On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 21:49:37 GMT, "Ron Magen" wrote:

|Charlie,
|There was another article, I think it was in the same paper, or maybe
|the previous weekend's. Anyway, it discussed *CURRENT* prices in Calif.
|real estate.
|
|The lead was that $10 MILLION bought a 'tear down'. That is, the present
|house {more like a compound, from the photo} was leveled so that another
|monstrosity could be built. It continued that $15 MILLION got you a
|'starter mansion'.
|
|Offset this with the election rhetoric, and the nightly news, indicating
|that a large portion of the population has NO health insurance, is
|termed 'the working poor', lost their job - or live in fear of that
|possibility, and seem unlikely to be able to retire with any comfort.
|
|I'm must just be living in an alternate reality . . .

My younger daughter bought a 1-BR condo in Costa Mesa, CA for $95K
about five years ago. Currently, it's "worth" over 250K. The older
daughter bought a tract house in Brentwood, CA (the northern
Brentwood, not the OJ Brentwood) for about $200K four years ago. The
houses in her neighborhood are selling the day they hit the market for
$450K

Tucson, where I live is going the same way. A number of years ago,
IBM built a facility here and moved people in from CA and CO. They
were selling their houses for big bux and needed to reinvest the dough
or pay taxes on it. The real estate market here accommodated them by
doubling the price of housing overnight.

About 10 years ago, Hughes Aircraft (where I worked) bought the
missile business component of General Dynamics (San Diego, Pomona, CA)
and closed an engineering division in Conoga Park, CA and moved those
folks here. The same thing happened to the housing market.

We now have $1M building lots in this area and today's paper has open
house ads from just one real estate firm for 10 houses over $1M, two
of them listed by a friend of mine at $5.2M and $1.8M respectively.

Another friend lives in a gated community of upscale houses (he built
his) and has "neighbors" who own million dollar houses and have never
spent a night in them. They come here to visit some friend in the
neighborhood who convinces them to buy something here, so they write a
check.

Alternate reality indeed.