The first spec home built and sold by R. Gregg Anderson overlooked the Pacific Ocean near San Diego. He would later build two skyscrapers and a tourist center with shopping mall in Maui. But for the past two decades, Anderson has sold homes in the Antelope Valley, on the edge of the desert. His Rancho Vista master planned community includes single-family homes, a golf course, and shopping center. Despite a downturn in the real estate market brought on by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry, Anderson feels optimistic about the future of real estate in the Antelope Valley. Along with projects in San Diego, Hawaii and Beverly Hills, Anderson was in the joint venture that took the Albertson Ranch in the Conejo Valley and made it into what is now known as Westlake Village. He has been recognized as a Builder of the Year for Southern California, served three times as president of the Antelope Valley chapter of the Building Industry Association, and been involved with the Antelope Valley Board of Trade, where he met his wife. Anderson is also the owner of 37 race horses. Question: The real estate market has tanked over the past year. How has that affected your company and your development? Answer: It’s only beginning to affect it. We have been a residential marketer here for 20 years and we’ve gone through three different cycles of downturns. Each downturn has been significant for a year, maybe a little more. This one, we don’t know where the end is. I am out of product right now. We started with 1,300 acres and we built out. We are not going to have any residential effect. We still are affected by it in our shopping center interest, and in the entire community. Q: What made you want to build in the Antelope Valley? Was your long-term thinking this was going to be where the population was going to move? A: There were a number of things. We built previously, my partner and I, in Palm Springs, Beverly Hills, and San Diego. We felt, as many did, there was a crying need for affordable housing. The Antelope Valley offered that opportunity on a long-range basis. We were approached and offered the opportunity to buy Rancho Vista. It had been sold once before and hadn’t worked out. It was foreclosed on and the owners took it back and contacted us and we felt we could see an optimistic approach. Although it would require considerable hard money put in before the development could be started. We had to bring sewer and water, three and five miles respectively, to the property. There were no streets; no electric poles. It was started from scratch. Our timing wasn’t too good. By the time we finished the infrastructure that was the time when we had interest rates in the high teens and low 20s. Nobody was buying houses. So we ended up sitting for five years in a spot where we couldn’t build anything. When we did there was pent up market and business was good from the outset. Q: Will something similar happen this time, a pent up demand for housing when the real estate market and economy improves? A: Yes I do. I still feel the Antelope Valley is the most affordable housing in Southern California that is within a few miles of major markets like Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley. The demand is just incredible for the future. I think now the future is brighter for the Antelope Valley then it was when we made our original investment here. Q: Why do you think that? A: There is more infrastructure, there are more jobs available. The aerospace and defense industries are well located here and they have contracts that will carry on for at least a decade. We are finding more companies relocating here, so there are more jobs for people who live here who are not forced to commute. All the things are in place for tremendous growth. There are no statistics that show there is not a tremendous demand for housing. Q: At the recent Antelope Valley economic and real estate forecast, there were numbers given on foreclosures, primarily on the east side of Palmdale. Are you aware of any on the west side? A: Yes, there are some. It is more concentrated on the east side. One of the more interesting statistics that doesn’t get mentioned is every day you hear that foreclosures are at a record level. That is true. What has never been mentioned is how many of those foreclosures are homes that people bought and refinanced in the last five years and took money out of the house so it is more heavily encumbered than it was when they bought it. That is triggering a lot of these foreclosures. It has nothing to do with the real estate market except what was created by lenders being overly aggressive and selling these loans and buyers being overly aggressive and refinancing and spending that money instead of using it for other types of investment for something that might produce income. That is a significant statistic that should be looked at nationwide. Q: The Valley faces a potential of not having an adequate water supply. Did too much building take place too fast or were there other contributing factors? A: No, I don’t think so. In fact, I’m not sure there is a water shortage. What did happen was the water was not properly used. They did not replenish the aquifer here, which would be a big help. We are not getting an allocation as high as we were from Northern California that we are getting now as far as the Antelope Valley East Kern Water District is concerned. And we failed to implement some water saving plan. When we first started building we offered houses with either front yard landscaping or zeroscaping. No one wanted zeroscape. People wanted the lawn and we went along with the demand, of course. Now we have used this valuable resource and I think we abused the use of it but I don’t think it is going to affect us dramatically in the future. Q: You made changes to the golf course to reduce the amount of water used there? A: We are almost finished our renovation of the Rancho Vista Golf Course. What we did there is create drought resistant areas off of the tees, beautifully landscaped, things that require no water at all. We are going to save millions of gallons of water per year. Now to do this we had to ensure that the golf course quality was going to remain as far as the golfers were concerned. Before we did this we sent our greens keeper up to Las Vegas. Our requirement for water is dramatically different. The PGA will come out in the next couple of months to re-rate the course. We are positive it will be a higher rated course, a better course because of the work we have done. The savings that will accrue from the water will accrue for evermore. Q: Are you involved with philanthropic activities? A: Yes I am. I try to keep that primarily local. We try to support the school districts in a number of ways. And we’ve done it in some strange ways. Twice we’ve taken busloads of schools kids once to Edwards Air Force Base to see the landing of the space shuttle. Most recently we took 17 buses out to watch the launching of Spaceship One. Some of those things become memorable. It wasn’t easy for a company the size of Rancho Vista to do this and get the kids out to see this launch. It was built right in our backyard. So for these kids to be out there and see that we thought it was something important they might remember throughout their life.
