Houses Are Springing Up All Over

Building Boomlet Throughout Valley

While homebuilding in most of Los Angeles County slowly stagnates, residential building in Santa Clarita Valley is demonstrating a strong but erratic recovery.

“We have seven or eight tracts going up right now. We haven’t had that many tracts at one time since 1970,” said Eugene Bahl, district county engineer for the Santa Clarita Valley.

The County Engineer’s office issues building permits for all construction, A ten-year study of these permits shows a county-wide trend toward fewer and fewer new residences. New local housing in Newhall, Valencia, Saugus and Canyon Country, however, has become plentiful in the last year.

Of the 5121 building permits issued in Los Angeles County last year, 591, more than 10 percent, were in Santa Clarita Valley. Workmen in hardhats either are, or will soon be, laboring on 562 new local homes.

Ten years ago, 16,356 apartments, townhouses and homes were built in the county in fiscal 1964-65. In the last fiscal year that just ended June 30, a decade later, only 5121 such dwellings were built or started.

“The smaller total number of housing units shows the effects of tight mortgage money and the slackening of growth all over Southern California,” Bahl said. “There was a slight recovery in 1969-70, and then after the earthquake in 1972 it just never came back.”

The 1972 quake hit the Santa Clarita Valley hard, and the building figures show this. When potential home buyers became nervous, so did developers and builders. The value of residential home construction here was halved from $20 million in 1965 to $10 million in 1974.

The number of units built here dropped 52 percent in the same period. Housing construction in the whole county dropped 39 percent between 1965 arid 1974. This brought the Santa Clarita Valley and all of Los Angeles County to a low point in 1974.

Since then, however, the Santa Clarita Valley and a few other building hot spots have parted ways with the rest of the county. “La Puente, Calabasas and the Santa Clarita Valley are the only places that are still expanding,” Bahl said.

While new construction in the county dropped another 48 percent in the last year, the Santa Clarita Valley began to grow again and there was an advance of two percent in housing starts.

Of course, housing costs are up here and everywhere else. The price of the average dwelling built here and in Los Angeles county went from $16,000 in 1964 to $30,000 in 1974. Bahl blamed the increase on inflation and a trend toward larger homes and fewer apartments.

Even with the present upward trend in the number of homes built, Bahl refused to make any predictions about the future of the housing industry here.

“There are just too many things that effect the building trade,” he said. “I process the permit applications that come in. It’s confusing enough trying to figure out what has already happened.”

Less cautious, of course, are the developers who gamble large sums of money on their predictions of good housing demand and mortgage money to pay for it.

“We think that this area is leading a housing comeback, and we hope to see it lead even more,” said Ed Toney, director of land development for Valencia Corporation.

The Valencia company has gambled on that hope and recently started construction on 82 towhhouses in Fairways East, bounded by Tournament Road, Travino Drive and Hogan Drive.

Valencia salesmen have been showing model town-houses in the original Fairways group as examples of what the new townhouses will look like. “In the first two weekends, we’ve opened escrows on half of the townhouses, and construction has barely started,” Toney said. The prices range from $33,990 to $48,990.

The favorable reception for those townhouses has encouraged Valencia Corporation, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Newhall Land and Farming Company, in development of plans for a new housing tract.

With 18 units still unsold in the Meadows, Valencia is also making plans for up to 300 new homes in the West Meadows. Prices have not yet been established, but homes in the Meadows went for $47,440 to $63,990.

In Seco Canyon, TiffanyClaridge Inc. has 50 homes under construction. Over 30 of these have already sold at prices between $41,225 and $47,900. Pardee Construction Company couId not be reached, but Bahl said the company has 20 active building permits.

More than 50 building permits are in force in Friendly Valley. Sales there must be brisk. The sales office phone was constantly busy yesterday and Wednesday.

Kaufman and Broad, builders of the Pinetree, Timberlane and GoldenOak tracts, now have 35 homes under construction in the New American Homes development. Due for completion in November, the K & B homes are priced between $28,990 and $32,790.

About 25 private parties have taken out permits for construction on single homes in the Santa Clarita Valley.

All the present construction, of course, is the result of building permits issued in the past fiscal year. The first two months of this fiscal year have already seen erratic housing action. July was a slow month for building permits,” Bahl said. “But I think August will double any month we had last year. It just shows how unpredictable housing is out here.”