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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (15293)	12/1/2003 3:21:16 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

For just the price of an L.A. house, buy a town By Associated Press If big-city life has got you down, a desert hamlet 150 miles east of Los Angeles could be the perfect alternative. It comes on 690 acres that include the 150-acre town and its 1940s-era cafe, four operational gas pumps, 28 motel rooms and a post office, all located on historic Route 66. There's only one catch. If you're looking to buy in Amboy, you'll have to buy the whole place, and a couple of people may be in line ahead of you. Celebrity photographer Timothy White and his business partner, Walt Wilson, put the town on the market last July for $1.9 million. The pair, who bought Amboy five years ago for an undisclosed sum, got no serious takers, and Rob McManus, estate director for Dilbeck Realtors, suspects the Iraq war caused their marketing campaign to be overlooked. But now, McManus says, there are separate offers by Californians who say they want to preserve Amboy. He expects the town could fetch $1,395,000. "I'm not allowed to reveal much information about the negotiations, other than that the terms and conditions should work," McManus said. White said from New York he's excited about the potential sale. "But while we're ready to move on and turn it over to another caretaker," he said, "it's kind of tough, because we're emotionally involved in this property. It's a very spiritual place, and a piece of American history." Founded by miners in 1858, Amboy was a booming town of 500 residents when Route 66 was paved in the 1920s. It began to die 50 years later when Interstate 40 bypassed it, and only seven people live there now. Wilson, who is one of them, runs the place. These days Amboy provides a backdrop for movies, commercials and photo shoots, and is a tourist stop for Route 66 aficionados traveling between Palm Springs and Las Vegas. White says he found it during a motorcycle trip. "I was captivated by the light, the location, the peeling paint, the stainless steel cafe interior, the old-fashioned gas pumps," he said. "It seemed as though time had stopped in 1951." dailynews.com guess no one's offered 1.9 mill for Amboy from a year ago.