Feeling at Home With Antelope Valley Prices
Armando Franco sounded downright gleeful when he talked about spending 2 1/2 hours each day traveling between his home in Palmdale and his job in Maywood nearly 70 miles away.
“There are so many ways to get into L.A.,” the auto insurance broker said, excitedly ticking off various routes. There’s the state highway, surface streets to the interstate or the scenic Angeles Crest Highway.
Franco is a rare breed of commuter who claims to enjoy his daily excursion. The reason: his five-bedroom house on a quiet cul-de-sac that he purchased for $300,000 four months ago.
“That’s the beauty of the whole thing,” he said. “Moving here was my chance to buy a house.”
The Palmdale neighborhood of Carlton Ridge -- and others like it in the Antelope Valley -- is among the few left in L.A. County where new single-family houses fall under the county’s median price of $407,000.
“Anyone looking for an affordable home shouldn’t overlook the Antelope Valley,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “The big bugbear is the perceived distance to L.A.”
Lying in the shadow of Edwards Air Force Base, Palmdale is closer to the Kern County line than to Dodger Stadium, which is more than 60 miles away. Yet like the Inland Empire to the east, Palmdale has been an affordable alternative to Los Angeles for first-time home buyers like Franco for more than a generation.
Now, with prices at record highs in the desert communities, the area is turning into a move-up market as well.
“The dynamics are now different,” said Michelle Wolkoys, a building industry analyst with Meyers Group, a Costa Mesa company that tracks new-home sales. Local homeowners are cashing in on their homes’ equity and trading up to bigger, new homes in the area, she said.
Scott Johnson may be ready to move up.
A truck driver who lives in the Quartz Hill community near Lancaster, Johnson spent a recent Sunday visiting the guest center at the Anaverde master-planned community in Palmdale, where 5,000 homes are slated to be built over the next several years.
The first phase of 1,400 homes, which are expected to sell in the mid-$300,000s, is due to open next spring, and Johnson is eager to weigh his options.
As a commuter to the San Fernando Valley for the last 15 years, Johnson is looking to move closer to the 14 Freeway, and he senses that the timing may be right: The region’s booming housing market has increased the value of his current home and demand is high. “I won’t have any problem selling my house,” Johnson said.
Those trends are benefiting companies such as Forecast Homes. Forecast, a division of Hovnanian Enterprises Inc., the big New Jersey-based builder, is constructing seven tracts in the Antelope Valley that range from the low $300,000s to the high $500,000s. At Anaverde, Forecast has sold a handful of houses six months before the final nails are scheduled to be hammered into place.
“There’s a strong segment of the area that wants to move up now that they have sustainable equity,” said Michael Dwight, Hovnanian group vice president. “They want to buy larger homes in what they perceive to be better neighborhoods.”
The Antelope Valley is one of the few places where builders are “able to deliver homes that families can afford,” Dwight said. Of the 539 new homes sold in the region during the second quarter, 80% were priced between $300,000 and $400,000, according to Meyers Group.
“If you told me five years ago we would be selling homes there in the $300,000s,” Dwight said, “I would have called the men in the white coats to come and take you away.”
John Stewart can see why some might think the region’s home-appreciation rates are a little bit nutty.
The Palmdale resident last week accepted an offer for his four-bedroom, three-bath house on Eclipse Drive for about $300,000, almost three times what he paid for it seven years ago.
“It’s a good time to get out,” he said. Stewart, his wife, Shawna, and two of their three children are moving to Iowa, where they are buying a similar-sized house for $55,000.
“I can pay off the next house in cash and still have plenty of money to last a year,” said Stewart, who plans to start his own welding business.
For his part, Franco is just as happy to be staying put in Palmdale. The 37-year-old, his wife and their brood of five kids had been living with his parents in North Hollywood while he searched for a house.
Franco kept at it for eight months, traveling to communities throughout Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, before finding his two-story home on Denara Court, a short walk to a new elementary school and an aquatic park both set to open next year.
“With a big family you’ve got to have a big house,” he said. “But all the houses I was looking at were $600,000 or more. I got a big house in Palmdale for half that.”
