My parents bought a deep lot in South Pasadena after WWII for $2,000. With some friends, my dad built a small 2 BR house on it. Several years later they got a contractor to add on a master bedroom and living room to the front of the small house. Mom died many years ago, and dad finally died a couple years ago at age 100. My brother and I subsequently sold the place for $1.5 million.
Although, honestly, I can't imagine what it's like living in Mojave. No thanks (for me)!Why on earth would someone like me, at 66 ever want to sell? This place has been paid for for 5 years and last year at 65, our property tax was frozen, then we got a substantial property tax drop this year. We old folks can't come close to what we have for what we'd have to sell for. Our property, along with everything else has appreciated considerably from it's value when we built 15 years ago.
John, are you in the town of Mohave on Hwy 14? In the 1950s, my dad speculatively purchased quite a lot of property throughout SoCal, including Santa Barbara, Oceanside, & Pasadena where we lived. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1959 at the age of 46. My mom remarried nine years later when I was sixteen, and my step-dad sold all the properties to help fund an early retirement - with the exception of two five acre parcels in the desert that essentially had no value. One was east of 29-Palms near Joshua Tree National Monument, while the other was north of Mohave near Cantil & the current Honda test track. When my mom passed away in 2016, my sister & I inherited the properties, and they were still worth next to nothing! I’m in Oregon & my sister is in Florida, so we couldn’t reasonably keep an eye on them. We might have kept them just for fun, but then we started worrying about squatters & perhaps being responsible someday for a massive clean-up operation. By 2018, we’d sold both properties, but part of me wishes we’d kept them, as years ago my wife & I would pass through the Mohave area on our way to visit her family in Phoenix during the holidays. I fondly recall how we’d drive all night, and seemed to always hit it with the sun rising on the horizon, and a beautiful scene unfolding before us. But then again, it was December!
My disdain for driving to visit my boys is becoming an issue as I no longer have the patience, or the nerve for D/FW driving. We drove right through the middle of it last Friday headed to West Texas for a hunting trip, and my "nerves of steel" brother, who was driving, was going nuts at the craziness.....85 mph bumper to bumper, and if it's not like Talladega, it's a traffic jam. I no longer do it alone, and am fine with my wife, or a passenger along to help me watch traffic and navigate. But if I could, I'd never leave my little country world out here.John,
Back in 1999, to afford buying a house in the San Francisco Bay Area, the bank told me I qualified for homes east around Tracy (90 miles away) or north in the Fairfield area (60 miles northeast). So, I bought in the 60 miles away area.
My wife and I like visiting the Mojave area, but I don't think we would live there. We usually stay there passing through on our way to or from Death Valley or Joshua Tree.
Um, no.
