I wish I were a member of the growing juggernaut of elite achievers who can afford to buy beautiful houses in wonderful areas then raze the structures and build something much grander.\u00a0 This whole process either bespeaks a society of great wealth, energy, and imagination or foretells doom on the scale of sybaritic Romans who overate so their throats could be tickled with feathers to purge stomachs for more feasting.\u00a0 Unabashedly, I admit that the former explanation is likely correct, and only meager wage earners like myself are satisfied with, and utterly limited to, moving into a place and living in it as is.<\/p>\n
Recently I have seen and read about many vigorous home buyers who aren\u2019t really buying a home but the land under doomed dwellings.\u00a0 The supreme example of inspired crushing and rebuilding comes from the world\u2019s most compelling athlete, Tiger Woods.\u00a0 When Tiger is in contention, an otherwise dreary golf tournament becomes great drama.\u00a0 His rewards have been commensurate with his talent, and the 31-year old now earns more than $100 million a year.\u00a0 In 2005 he bought an estate north of Miami on Jupiter Island, \u201cthe world\u2019s most expensive zip code,\u201d for about $54 million.\u00a0 There are four houses on the lush seaside property, and the 25,000-square foot main house, a shack by the Tiger standard, has been slated for demolition.\u00a0 The fate of the two guest houses and beach residence has not been revealed.\u00a0 It will probably suffice to augment, rather than destroy, the two docks poised to host the golfer\u2019s 153-foot yacht, Privacy.<\/p>\n
Frenetic California has more smash-and-build buyers than any other state.\u00a0 As a former reader of the Hot Property feature in the Los Angeles Times real estate section, I was often awed when actors and actresses, directors, producers, publicists, and hairdressers came in and flattened a place most would consider a palace.\u00a0 Admittedly, compared to Tiger these entertainment employees were in the low-rent district, having jacked up a meager several million bucks, but their visionary zeal was commendable.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, inevitably, the seller is aggrieved by the destruction, but what can she do.\u00a0 In the late 1980\u2019s Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, at the suggestion of their real estate agent, had left autographed copies of books they\u2019d written during a decade in their Brentwood residence.\u00a0 The literary gifts may have helped consummate the deal, but a year later, when the buyer leveled her beloved home, Didion writes in The Year of Magical Thinking<\/em> that she felt like returning to reclaim her books.<\/p>\n Many people in stately Hancock Park, a few miles west of downtown Los Angeles, are aghast that buyers have been moving in and not only tearing down unique homes built decades ago but replacing them with sterile 6,000-square foot barns shoehorned into small lots and glaring down on everyone around.\u00a0 Space is less critical in communities like Atherton and Los Altos Hills south of San Francisco.\u00a0 The rapidly rich computer phenoms from the Silicon Valley often live there, and before moving in they have more authoritative versions of a conversation I had with a home-building supervisor in 2000.<\/p>\n \u201cAbout how much does it cost to move into this part of Los Altos Hills?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cA minimum of three to five million, but there aren\u2019t many of those,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s the maximum?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no maximum.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow much would this house cost?\u201d I asked, referring to the four-bedroom hilltop house where I was spending the weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one would buy this house.\u00a0 They\u2019d buy the land and build something nice.\u00a0 This property has one of the best views in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n In early August I visited my hometown Sacramento and decided to drive around some of my former neighborhoods.\u00a0 In upscale Sierra Oaks, nestled against the levee of the American River east of town, the old has often been superseded by the new.\u00a0 Numerous large wooden houses I\u2019d admired as a kid have disappeared and in their stead stand stone or stucco or brick residences that, on large lots, look well-designed and appropriate.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the Hancock Park model was used across the street from the house where I lived from fourth grade through high school. \u00a0In the late 1960\u2019s our neighbors enlivened their claustrophobic backyard by installing a jewel of a swimming pool.\u00a0 Now the water\u2019s gone and a garage provides an awkward base for an incongruous second floor window leering across the way.<\/p>\n Rebuilding is most common in affluent neighborhoods but not confined there.\u00a0 In forlorn North Sacramento, where I lived (not always prudently) for 14 years, an occasional nice new home has been built where a shabby one existed.\u00a0 This is also happening near downtown in economically-challenged Oak Park where on the western perimeter they\u2019re building some homes and remodeling others, and asking prices like $350,000 for a two bedroom place that, frankly, is within a Tiger Woods lag putt of distinctly dangerous areas.<\/p>\n Ultimately, I\u2019m probably envious of the rich, the affluent and even the stable lower-middle class, and the consistently good decisions they\u2019ve made about financial matters.\u00a0 Unlike them, I\u2019ve three times squandered real estate equity and other assets and currently cannot buy even a creaky house in a bad Bakersfield neighborhood.\u00a0 California is much too pricey for those who either altogether missed or unwisely bailed out of the real estate skyrocket.\u00a0 There is an option for people in my position.\u00a0 It\u2019s called renting.\u00a0 The Golden State is going to have an increasing percentage of people writing monthly checks to landlords, and so will other states that grow rapidly and become popular and therefore expensive.<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wish I were a member of the growing juggernaut of elite achievers who can afford to buy beautiful houses in wonderful areas then raze the structures and build something much grander.\u00a0 This whole process either bespeaks a society of great wealth, energy, and imagination or foretells doom on the scale of sybaritic Romans who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,72],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n