Realty Offerings Include a ‘Brooklyn Bridge’
Val Verde has its very own version of the Brooklyn Bridge--only in this case it really is for sale.
Eager buyers have been turning up lately at auctions to buy a piece of hilly land known as Tract 890, which was subdivided into hundreds of tiny lots in the early 1930s and marketed as ripe for oil speculation.
No oil was ever discovered there, and Los Angeles County planners say the vacant property is in a slide area, lacks utility hookups and adequate roads and is too steep to be developed unless the more than 400 owners consolidate their holdings. “It’s sort of a local nightmare,” said DeAnne Tippetts, a Val Verde real estate agent who refuses to list the property. “People see it advertised, hear the price and come in here excited all the time, thinking it’s got to be a deal.”
Keith Page, 45, of Encino, thought he had stumbled on a gold mine when he got a brochure from an auction company last month listing two 25-by-110-foot lots in Tract 890.
For a minimum bid of $600 per lot, he was going to buy them sight unseen, but a day off from laying carpet gave him a chance to drive up to the village in the Santa Clarita Valley.
“You’re a real sucker if you don’t go out there and take a look,” said Page, who decided against buying the lots. “Most of it is straight up and down.”
Tract 890 is one of many “paper tracts” or “ghost tracts” in California, said Robert Gilmore, managing deputy commissioner for the state Department of Real Estate.
Carved into minuscule pieces before zoning laws were passed in 1936 that regulated the minimum size of lots, these properties are “legally divided, but not divided in a practical sense,” Gilmore said.
Other areas in Los Angeles County with ghost tracts include Topanga Canyon, Kagel Canyon, Malibou Lakes and Green Valley, he said.
The lots are put on the auction block by real estate agents and even by the county, which sells them to the highest bidder if the owners default on their property taxes. The county and the auction companies include a disclaimer in their brochures saying that “no warranty is given as to the buildability or zoning of each parcel. . . buyer assumes full responsibility.”
“People are really starry-eyed, but 98% of what is available at auctions, including Tract 890, is like buying the Brooklyn Bridge,” said Morris Litwack, a county planner. “There are diamonds, but it’s tough finding them.”
There’s no shortage of people willing to sell pieces of Tract 890, though. Glendale developer Avedis Kasparian, for instance, recently bought 25 lots there for $37,500 and hopes to sell them when he starts his land auction business.
“Maybe some people who don’t know what from what will pay big money for it because it’s California land,” Kasparian said. “Though you never know, those lots could really be worth something someday.”
That’s what Barbara and Thomas Anderson of Granada Hills are hoping. They spent $20,400 recently on seven lots in Tract 890. Although they viewed the property, they are unsure of the exact location of their lots until it is surveyed. “Part of the tract is level and we’re hoping the lots we bought are in that part,” said Thomas Anderson, a police officer. “If not, I’ve learned an expensive lesson.”
Pedro Aguirre has less to lose. The Los Angeles produce company owner spent $2,200 for one lot in Tract 890 in February sight unseen.
“It’s like playing bingo or going to Vegas,” Aguirre said. “Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t.”
Realizing a profit on Tract 890 is not impossible but not likely to make you rich. In 1937, Kathleen Kelleher spent about $100 on two lots, hoping oil would be discovered, but no oil company ever even drilled there.
A land auction company recently offered her $1,200 for the property, a profit of $1,100 in 54 years.
