the name of a buyer or seller.
If you want your name left out of our home sales report for any other reason, it is up to you to take the simple legal steps needed to keep your name off your deed; for example, by taking title via a trust, corporation or partnership. If you fail to do so, your name and address will be forever available online at the county website, along with many public record aggregation sites -- a fact that makes it pointless for The Pine Cone to omit it. Once you record a deed with your name on it, your privacy is gone, and there is nothing we can do to change that fact in any meaningful way.
Meanwhile, our readers have a strong interest in knowing about home sales in their community.
Accordingly, we will not omit names from home sales simply because the buyer or seller wants privacy, or for any reason except those stated above.
I apologize for any inconvenience caused by this policy. We believe such inconvenience is outweighed by the benefit to the public of being fully informed about real estate sales in their neighborhood.
Please do not ask us for exceptions. However, if you have a home sale that meets one of our criteria for special handling and you would like the name of the buyer or seller omitted from our real estate sales listings, please send the relevant information (reason person requires privacy, date escrow closed, address and name of buyer/seller to be omitted) to me via email NO MORE THAN THREE DAYS AFTER THE CLOSE OF ESCROW. If you wait, there's a good chance your request will be received after your sale has already been reported, and we never make changes to past editions except to correct factual errors.
Thank you,
Paul Miller, publisher
Copyright, Carmel Communications, Inc.