Valencia Homes - A Campground?
DECEMBER 8, 1967
Some 25 hardy souls nearly all of them anxious to explain that what they were doing was really not as odd as it looked — forsook the comfort of warm beds and camped out all night in dewy, icy darkness so when dawn broke Wednesday they could buy some houses.
The unusual scene — which has occurred in only three other places across the state in recent years — took place at the sales offices of Valencia Homes, where sales-men ended up doing a veritable land-office business in peddling their newest sector of ‘tract houses.
The occasion was inspired by the fact that Valencia, the giant development now sprouting up on Newhall Land and Farming Company property, in Newhall, was taking orders for the final unit in its first 400 house, “village.” Construction on the 45 places scooped up Wednesday by the “campers” Is still some six months away.
Nonetheless, the home buyers — most of them from the San Fernando Valley — came as early as Tuesday morning to sign-in. The scene vaguely resembled one at a state park during the peak summer months where campers, waiting their turns to pitch their tents, are required to sign a roster and appear for roll call each morning.
The campers at Valencia promised not to leave the premises and so, completely outfitted with sleeping bags and big, soft pillows they stayed well into the next day so they could get first crack at the tract models they wanted. Unlike the state park campers, though, the Valencia campers put down $400 to cover deposit costs on the pads they hope to inhabit one day.
In most cases the buyers were husbands, who had left their families behind for the night. Many said they were going to work the next day.
Some attending the free-for-all, however, were couples, like Mr. and Mrs. N.B. Huntley — she an attractive blond, and he a handsome Encino real estate broker.
Attired in matching baby blue outfits, and well prepared with pillows and blankets, in their 1967 Cadillac, the couple explained that they were planning to buy the Fontana model, the cheapest of the eight Valencia models, with a Spanish exterior.
Neither of them thought that camping out all night to buy a tract home was so odd. “It’s something you don’t do every day,” Huntley explained, as his wife nodded in agreement.
“Besides,” she added, stroking her chocolate brown poodle, “if you’ve got to sleep in a car all night, it may as well be a 1967 Caddy.”
Their infatuation with Valencia, explained the Huntleys, all started because he often comes to play golf at the Valencia course.
“It’s only 15 minutes, from work, it’s relatively smog free, and the home is big enough for us. We’re not planning on having any children,” explained the Huntleys, who have only been married a year and currently live in an apartment.
Valencia salesmen were originally planning to lock the doors of their sales office, off Lyons Avenue, at the regular 6 p.m. closing time, but as more and more buyers started moving in, they had a change of heart.
Instead of closing the office, they kept it open and even had coffee served throughout the night. The buyers spent a great deal of the night socializing, and by morning at least one block party had been arranged and most of the people, although sleepy, were in the best of humor.
Altogether, some 334 homes have been sold out of the 390 in the first “village.”
A second village will probably not start until sometime next summer, and Valencia salesmen who now say their development is number one in the country as far as sales, are hopeful the situation will be the same on the second village.