Taking the money and running

STEVE SMITH

Living here, reading stories about how wonderful it is to have access

to so much and how it gets better in Newport-Mesa by the minute, one

would wonder why anyone would ever want to leave.

But leaving is just what one young couple is doing. Married for

five years with a 6-month-old son, they just sold the house in which

they’d been living for the past three years. She wasn’t working but

he quit his high-paying job and bought a franchise from a well-know

company.

Their garage sale is March 5 and everything -- everything -- will

go. Six days later, they leave for Kansas City.

That’s right, they’re leaving a very nice part of Costa Mesa and

all that this area offers for the flatlands of the Show Me State.

In their case, perhaps it should be the Show Me the Money State

because the three-bedroom, two-bath Mesa Verde home they bought three

years ago for $330,000 just sold for -- hold on -- $699,000.

Yes, $699,000, and it wasn’t even on Costa Mesa’s Eastside. Or as

we west and north-siders like to kid, “Newport Beach adjacent.”

A funny thing has happened to housing and land in Newport--Mesa.

In short, there isn’t any. And it’s not just in these two cities.

Statewide, there is a housing shortage estimated at 100,000 units, a backlog that is unlikely to be filled any time soon.

The sad fact is that we’re out of dirt. The massive 14,000 home

development that will take place down on Rancho Mission Viejo over

the next 20 years is the last expanse of open land in the county.

After that, it’s all infill. (Infill is the process of going back to

older, developed property, razing it and plunking something new down

in its place).

Housing priorities seem to be changing. In all of 2004, there were

only two ZIP Codes in the entire county in which home prices fell.

Both were in the high-end market.

One ZIP Code was nearby in Irvine where homes costing nearly $3

million fell about 17%. The other drop was in a place called

Surfside, where prices fell about 7%.

One of the recent notable developments for readers here is the

change in the average home price in Costa Mesa.

For the 17 years I’ve been a homeowner, the ZIP Code 92627, which

included the Newport Beach adjacent Eastside of Costa Mesa, has

always out-priced the ZIP Code 92626, which covers Mesa Verde.

No longer. Now, 92626 homes are selling, on average, higher than

in the rest of the city. I can only speculate, but I wonder if the

increasing air traffic out of John Wayne airport over 92627 has

finally made some folks realize that the Eastside has issues.

That idea has not caught on with at least one local real estate

company that continues to break out Costa Mesa listings into two

sections titled “Costa Mesa” and “Eastside Costa Mesa.”

It really doesn’t matter because there aren’t enough houses to go

around.

The housing market scramble and the sticker shock that accompanies

it is about to become apparent to the folks in Crystal Cove, who will

soon be moving to make way for a more public beach.

Recently, there has been an attempt at a last-minute reprieve, the

concept being that the continued rents coming from the property will

provide relief to this cash-strapped state. The concurrent argument

is that we don’t have the money to build the beach park that is

supposed to replace the homes.

Perhaps the answer lies in a three-way deal. We give up the fight

to maintain the fairgrounds in Costa Mesa and let the state sell it

to developers for the approximately $230 million they can collect. A

few million of that revenue is then used to build a decent county

fair pavilion down at El Toro, one befitting the event, one replacing

the embarrassing collection of buildings on the current property.

Then we carve out a little more dough to create the park.

The biggest sacrifice may be the loss of the Pacific Amphitheater

on the current fairgrounds. If homes are built there, I can’t see

that that the venue will stay. That will end an old dream I’ve had of

luring the Pacific Symphony Orchestra to play there in the summer

instead of down in Irvine.

To that young couple, none of this will matter. In mid-March,

they’ll be off to Kansas City singing the old Steve Miller tune,

“Take the Money and Run.”

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer.

Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at

(714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to onthetown2005 @aol.com.