Saturday, May 19, 2007

Ancient Cabrillo

Oldest north of Venice Blvd. at 173 days, and fifth oldest overall in the Ancient Listings of Palms-Mar Vista, is 3368 Cabrillo Blvd. Goes with the old conquistador Juan Cabrillo ( -1543) (or is that pushing the analogy too far?).

Well-priced new listings still sell fast. Let's see ... 3 bedrooms/2.75 baths for $1,095K (after a $55K reduction in April) in a nice location north of Palms, west of Centinela. No other sales on Cabrillo in the last 2 years. Sales within 2,000 feet in 2007 were 12624 Brooklake St., 3/1, 2/13/2007 for $800K and 12566 Woodbine St., 3/2, 3/20/2007 for $935K. So when's the next price reduction?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

To put this in proper perspective,
I grew up in this neighborhood.

My parents immigrated to the US in 1967 from Central America and shortly before they got their US Citizenship in 1972 they bought a 2 Bdrm, 1.5 bathroom house on 1/4 acre lot, with a swimming pool about 2 blocks away from this house. Our house cost a whopping $30K but houses on Cabrillo were selling for about $45K at the time. A refugee family from the Middle East bought one about 3 years after we did. We lost ours to an HELOC which turned me off them for life. I weep when I think about this because my current cell phone bill is more than my parents mortgage.

Our next door neighbor, a local custodian, was clever enough to buy the house on the other side of his when he and his wife divorced.

In short, these were not million dollar homes 30 years ago. They were (and still are) starter homes for people newly come to the middle class from other countries. My neighbors were blue collar workers in the aerospace industry. Most of the moms were stay at home moms, although as we got older the moms began taking part-time jobs to help accumulate the $300/credit tuition at UCLA.
The local schools (Walgrove, Mark Twain & Venice High) were tough and had gang/drug issues even then but... my graduating class had kids go off to MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley (with UCLA as a "safety school"). Our teachers were fearless and getting anything less than a 5 on an AP Caculus test made one an object of pity and derision.

The schools were sufficiently integrated then that they qualified as "Currently Integrated Schools" and allowed to opt out of LA's voluntary busing scheme.

When were these glory years? They were the 70's. Not that long ago, and certainly not long enough to account for a 30x run up in price.

This is a ridiculous market.