The Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

We're hitching a ride with Sherman and Mr. Peabody in the Wayback Machine today to revisit a time when homebuilders couldn't keep up with demand in Southern California as buyers flocked to get their piece of the American Dream.

Long Beach Press-Telegram columnist Tim Grobaty recalls in today's edition the ads for developments in the Los Altos and Lakewood Plaza neighborhoods during the early 1950s. The sales pitches were breathless — and so were the prices.

"THEY'RE ALL RUNNING TO LOS ALTOS VILLAGE!," hollered an Independent, Press-Telegram ad in 1952. "Join the crowd," the ad exhorted." Pay less money down and have easier monthly terms in the beautifully planned L.S. Whaley community....TIME IS FLEETING...THEY'RE SELLING FAST...COME OUT EARLY TODAY, AHEAD OF THE CROWD."

And you bet there were crowds. It was as though families were beamed down from space, fully formed. Ones such as ours when our family moved in, with a husband and wife, a daughter and a son — the dog would come soon — looking for what some have called with varying degrees of irony, the promised land.

Grobaty also writes about another ad that detailed the quality of the homes of Lakewood Plaza, a  series of tracts to the north of Los Altos. A down payment of $450, with monthly payments of $60.98, bought a home with such details as:

• Two baths with stall shower.
• A wall of windows opening onto a paved terrace.
• A living room wall of ash or Philippine mahogany.
• Built-in breakfast nook (equipped with "conver-tables" that folded every which way).
• Two car detached or attached garage.
• Dual wall furnaces.
• Zolatone, the new grease- and dirt-repellent paint.
• And electric Thermador bathroom heaters.

The homes ranged from under $10,000 up to $12,000 for more "luxurized" mode.

Finally, the piece pays homage to the developer.

The mastermind of all of Los Altos — virtually the entire New East as well as the earlier northward expansions of Long Beach — was a young Nebraska transplant Lloyd S. Whaley, who, through his Home Investment Co., began erecting entire neighborhoods in the late 1930s.

His projects included Ridgewood Heights, Country Club Manor, Wrigley Terrace, Wrigley Heights, and, as he moved into the '50 s and eastward, Los Altos Terrace, University Manor, the tremendously upscale Park Estates (where he built his own home on Bryant Road) and, most sprawling of all, Los Altos Village.

It would be interesting to be able to set the controls for the Wayback Machine into the future to read what nostalgic writers 50 years from now will be writing about the homes of today.

State Report Finds CA 'Dramatically Undersupplied for Housing'

A new report by the Department of Housing and Community Development reveals that California still faces a lack of housing. UPDATE: The report can be downloaded here.

According to an article in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the study, "The State of Housing in California 2011: Supply and Affordability Problems Remainm" reveals that California lacks an adequate supply of housing in the right locations that is affordable to families, California's work force and its special-needs populations.

Said Steve Johnson, who oversees the Southern California office of Metrostudy, a real estate information and consulting firm:

We are dramatically undersupplied for housing. I think housing has already been stretched. Appreciation in the rental markets is up and rental occupancy rates are high. It's at about 94 percent in the Inland Empire.

Four major demographic groups will be driving the housing market over the next decade, the report said:

• Older baby boomers, who will live longer than previous generations and constitute a senior population unprecedented in size.
• Younger baby boomers, many of whom may be unable to sell their current suburban homes to move to new jobs.
• Generation Y, which will be renting housing far longer than their predecessors in past generations, partly because of high college debt.
• And immigrants and their children, many of whom will want to move to the suburbs but may find housing there too expensive, even after the current drop in prices.

BIASC Names Mark Knorringa as New CEO

The BIA of Southern California announced today that it has named veteran homebuilder and association executive Mark Knorringa as its new CEO. The L.A./Ventura Chapter is one of four that are part of BIASC.

Knorringa, 61, has worked in the industry for more than 35 years as a builder, developer and association executive. Most recently, he has been the Executive Officer of the Riverside County Chapter since 2008 and was named BIASC’s Executive Officer of Year in 2010.

“Strong leadership and member involvement are critical as BIASC continues to fight for homeownership and the professionals that work hard every day to deliver the American Dream,” said Bob Yoder, President of the Southern California Division of Shea Homes and this year’s BIASC President.

“Mark has a unique perspective given his breadth of experience in Southern California. He understands the business and the impacts that legislation and regulations have on members, and he has the organizational skills we need to continue providing members with valuable programs and services.” 

You can read the rest of the press release here.

8 Years and $4 Million Later, Construction to Begin

An article from the San Jose Mercury News details very clearly why so many projects in California take so long to get built and why they often cost so much.

In this case, a former UC agricultural research facility in Santa Clara was deemed surplus in the late '90s and purchased by Bay Area builder SummerHill Homes in 2003.

But the neighbors didn't like the idea of the land being developed, so they eventually got an initiative on the ballot to block it. They lost. Then they filed suit under CEQA, the state's oft-abused environmental law, but lost that battle, too.

Here's how the paper's Julia Sudek put it.

In fact, the president of SummerHill Homes is more than fed up with the neighbors who caused the eight-year delay. While Robert Freed respects the neighbors' right to express their opinion and attempt "to see their issues properly addressed," their opposition has cost his company $4 million in fighting the referendum and paying for the lawsuit and other expenses.

The delay also has meant that funding sources have "dried up" for affordable housing and will further delay the city's efforts on that part of the project, he said.

"To be quite blunt, I think the opponents should be embarrassed by what they did," Freed said. "When a small group is able to do the kind of damage that they did, in my opinion, they ought to be ashamed of themselves."

It's fairly clear, however, that many NIMBYs and no-growthers have no shame. That's why real CEQA reform is needed in California. Not just for favored projects like a football stadium in downtown L.A., but up and down the state.

You can read the article here.

Nearly 5 Million Americans Move Back in With Mom and Dad

As we've noted a few times, one of the reasons there appears to be more housing available than there is demand is that so many people have moved in with parents or other family members because of high unemployment rates and the uncertain economy.

But as economists like Mark Schniepp have pointed out, that doesn't mean these extended family living arrangements are permanent, as some advocates of higher density wistfully hope for. In fact, when things do start to improve, mom and dad are pretty likely going to decide it's time for the boomerang kids to move out. That is, if the daughter-in-law doesn't decide to take that step first. And when household formations start to go up again, we're likely to see a fairly rapid increase in demand for rental and for-sale housing.

Now, thanks to the Pew Foundation, we have a better indication of just how many people are doubling-up with family members:

Large numbers of Americans enacted their own anti-poverty program in the depths of the Great Recession: They moved in with relatives. This helped fuel the largest increase in modern history in the number of Americans living in multi-generational households. From 2007 to 2009, the total spiked from 46.5 million to 51.4 million.

You can read the summary here, with links to the full report.