Every time I go to a Gelson’s market in Calabasas, which isn’t very often, I pass a cactus garden and walled house and yard. In August 2020 I finally took my camera and stopped to walk through the garden and photograph it and the gated entrance. Now a local newspaper had called it the “Cactus House.” The paper reported that The house features four bedrooms and four baths in 4,667 square feet. The walled compound also has two decks overlooking a koi pond and pool.
The view as you drive by.
After you have driven by the entrance to the walled compound is on a side road that is not easily seen. I took a total of 14 pictures of the cactus and palm garden along with the entrance.
The property is estimated by Zillow at just over $2 million and is not for sale now. Photos were taken in 2020.
If you are not a resident of Canada but want to buy a piece of real estate in British Columbia or Ontario you must pay a tax of 20% of the purchase price. The tax was implemented to discourage foreign buyers who have driven up demand.
That is not the situation in the United States but that kind of tax should be implanted. Los Angeles area Southern Regional Association of Realtors, Inc. published an article in the Los Angeles Times Advertising Supplement on Saturday August 6, 2022 reporting that sales to foreign buyers is up 8.5%. International buyers purchased $59 billion worth of U.S. residential properties from April 2021 to March 2022.
In the Los Angeles area San Gabriel Valley is a well known area where Chinese buyers have bought homes where they do not reside.
Forbes magazine reports July 19, 2022. Anyone who bought a home – or tried to – over the past couple of years knows that it was rip-roaringly competitive, with bidding wars and all-cash deals. But it actually could have been worse. One group all but disappeared from the market during the pandemic: foreign buyers with mega millions. But now foreign real estate investments are slowly coming back, according to a new survey from the National Association of Realtors.
Ensuring affordable housing for all Americans is not on the agenda in Congress but it should be.
Los Angeles (CNN) Jolinn Bracey slept in her Toyota Corolla for five years until she put homelessness in her rearview mirror by moving into a tiny home.
Bracey, 48, is one of 41 residents of The Chandler Boulevard Bridge Home Village in North Hollywood, California, which provides transitional housing for the homeless.
“This has given me a place to reconfigure myself and build up to my new home,” Bracey told CNN. “It put me back into practice of being consistent in the normal things that you do. It grounds you.”
Bracey moved into the 64-square-foot home in February. It features a bed, air conditioner, racks to hang her colorful clothes and, most importantly, a door that locks.
“It’s the first time in a long time that I don’t feel like someone is going to come up on me,” said Bracey.
She said a fire in a house she once owned and an unfair eviction at a place she rented led her into homelessness.
There are more than 41,000 homeless people in the city of Los Angeles, according to the last count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, an independent, joint powers authority created by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles mayor and City Council.
Villages like Chandler aim to chip away at that number by placing formerly homeless people in protected, fenced-off communities.
At Chandler, case managers can offer residents help for anything from drug and alcohol abuse and mental health issues, to navigating the complexities of job applications, health insurance and more.
“We’re dealing with people at the worst moment of their lives,” said Rowan Vansleve, president of Hope of the Valley, the non-profit that operates Chandler and other tiny home villages in the Los Angeles area.
“It’s really humbling to say, ‘I can’t feed myself. I can’t house myself. I can’t get a hot shower.'”
Vansleve says new residents revel in that first shower on site and calls hot water and great soap “magic” that helps residents feel like a better person.
The residents are also fed three meals a day.
“We do everything we can to make this site welcoming. We call it the ‘Love Club,'” Vansleve added.
Despite the nickname, the village does have rules. At the top of the list is no weapons or drugs allowed on campus, and paraphernalia must be checked at a locker outside.
Hope of the Valley says residents live in the homes for free and can stay as long as they are on a pathway to permanent housing, which counselors estimate takes three to six months.
Vansleve said the strategy is to take people off the streets within just a few miles of the tiny home village, not from other parts of Southern California, such as Skid Row.
“That way, people in the neighborhood see less homeless, less trash, less crime, fewer drug users roaming around,” he added. “I think these villages should spread across the country like Starbucks — be in every community.”
Vansleve says the tiny home villages are built on small parcels, many repurposed city properties. The Chandler complex sits on just half an acre.
An Everett, Washington, company called Pallet, which specializes in small shelter homes for homeless or temporary housing, built the homes for the Chandler village. The company estimates the minimum cost of each home to be $5,495.
Pallet reports it has helped build 44 tiny home villages, most on the West Coast, with 13 projects in the pipeline.
Hope of the Valley aims to house more than 900 people by November, Vansleve said.
Completely out of view from any passersby, Chandler resident Todd Dumanski loaded his laundry at the row of stacked washers and dryers
.”I’ve been a heroin abuser and polysubstance abuser almost my entire life,” Dumanski said.
Dumanski, 36, said he once amassed a net worth of well over a million dollars by founding a vitamin and supplement company in the Philadelphia area. But he said business misfortune and his drug use eventually put him on the streets after a move to Los Angeles.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” he said, “because a lot of people (addicts) died.”Dumanski described a dark homeless underworld filled with debilitating or lethal drug abuse, rampant theft, all forms of violence including sexual assault against women and men, and bullets flying.
“I got shot at six times, by a revolver, by three gang members,” Dumanski said.”They were young, maybe 18 to 24 years old. They shot at me because they wanted my spot for one of their friends who would soon become homeless.”
Dumanski said he had built an elaborate shelter near the 170 Freeway, hidden from view, and he had rigged up a grill.
Now, Dumanski lives in a tiny home less than a mile away, with little more than his bed, toiletries and a huge water jug with a handle that he lifts to add to his workouts.
“I like to throw everything in one backpack,” Dumanski said. “I don’t attach emotions to material stuff. Technically from the outside I have nothing, but I feel I have everything. “
Dumanski once had a house and a BMW — but also feelings of depression and suicide, he said.”
You give me tens of thousands of dollars, that isn’t going to help me right now,” Dumanski said. “I’m right where I want to be right now. I know what I have to do moving forward. This place has been a game changer, man.”
Each tiny home is different. The interior style ranges from Dumanski’s minimalist white to Bracey’s kaleidoscopic flickers of purples, reds, aqua and more.
“My décor is just me — I’m colorful, funky,” Bracey declared. “I think outside the box.
“Inside her tiny home, Bracey dreamed out loud about getting a bachelor’s degree and spinning all the good will she found at Chandler onto people who are currently homeless.
She says she’s two classes away from finishing up an associate degree at Los Angeles Valley Community College.”
I just want to help everybody not go through what I went through,” Bracey said.
At the end of the month, Bracey said, she plans to move into an apartment. It will be just down the street, not far from the parking garage where she used to sleep in her car.
I assigned myself the project of photographing the interesting buildings of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The photo collection includes office buildings, theaters, and places of worship. Thus far I have a collection of photos in what is generally called the mid-Wilshire area that primarily is also called Koreatown. I have photos of the property once known as the Ambassador Hotel, that should have been preserved, the Wiltern Theater and the Bullock’s building (a famous upscale department store now long gone). It has taken three trips to the area and as I am quite old the walking has been difficult.
Included in that area is the Wilshire Boulevard Temple (Jewish Reform). The doors were locked and tours are by appointment only according to the temple’s website. It is an enormous structure topped by a large a Byzantine revival dome. Today’s Jewish community primarily lives in West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley although most areas of the city do have synagogues.
Wilshire Boulevard Temple serves as the third home of the Congregation B’nai B’rith, which was founded in 1862 and is the oldest Jewish congregation in Los Angeles. The congregation left each of its first two synagogues, both located downtown and both now demolished, as its size grew and as the city moved westward. The congregation purchased property at the corner of Wilshire and Hobart Boulevards in 1921.
At the time, the Mid-Wilshire area was an upper-class suburban enclave with great commercial promise, sometimes called the “Fifth Avenue of the West.” Religious organizations of all denominations followed their members here as they moved west from downtown, and most of the churches were grand and impressive. That accounts for the fact that other religious organizations also build beautiful churches in that immediate area.
Because the immediate surrounding community is now primarily Korean and Hispanic the synagogue has decided to retain the facility but provide services for the non-Jewish. The community outreach has been recognized by local leaders, who hope it will become a model for other organizations as well.
The photo of the exterior is mine. The interior photo posted by the temple.
Owners would have to pay assessments ranging from $80,190 for one-bedroom units to $336,135 for the owner of the building’s four-bedroom penthouse, a document sent to the building’s residents said. The deadline to pay upfront or choose paying a monthly fee lasting 15 years was July 1. The association had just $800,000 in reserves.
The building was in a desirable location. Owners pocketed impressive returns when sold. All, except one apartment, sold for more than double the purchase price. Unit 508, a 1,683-square-foot condo sold for $800,000 in February, more than doubling its 2012 sale price of $370,000.
When a development’s homeowner’s’ association (HOA) encounters large or unexpected expenses, the HOA needs money to repair or replace the damage. For example, what if a clubhouse roof starts leaking, the pool needs resealing, or a piece of equipment in the fitness room breaks down? At times like these, it is wise for HOAs to have a reserve account.
House in my neighborhood, asking price $800,000. Similar to the price of a condo.
Reserves for single family homes isn’t a bad idea either. When the bathroom tub backed up in my home the plumber said he needed to install a drain cleaning opening under the house. After he crawled under the house he reported that the main sewer line was leaking in many places. Cost for replacing the sewer system under the house was $5,000. There was no reserve fund. There was the retirement investments and that paid the bill. A similar situation resulted in installing new copper plumbing for another $5,500. Termites are lurking and the roof is 30 years old.
Owning a house is expensive but it provides us a place for both privacy and fun.
I don’t live in a condo so I personally am not concerned with condominium maintenance. My mother lived in senior community that maintained the outside of the buildings and the grounds. The management company provided hotel vouchers when all residents were required to leave when the exterior of buildings needed painting.
I’ve known a few people who have had water leaks in their units. Both were resolved but it did require involvement of building management.
Now that we have viewed the events in Surfside Florida everyone is concerned about their condo and townhouse homes. Just one day after an investigation by CBS2’s David Goldstein exposed potential problems at a Marina Del Rey condo, building inspectors were on the scene Thursday to survey the property. This property consists of two 65 story buildings. That brought out county public works department to conducts an inspection.
It might be frightening but everyone living in shared facilities throughout the country are likely to demand repairs.
Los Angeles has many places of historic significance that many Angelenos are not familiar with. Historic Bunker Hill was a community of wealthy people with very large sumptuous homes overlooking the downtown that was abandoned as the wealthy moved west to Hancock Park and Beverly Hills. The Bunker Hill homes were ultimately torn down and the area became an area of high rise office buildings.
Forgotten but still there is a group of mansions in what became known as Angelino Heights. Carroll Ave Victorian Era Residents were built in the 1880s and 1890s. Many were destroyed when the Hollywood Freeway was built. There are no signs directing sightseers to the street. The house that sits at 1345 Carroll Ave in Angelino Heights is known as the Sanders House and is most famous for being featured as the spooky setting for Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video. The 3,532-square-foot Queen Anne style house was originally built for a local warehouse operator named Michael Sanders in 1887. Many are occupied and none are open for tours. The two block street is lined with the mansions. The street is not gated and anyone can park there.
I learned of the street when we signed up for a city tour. This was not the tour offered in the front of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. The tour gave us only a drive-by. Later on my own I drove around the neighborhood for about a half hour before finding the street.
The community of Calabasas has eclipsed Beverly Hills in Bloomberg’s annual ranking of the richest cities in the United States. The average household income in Calabasas is $194,010, more than twice the national average – and about $4,000 higher than Beverly Hills. Calabasas actually has fewer residents than Beverly Hills, checking in at a little over 24,000 compared to Beverly Hills’ 34,600. The Calabasas Country Club cites the “celebrity factor” as a reason to live there. Celebrities such as the Kardashians, Drake, Will Smith, Katie Holmes and Justin Bieber have all called Calabasas home. Currently at least 20 entertainment celebrities live in Calabasas.
Bloomberg reported Zillow states the median home price in Calabasas is $1.19 million, while it’s $2.76 million in Beverly Hills. “What you pay $20 million for in Hidden Hills you’re going to have to pay $50 million in Holmby Hills,” said Tomer Fridman, a luxury real estate agent who works with the Kardashians. The most expensive listing in Calabasas according to the report is a $32 million mansion in The Oaks gated community within another gated community.
Yes, you go through two gates to reach some homes. First you pass by the gate house where you provide identification before the gate is opened. The guard will provide a passcode to open the second gate that is located another mile down the road.
Barry Williams has a net worth of $2 million dollars. As an actor, he is best known playing Greg on The Brady Bunch. There is no info on the outstanding loan he had on the property.
Information on the LA Times web site says the house has four bedrooms and has little over 2,800 square feet.
A mausoleum like structure designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright is identified by the Los Angeles Times as iconic. It is really a Grotesque structure that makes a great movie set. Its exotic style has made it a destination filming location for films such as “Blade Runner,” “Rush Hour,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “The Karate Kid Part III.” In its favor the house provides a terrific view of Los Angeles and plenty of room for fabulous costume parties.
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