Hynes bought her three-bedroom home in Lancaster brand-new for $119,000 in 1989, when Milli Vanilli was riding high on the charts. The poplar, willow and ash saplings she planted in front now tower over the lawn, shading her home from the desert sun.
"It's my little oasis," said Hynes, a 62-year-old public health nurse.
Her home is an island in a sea of repos. Houses on both sides have fallen into foreclosure; one is priced $10,000 less than the amount she paid 20 years ago.
Nearby, a four-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot home sold in May for $89,000. That's less than the construction costs of $100 to $125 a square foot, according to Patrick S. Duffy, principal of Metrointelligence Real Estate Advisors in Los Angeles.
The retro prices are attracting a new wave of speculators. In April, investors bought nearly 1 in 5 homes purchased in Southern California, according to DataQuick. That figure is around 30% in some inland communities.
Mohammed Hafeez, 52, a Culver City electrician, has bought four houses in Lancaster since January.
Hafeez said he paid $49,000 for the least expensive house and $70,000 for the priciest of his investments. He's now renting them for $1,000 to $1,300 a month, and all four houses are occupied and generating positive cash flow, he said.
Still, he's holding off on more purchases. Rents are falling along with home prices as investors like him snap up foreclosures and turn them into rentals.
"I don't know how much or how far down it will go," he said.
He has reason to worry. Another tsunami of foreclosures is threatening to swamp an already saturated market. In Palmdale and Lancaster, 903 homes were sold in April, but according to ForeclosureRadar, more than 7,500 are in some stage of foreclosure.
Some buyers who thought they were getting bargains didn't. In Lancaster, Beatrice's eldest son, Daniel, bought a house near his father's for $175,000 in April 2008; comparable properties are now selling for about $95,000.
To home buyer Al Rossi, timing isn't everything. The 59-year-old bought his first house in February in Lancaster for $140,000. An administrator at the Los Angeles Mission downtown, he wanted a roomy place where he could live with his son-in-law and two grandsons. His mortgage payment on the four-bedroom house is $1,050, just slightly above the $900 a month he was paying for a one-bedroom apartment in Norwalk.
The house was in good shape when Rossi bought it, though the lawn had died. The family will be planting new greenery soon. They've just installed a new hot tub and bought a gas barbecue grill as well.
If neighborhood property values fall further, so be it, Rossi figured. The improvement in his quality of life is gain enough.
"I did not buy a slot machine," he said. "I am not an investor.
"That's what got us into this mess -- greed," he said of the housing crash.
"Greed messed everything up."
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peter.hong@latimes.com
