When the Desert Calls
National Perspectives
May 27, 2007
May 27, 2007
By BARBARA E. HERNANDEZ
ALAINA DeMARTINI decided to trade the San Francisco chill and fog for palm trees and bright stars in an open sky. So last year, she and her husband, David, a retired electrician, moved to the house in Palm Springs, Calif., that they bought as a second home five years ago.
The couple had made monthly trips to their desert home, a 1,900-square-foot 1963 Alexander house with a wall of windows facing the San Jacinto Mountains. They traveled to the two-bedroom, two-bath house, which they bought for $200,000, by flying into Palm Springs International Airport or driving for eight hours.
“Eventually we were asking, ‘Why are we going back?’ ” said Ms. DeMartini, a former loan agent.
Although Palm Springs has long been considered a second-home haven, home buyers are increasingly turning to it for their primary residence, real estate brokers say.
Negin Shams, a broker at the Shams Group in Palm Desert, 14 miles east of Palm Springs, said the change had been gradual but had gained speed in the last decade. Ms. Shams said that primary-home buyers had grown from 10 percent to about a third of her business in recent years, and that they included an influx of young buyers from the neighboring Los Angeles and Orange Counties, with most of them finding work in the growing financial services sector.
One reason for the move is the lower cost of housing. In March, according to DataQuick, a company in La Jolla, Calif., that provides real estate research and data, the median home price for Palm Springs was $407,000, versus $540,000 in Los Angeles County and $630,000 in Orange County.
In addition, empty nesters from Southern California, the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest who buy vacation homes in the Palm Springs area often end up living permanently there within five years. “They are prebuying their retirement homes,” said John Raymond, director of community and economic development for Palm Springs.
While actual figures are difficult to gather, Mr. Raymond said, the reality is that Palm Springs is increasingly two experiences — the full-time and the part-time.
Palm Springs lures many people with its aura of luxury, cultivated by vacationing celebrities and by a vigilant building preservation committee that promotes the area as a mecca for modernist homes. It is also known for its tolerance and its gay and lesbian events that make it a mainstay of top-10 lists of gay vacation spots.
According to Bob Marra, the president of Wheeler’s Market Intelligence, a local marketing research firm, the population of Palm Springs and the surrounding Coachella Valley grew to about 412,000 permanent residents in 2006, a nearly 30 percent increase since 2000. By contrast, the state’s Department of Finance reported that the population of California had grown 9.8 percent from 2000 to 2006.
Developers have noticed the trend. Several new projects cater to full-time and part-time residents, among them Port Lawrence by the Rael Development Corporation. The project has 118 downtown lofts that offer living and work space; studios start in the $600,000s, with penthouse lofts priced at $1.3 million.
The project, in the early stages of construction, has had a lot of interest, said Maggie Feldman, a Rael spokeswoman, but she declined to say how many units had been reserved with $10,000 deposits. The project is scheduled to be completed next year.
Mike McCulloch, 50, a city councilman, said he had lived in Palm Springs since 1962, when the city “went dark” in the hottest months. “In the summer everything closed; you had very limited choices if you were a full-time resident,” he said. “That changed in the 1970s when we saw the revolution of the condominium.”
Condos made second homes more affordable, and others moved to become full-time residents, he said.
Many projects are designed for older people who want a “turnkey experience,” Mr. McCulloch added, explaining that increasingly they are full-time residents. “Those are for people who don’t have to worry about mowing the lawn or painting the fence,” he said.
Ms. Shams said families seeking primary homes tend to prefer single-family houses with private backyards and no homeowner’s association dues. “Families want costs kept down,” she said. “The winter people want gated communities and golf courses. They want something they can lock up and leave with no worries.”
Escena Palm Springs by Lennar Communities is being marketed to appeal to both. Escena has 1,450 units planned on 355 acres in East Palm Springs, an area previously known for its wind-whipped sand dunes.
The development is seeking to attract singles, gays and lesbians and first-time home buyers, while also aiming its high-end homes on the golf course at retired captains of industry, said Dan Cady, director of marketing for Lennar Communities.
Models are now available for viewing, and Lennar and Standard Pacific Homes are taking deposits on homes, which range in size from 1,961 to 3,824 square feet and start in the $600,000s. Houses built by Standard Pacific opened in January, while Lennar’s homes opened on May 19.
Another project breaking ground is the gated Avalon Palm Springs by the SunCal Companies, which will offer 752 single-family homes and 399 multifamily units on 309 acres near the entrance of Palm Springs. The homes, which have not yet been priced, are expected to be built in 2008, said Joe Aguirre, a spokesman for SunCal.
William Feingold bought a Palm Springs condo in 2000 as a way to escape from his Los Angeles workweek. Soon, he said, he found himself staying longer and longer. Finally, he decided to stay permanently and gave up his job as an apartment manager.
He bought his 1,250-square-foot, two-bedroom unit for $110,000, and says it is now worth about $325,000. But he didn’t buy it as an investment. “I was never crazy about Los Angeles,” said Mr. Feingold, 57, now a semiretired stockbroker and a local radio personality. “As soon as I saw the mountains, I knew.”
The San Jacinto Mountains tower above Palm Springs, often only feet away from a pastel-colored quilt of condos and midcentury modern homes. Other mountain ranges — the Santa Rosa, the San Bernardino and the Little San Bernardino Mountains — surround the valley, creating deep canyons and spectacular waterfalls.
In addition, Mr. Feingold, who is gay, said he was surprised to learn how gay-friendly Palm Springs is. “You could be openly gay and be yourself,” he said.
Comfortable in his environment, he ran for mayor; he lost but became chairman of the city’s human rights commission. He then gave up on a career in local politics and became Bulldog Bill Feingold, a liberal radio talk show host known for his biting social commentary. “If it wasn’t for Palm Springs,” he said, “I would never at the age of 57 start my own radio show.”
For some, the desert can be an empty, forsaken place. But others enjoy one of the last scraps of wild California, where mountain lions and bighorn sheep live in the shadow of the granite-speckled mountains.
Ms. DeMartini, who relocated from San Francisco, also found its beauty exceptional. She joined the Palm Springs Modernism Committee to preserve historic buildings and is also working to keep area hillsides free from encroaching development.
Mr. McCulloch would like to see more communities and hotels built to bolster the economy. Palm Springs has lost much of its high-end shopping to nearby Palm Desert, he said. “You can’t fight growth; it’s inevitable,” Mr. McCulloch said. “You just try to manage it.”
May is usually when the season ends for many of the area’s second-home owners. In the past, stores and restaurants would close — but now many stay open for the year-round population. “I only know of a couple restaurants that close, but almost everyone stays open,” said Jimmy Patty, general manager of Sherman’s Deli and Bakery in downtown Palm Springs.
The permanent residents of Palm Springs usually survive the heat of the summer by arming themselves with water bottles and air-conditioning. Temperatures can rise to 120 degrees.
A full-time resident’s first summer in the desert turns infatuation into either love or divorce.
Ms. DeMartini fell in love. She enjoys floating in the pool at 11 p.m. and looking at the stars through the palm trees.
“I’m finding out more about what I want and what I think,” she said. “And I want less than I imagined. The desert is great for simplifying your life.”
Click Here to Link to This Article on The New York Times
ALAINA DeMARTINI decided to trade the San Francisco chill and fog for palm trees and bright stars in an open sky. So last year, she and her husband, David, a retired electrician, moved to the house in Palm Springs, Calif., that they bought as a second home five years ago.
The couple had made monthly trips to their desert home, a 1,900-square-foot 1963 Alexander house with a wall of windows facing the San Jacinto Mountains. They traveled to the two-bedroom, two-bath house, which they bought for $200,000, by flying into Palm Springs International Airport or driving for eight hours.
“Eventually we were asking, ‘Why are we going back?’ ” said Ms. DeMartini, a former loan agent.
Although Palm Springs has long been considered a second-home haven, home buyers are increasingly turning to it for their primary residence, real estate brokers say.
Negin Shams, a broker at the Shams Group in Palm Desert, 14 miles east of Palm Springs, said the change had been gradual but had gained speed in the last decade. Ms. Shams said that primary-home buyers had grown from 10 percent to about a third of her business in recent years, and that they included an influx of young buyers from the neighboring Los Angeles and Orange Counties, with most of them finding work in the growing financial services sector.
One reason for the move is the lower cost of housing. In March, according to DataQuick, a company in La Jolla, Calif., that provides real estate research and data, the median home price for Palm Springs was $407,000, versus $540,000 in Los Angeles County and $630,000 in Orange County.
In addition, empty nesters from Southern California, the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest who buy vacation homes in the Palm Springs area often end up living permanently there within five years. “They are prebuying their retirement homes,” said John Raymond, director of community and economic development for Palm Springs.
While actual figures are difficult to gather, Mr. Raymond said, the reality is that Palm Springs is increasingly two experiences — the full-time and the part-time.
Palm Springs lures many people with its aura of luxury, cultivated by vacationing celebrities and by a vigilant building preservation committee that promotes the area as a mecca for modernist homes. It is also known for its tolerance and its gay and lesbian events that make it a mainstay of top-10 lists of gay vacation spots.
According to Bob Marra, the president of Wheeler’s Market Intelligence, a local marketing research firm, the population of Palm Springs and the surrounding Coachella Valley grew to about 412,000 permanent residents in 2006, a nearly 30 percent increase since 2000. By contrast, the state’s Department of Finance reported that the population of California had grown 9.8 percent from 2000 to 2006.
Developers have noticed the trend. Several new projects cater to full-time and part-time residents, among them Port Lawrence by the Rael Development Corporation. The project has 118 downtown lofts that offer living and work space; studios start in the $600,000s, with penthouse lofts priced at $1.3 million.
The project, in the early stages of construction, has had a lot of interest, said Maggie Feldman, a Rael spokeswoman, but she declined to say how many units had been reserved with $10,000 deposits. The project is scheduled to be completed next year.
Mike McCulloch, 50, a city councilman, said he had lived in Palm Springs since 1962, when the city “went dark” in the hottest months. “In the summer everything closed; you had very limited choices if you were a full-time resident,” he said. “That changed in the 1970s when we saw the revolution of the condominium.”
Condos made second homes more affordable, and others moved to become full-time residents, he said.
Many projects are designed for older people who want a “turnkey experience,” Mr. McCulloch added, explaining that increasingly they are full-time residents. “Those are for people who don’t have to worry about mowing the lawn or painting the fence,” he said.
Ms. Shams said families seeking primary homes tend to prefer single-family houses with private backyards and no homeowner’s association dues. “Families want costs kept down,” she said. “The winter people want gated communities and golf courses. They want something they can lock up and leave with no worries.”
Escena Palm Springs by Lennar Communities is being marketed to appeal to both. Escena has 1,450 units planned on 355 acres in East Palm Springs, an area previously known for its wind-whipped sand dunes.
The development is seeking to attract singles, gays and lesbians and first-time home buyers, while also aiming its high-end homes on the golf course at retired captains of industry, said Dan Cady, director of marketing for Lennar Communities.
Models are now available for viewing, and Lennar and Standard Pacific Homes are taking deposits on homes, which range in size from 1,961 to 3,824 square feet and start in the $600,000s. Houses built by Standard Pacific opened in January, while Lennar’s homes opened on May 19.
Another project breaking ground is the gated Avalon Palm Springs by the SunCal Companies, which will offer 752 single-family homes and 399 multifamily units on 309 acres near the entrance of Palm Springs. The homes, which have not yet been priced, are expected to be built in 2008, said Joe Aguirre, a spokesman for SunCal.
William Feingold bought a Palm Springs condo in 2000 as a way to escape from his Los Angeles workweek. Soon, he said, he found himself staying longer and longer. Finally, he decided to stay permanently and gave up his job as an apartment manager.
He bought his 1,250-square-foot, two-bedroom unit for $110,000, and says it is now worth about $325,000. But he didn’t buy it as an investment. “I was never crazy about Los Angeles,” said Mr. Feingold, 57, now a semiretired stockbroker and a local radio personality. “As soon as I saw the mountains, I knew.”
The San Jacinto Mountains tower above Palm Springs, often only feet away from a pastel-colored quilt of condos and midcentury modern homes. Other mountain ranges — the Santa Rosa, the San Bernardino and the Little San Bernardino Mountains — surround the valley, creating deep canyons and spectacular waterfalls.
In addition, Mr. Feingold, who is gay, said he was surprised to learn how gay-friendly Palm Springs is. “You could be openly gay and be yourself,” he said.
Comfortable in his environment, he ran for mayor; he lost but became chairman of the city’s human rights commission. He then gave up on a career in local politics and became Bulldog Bill Feingold, a liberal radio talk show host known for his biting social commentary. “If it wasn’t for Palm Springs,” he said, “I would never at the age of 57 start my own radio show.”
For some, the desert can be an empty, forsaken place. But others enjoy one of the last scraps of wild California, where mountain lions and bighorn sheep live in the shadow of the granite-speckled mountains.
Ms. DeMartini, who relocated from San Francisco, also found its beauty exceptional. She joined the Palm Springs Modernism Committee to preserve historic buildings and is also working to keep area hillsides free from encroaching development.
Mr. McCulloch would like to see more communities and hotels built to bolster the economy. Palm Springs has lost much of its high-end shopping to nearby Palm Desert, he said. “You can’t fight growth; it’s inevitable,” Mr. McCulloch said. “You just try to manage it.”
May is usually when the season ends for many of the area’s second-home owners. In the past, stores and restaurants would close — but now many stay open for the year-round population. “I only know of a couple restaurants that close, but almost everyone stays open,” said Jimmy Patty, general manager of Sherman’s Deli and Bakery in downtown Palm Springs.
The permanent residents of Palm Springs usually survive the heat of the summer by arming themselves with water bottles and air-conditioning. Temperatures can rise to 120 degrees.
A full-time resident’s first summer in the desert turns infatuation into either love or divorce.
Ms. DeMartini fell in love. She enjoys floating in the pool at 11 p.m. and looking at the stars through the palm trees.
“I’m finding out more about what I want and what I think,” she said. “And I want less than I imagined. The desert is great for simplifying your life.”
Click Here to Link to This Article on The New York Times
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