Glenn Campbell’s song “Country Boy, You’ve Got Your Feet in L.A.” hits rather close to home for me. As an eccentric, absentminded professor not entirely comfortable with driving, I have lived near the campus of the University of Southern California for the last fifteen years.
On a daily basis, being in the urban setting doesn’t really bother me that much. And planting some trees at my home has allowed me to bring a bit of the country with it. But, having grown up in the country, I become keenly aware of what I have been missing when I come back.
In 2020, I had the chance to buy this mini-ranch in Los Osos. It will eventually be my retirement home, but for now, I will be renting out the main house.
My mother lives in a converted part of the barn, and I stay there when I visit. Over each of the next ten years, I am looking to plant about ten new fruit trees. But it is unlikely that I will be able to resist the temptation to exceed that target. There may be many more. We are also looking into the possibility of boarding horses.
Getting into the home rental business was not my original plan. Ten years ago, I was looking for a single family home near the USC campus.
The university was offering a subsidy to employees buying homes in its “historical neighborhood.” However, I fell in love with a property near the edge of campus when I first laid eyes on it. I knew I had to have it. It was a triplex that would not qualify for the subsidy, and it listed for more than I had planned to spend. But, looking at the rental income potential, I quickly realized that this could actually be a rather nice arrangement.
It wasn’t easy to get the property. Sadly, it was already in escrow. It was only after that deal failed to close that I was able to make a bid. And, in 2010, in the midst the then recession, getting the needed bank loan was not easy.
I learned that it was much more difficult to borrow for an investment property—which would bring in rental revenue—than for a personal home. But, in the end, it worked out. And with the recession, it cost considerably less than it had sold for a few years earlier.
Ten years later, some very persistent realtors were courting me to sell the property to developers wanting to build a large complex on this and surrounding lots. They saw a chance take advantage of re-zoning to encourage more rental units near metro rail stations on the recently completed Exposition Line.
I was hesitant to sell, and the idea made me feel very guilty. This was a property I was supposed to protect, and now I was thinking about letting it get demolished to make room for a monster complex. But with the opportunity to buy another property down the street and, on top of this, a San Luis Obispo area property for retirement, I ultimately gave in.
Yes, it feels rather surreal to think about retirement—something I always associated with “old” people—but the time is approaching. The tentative plan is for sixteen years from now, but who knows?
One has to be careful about that move, knowing what one is getting oneself into. Playing golf every day may sound fun before the fact, but I rather suspect that it turns boring rather fast. And then, I never really got into golf to begin with. But at my ranch, I will have my fruit trees and a beautiful view. Yes, I will miss giving (albeit not grading) exams, but there are tradeoffs in life.
With the pandemic, my classes have gone online and can be done from anywhere I can access the needed Internet bandwidth, so I get to spend much of my time at the ranch at the moment. Once we get back to in-person classes, I will still visit often and expect to spend much of my summers here.
One of the neighbors has an obnoxious donkey with an annoying habit of braying in early each morning. Yelling at it to shut up doesn’t seem to help. But at least the spectacle usually doesn’t wake me anymore.
