“Topanga's $1.5 Million Paradise”
by Ian Brodie
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| What you see is what you get for 1.5 million in Topanga—this rockpool plus 13 acres, four houses, an ocean view and all the fruit you can eat. |
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| Mimi Morton of Red Carpet and her magnificent Excalibur. She’s selling the most expensive Topanga property so far. |
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| Being in a Moshav means having to till the fields, organically of course. |
Mimi Morton was leaning on the
hood of her flamboyant red Excalibur, which matched her jacket, worrying as
usual.
You would think she was never
going to sell another property, despite her 13 years as a popular and
successful realtor in the area—that, and despite an escalating property market.
Yet there she was, fussing about
keys and who knows what else. Maybe it was just nervous excitement. Red Carpet
Realty is, after all, handling Topanga’s first million-dollar-plus
property—$1.5 million to be precise.
“It’s one of the few places in
the Canyon with an ocean-view,” Mimi was saying, as she swept through the front
door of the main house. Only she was wrong. The smog was up that day and all
you could see was a brownish haze where the ocean was supposed to be but where,
on clear days, you can see all the way to Catalina.
No matter. It’s quite a spread
Mimi has on the market. It’s right at the end of Colina in the Post Office
tract. Known in real estate-ese as a compound, it consists of four houses
scattered around 13 fertile acres full of orchards, vegetable plots and hiking
trails.
“Actually it’s well worth the
asking price,” said Mimi. “Why, in Bel-Air it would fetch six million. In fact,
anywhere on the west side of L.A. it would cost more.
“By today’s prices, Topanga is
still the best real estate bargain around, even though prices have been going
up.
“Yes, this is the most expensive
property in the Canyon so far. But it’s unique, it’s one of a kind and its
investment potential is immense.
"I know we think of it as a
lot of money in the Canyon, but it’s really not by today’s property values. And
I think it’s the first of many to come. Just in the last couple of years we’ve
seen $200,000 homes become commonplace up here.”
So who runs this slice of
paradise where pomegranates, nectarines, peaches, figs and grapes grow in
profusion?
It turns out the place is—ah,
Topanga!— a commune. Well, no, not a commune exactly, I was warned against
using that word. It’s a “moshav” which is the Hebrew word for a co-operative.
Not a kibbutz, which is totally communal, but a moshav where, in this case,
eight people live in three of the houses, and get together three days each week
to pursue their dream and, more practically, till the organic gardens.
They are into bio-dynamic
gardening which seems to mean doing everything in an intensive way, short of
spreading chemical fertilizers. They use manure instead, they “recycle” weeds
and they either feed their wet garbage to the chickens or put it on the compost
heap.
“Our orientation is holistic,
mystical and Jewish,” said Leslie Halperian, an earnest member of the group
whom I pressed for a one-line definition.
The moshav got going in its
present form only on August 5. Is Leslie disappointed that it is up for sale
already? Not really, he said, although they are all fond of the place and will
miss it.
The plan is to move “up north” to
a bigger place, more remote. “Some people love this because it’s so close to
L.A.,” he said. “But many more have said they would join us if we were more out
in the wilds, more of a frontier type of place.” The key to these ambitions is
the owner of the compound, Jerry Strauss, who bought it four years ago from the
Norton family. They were asking half a million bucks because they, too, wanted
to go “up north.”
Since then, Strauss has made many
improvements. Still, the difference is a reflection of Topanga’s spiraling land
costs. Most importantly, Strauss has put a restrictive deed on the property.
Its effect is that the compound
can never be split up into more than the existing four parcels. True, a new
main house could be built on each parcel, so that the existing homes would
become guest cottages. But you could never get development of one house or more
to an acre.
“I’m against that kind of density
for the Canyon,” said Jerry.
He also has other, Topanganesque
ideas. He thinks the compound could be made self-sufficient in electricity by
building windmills.
He has his own well on the
properly which can irrigate the crops—there's a lot of water under Topanga,
deep down.
And his swimming pool is a model
of the genre—nine feet deep, but with shallow gently sloping rock sides where
the water catches the sun, giving him a beautiful looking rockpool that is also
virtually solar heated.
What a pity such nice
people, with such interesting ideas, will be leaving us.
