Real Estate

Richard W. Traweek, a Los Angeles real estate syndicator, was surfing along the very crest of success. He was still under 40 years old and had already raised more than $120 million from investors in 38 real estate limited partnerships. He had reaped millions of dollars from the multiple fees that characterize such enterprises. He was a major political player as well, donating big money and hosting fund-raisers for prominent politicians of both parties, state and national.

In late 1985, Shirley Lampel was a woman in anguish. Her husband had just died, and years of suffering from diabetes had left her without sight in one eye and only limited vision in the other. The one ray of hope was financial. Her doting husband, Sy, an auto mechanic, had left a $30,000 life insurance policy. Prudently invested, it would help support her modest but comfortable life in Santa Maria, Calif.

The confident smile Sam Rivero wore as he hunted for his first house had a lot to do with the buzz thumping in his ears. Ever since home values began sinking, pundits have touted the juicy opportunities for aspiring buyers priced out of the market before, and the young business-development executive heard that cue like a sonic boom.

Here is Forbes magazine's 1988 list of the 400 richest Americans in descending order of wealth, showing estimated fortune in millions, residence, source of wealth and age. Duplicated numbers represent ties; boldfaced entries are used to designate Californians. 1) Sam Moore Walton, $6,700, Bentonville, Ark., Wal-Mart Stores, 70. 2) John Werner Kluge, $3,200, Charlottesville, Va., Metromedia, 75. 3) Henry Ross Perot, $3,000 Dallas, Electronic Data Systems, 58.

Despite carnage on Wall Street, vacant storefronts on Madison Avenue and pricey restaurants offering "grill menus" (read: cheap burgers), some things remain unchanged in the great metropolis. The price of the average Manhattan apartment is still hovering at more than $1 million.

The Crenshaw district, a primarily black community located between downtown Los Angeles and the airport, may become the next century's boom town as real estate and home hunters discover its bargains, according to government and business officials meeting on the area's future. Crenshaw 2000, sponsored by the Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce and Councilwoman Ruth Galanter's office, was held Saturday at Dublin Avenue School to provide residents a picture of possibilities.

Donald T. Sterling bought the landmark former MGM headquarters in the heart of Beverly Hills, furnishing rooms with French antiques and restoring the detailed bronze elevator doors, sculpted wood wall moldings and parquet floors. But when posh retailer Barneys of New York wanted to lease the choice ground-level space from him, the Los Angeles Clippers owner refused. Except for his own offices on the top two floors, the building he calls Sterling World Plaza is completely empty.

Roving through the halls of the Glendale Galleria one night earlier this year were about a dozen wannabe cops trying, with varying degrees of ridiculousness, to be covert. I know, because I was one of them. I was there as a student in an eight-week Citizens' Academy held by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, better known as the ATF.

Following the recent "coup by briefing" mounted by the Turkish military, in collusion with the secular opposition parties, against Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan and his Welfare Party, a purge of Islamists is underway. Hundreds of Welfare-associated bureaucratic appointees in a dozen ministries have been removed, and millions of dollars in government funds earmarked for Welfare-controlled municipal governments, such as Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, have been slashed.

Promoters of this desert city like to say that it's located in the Valley of the Sun, reflecting the area's weather, life style and spirit of limitless opportunity. But the mood here is anything but sunny these days as Phoenix suffers through a real estate and banking collapse that has left its mark all over town. Once the embodiment of Sun Belt growth and prosperity, the Phoenix area went on a wild spree of development and speculation in the mid-1980s.