NEW OVERSEAS ADDRESS

For mail to me in Oman after August 13:

Dr. Paul Sundberg
Language Centre
Sultan Qaboos University
PO Box 43
Al-Khoud, P.C. 123
Sultanate of Oman

Work telephone: 011-968-2414 1640 (968 is the country code for Oman)

HOME SWEET HOME

After seven years of being homeless – ok, a renter, not really “homeless” – as of August 1 (closing date) I now have a headquarters of my own on planet Earth! After selling my Urbana home in 2000 and moving eight times in seven years, my new condo plants me permanently in the historic Sundberg stomping ground of LA (since 1896), but on its far southern fringe: San Pedro, the historic port city for the city – now, along with next-door Long Beach, one of America’s largest ports.

After deciding I definitely needed and wanted a “home base” in the US to call my own while working overseas (rather than having Storage Unit #562 as my only US address), the end of June I started looking for a condo or duplex in San Pedro, one of the more affordable communities by LA standards, and found myself gravitating back to one condo I had visited on the first realtor-guided tour.

It was light, airy and spacious and had a killer view over Angels Gate, the entrance to LA harbor, and the Pacific beyond and a spacious balcony from which to enjoy it. More importantly, it also had two other requirements: a huge lockable storage unit on the garage level of the condo complex to keep stuff while overseas and two bedrooms, one of which to rent out and one I would fill with the rest of my stuff and lock up while away. The master bedroom was as large as two rooms and could easily serve as an office as well as a sleeping space, and the closed-off second bedroom wouldn’t detract from the flow of the unit, making it practical as a desirable one-bedroom rental apartment while I’m in Oman for three years.

I tried to view any potential property through a renter’s eyes. What would convince prospective renters to walk through the door and say, “I’ll take it!”? Since one of the prime draws in Southern California for over a hundred years has been the mild coastal climate and sea views, I wanted a place that would give the full “California dream” – cool breezes year round and a true panorama of the Pacific.

Unfortunately, very little of LA fits this bill, and the subsection that does is by now unaffordable except to corporate lawyers and movie stars. (Condos going for $800,000 and up along Santa Monica Bay!) Once you’re more than 10 miles from the coast, the climate zone shifts to desert and is hot and uncomfortable in the summer. Plus, why move all the way out to California to live in stuffy West Covina looking out your balcony at the apartment building next door and a gridlocked freeway?

Luckily, San Pedro was largely overlooked in the “irrational exuberance” of the real estate boom of the first half of the 2000s, and there are still relatively affordable homes here. My condo’s asking price (which I paid) was $525,000. But Midwestern readers should keep this in perspective: a dumpy free-standing duplex up the road with no view cost over $600,000. Other LA condos inland with no view at all are going for $400,000-plus, and you can’t touch a free-standing home in less attractive neighborhoods in LA for much under $500,000. So, I thought it was a gem at its price, and, more importantly, one that would hold its value and appreciate over time. Someone would always want it. Heck, I may just decide to keep it!

July has been mainly “home buyer hell,” between demands by Escrow, my own realtor Madeleine Drake (a seasoned “Pedro girl” who definitely knows from San Pedro real estate), the demanding sellers’ hot-shot realtor Mia Ellison, and the loan officer at Washington Mutual Bank, Samson Mendo, a Cameroonian who loves wheeling and dealing but doesn’t always follow through by promised dates.

After first considering a 5-year interest-only loan for 80% of the condo’s price, I was counseled by more experienced heads and ended up with a more traditional 30-year fixed rate mortgage loan (at 6.95%) with over 40% down on my end. I decided I didn’t know what my plans were after three years in Oman, but I did want to option of buying to keep and using my monthly payments to actually pay down principal rather than pay, in effect, years of “rent” to the bank and end up owning only my down payment. And who knows? Maybe I’ll want to retire there myself?

It was painful coming up with the 44% down myself to keep monthly payments manageable, largely cleaning out my taxable savings, but selling off all those assets at the top of the market a couple of weeks back looks like not such a dumb move now given the market roller-coaster (mainly down) since then!

At the moment, the condo is strewn with boxes waiting to be unpacked or repackaged for storage, but I’m living in my own home for the first time in years and enjoying the feeling thoroughly!

The San Pedro condo address (where I won’t be):

3138 South Gaffey Street, Unit 10
San Pedro, CA 90731-9514

(you can always look it up on maps.google.com to see where in LA it is!)