Can SLO County home sellers afford to stay in the area? Here’s what 1 couple did
Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of a two-part column about two adventurous families and the Cambria home that united them. Part 2 will focus on retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Bill Edmonds and his family.
When Kyle and Amby Ronemus decided to sell their Cambria home, their original plan had been to rent in the same North Coast community after the sale until Amby retired from her nursing job.
For 18 years, they had lived in the 1,700-square-foot Fern Drive home tucked high on a heavily forested hill overlooking a nature preserve, raising their two sons Chance and Thor there.
The Ronemuses decided that buying another home in the small seaside town they’d loved for so long wasn’t an option, given the dramatic rise in housing prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It didn’t make fiscal sense for the couple on the brink of retiring to sell one Cambria home and shovel all the proceeds into another one.
The Ronemus couple was far from alone in their residential dilemma.
This has been a great year so far for those selling homes in scenic San Luis Obispo County, but a tougher one for those who want to buy one. It’s also been a dismal period for renters whose residences are being sold out from under them because the market is so hot.
Some landlords want to sell now while working remotely is still a tempting lure, and the short-term vacation rental industry is booming on the North Coast.
While soaring list prices seem to be softening a tad, according to a business report, at the Sept. 15 North Coast Advisory Council meeting, some buyers are still upbidding quickly on prime properties.
Many tenants being bounced out of their leased or rented homes wind up having to move out of town.
Those displaced renters say they simply can’t afford to live here anymore. And even if they could, the stock of available rentals is just about nil.
“My friends are being evicted after living in this house for 10 years,” one Cambria woman posted on social media in mid-August. “They have been looking EVERYWHERE!!! Here ... Atascadero ... Paso. They have never missed their rent, and they work hard here in Cambria. There are no (long-term) rentals here. Pretty soon we won’t be able to find anyone to work for us because they have moved away.”
Her friends, she wrote, “might have to move out of California. This is a trend that Cambria is moving towards. We need to help others who want to work here, send their kids to school here, be able to live here.”
That lack of long-term rental properties also affects residents who’ve sold their homes — only to fail to find affordable Central Coast rentals in which to live while they consider their options.
Family moves from Cambria to Colorado
A yearning for adventure is in the Ronemus family’s DNA.
As a young man, Kyle Ronemus got free passage to Tasmania by working on a freighter, then hitchhiked across Australia and worked in Perth. He flew to Bali and backpacked through Southeast Asia, India, Burma and Nepal.
He then toured with his mom through Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia, traveling by motorcycle and then aging station wagon.
He and his wife eventually moved to the Central Coast.
During their Cambria years, Kyle worked in radio and later co-owned KKJL 1400 AM San Luis Obispo. Five years ago, he and his partners sold the radio station, popularly known as K-Jewel, but he still handles several radio advertising accounts.
Amby has been an registered nurse for more than 35 years, and will be able to retire within about five years or so.
Now in their early 60s, Kyle and Amby Ronemus are better off than many Cambria ex-pats.
They bought an investment home in Ridgway, Colorado, in 2000. They’d rented it for a dozen years, lived in it for four years and rented it as a vacation home for four years.
They “refinanced, remodeled and still owe what we paid for it,” Kyle wrote via text. “But like Cambria, Ridgway is a very desirable area, situated between Telluride and Ouray,” and the home’s equity has increased “even though our mortgage hasn’t decreased.”
During the last four years, Kyle and Amby moved back to Cambria, in part so younger son Thor, now 22, could spend his senior year at Coast Union High School.
Kyle explained that Thor wanted to play sports and graduate with the schoolmates he’d known since kindergarten. Kyle and Amby had also been active for years in Cambria youth sports.
Thor had hopes of winning a state title in basketball or baseball. He and his teammates made it to the semifinals in the former sport, but were off their game a bit because the team bus got stuck in Los Angeles traffic.
With a year at Coast Union, Thor qualified for resident rates at Cal Poly.
Kyle texted that Thor graduated with honors this spring in experience industry management. He is now living with his girlfriend, Caroline Roos, in Boulder, Colorado, in a home that’s been in her family since she was 1 year old.
In Ridgeway, Kyle and Amby are close enough to the younger folks, but not too close.
Son Chance, 24, an expert climber, is working on his doctorate in geology at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Photos of Chance’s extreme mountain-climbing exploits have graced Kyle’s Facebook page for years.
Chance has conquered peaks ranging from Half Dome and El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, which he climbed at age 16, to the three highest mountains in Alaska and others in the Andes.
In an odd way, a climbing challenge led in part to the Ronemus family’s decision to sell their house.
Kyle’s previous hip surgery and a wonky knee meant that he won’t always be able to manage the 40 steps leading to the front door of the Fern Drive home.
While there’s always sadness in closing a life chapter, there’s the thrill of planning ahead for the next one.
The Ronemus family’s ultimate goal is to build a second, smaller house on their 7-acre Colorado property and go back to vacation-renting their 1,900-square-foot home there.
“I’m currently researching the possibility of doing something like a small Stepladder Ranch on our property,” Kyle texted, “perhaps with goats, miniature animals, chickens, a couple of alpacas and maybe a yak or two. Big garden, too. Visitors would have a unique farm experience at the base of the Cimarrons.
“I thought about doing that plan for years, but reality happened. We’ll see. It would be fun to pull it off.”
The couple also owns a couple of acres in Paradise Valley, Arizona, about an hour southwest of Phoenix.
“We plan to spend some of January and February there and on the Central Coast” each year, Kyle texted, with the snowbirds moving their RV between campgrounds in Arizona, Morro Bay and San Simeon.
Meanwhile, Kyle and Amby have been keeping in touch with Bill and Cheryl Edmonds, who bought Ronemus family’s Fern Drive home in June.
Bill and Cheryl Edmonds “love the house,” Kyle texted. “And they’re younger. They can handle those stairs, the landscaping upkeep … and they’ll have a spot to raise a variety of small animals and have a nice garden in the future.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 10:05 AM with the headline "Can SLO County home sellers afford to stay in the area? Here’s what 1 couple did."
