By Bob Dorn
Not so long ago, a car was regarded as the worst investment a person could make. It would lose about a third of its value as soon as you’d bought it. It was out of the question as an investment; you could only hope the manufacturer’s warranty would hold up for the first three years or 15,000 miles, whichever came first, and that after that warranty period expired you might be able to sell it on the used market for half what you paid for it.
Either that or you clung to it as it threw its bearings or burned its valves, driving you to despair when you weren’t driving it.
Worse were boats. I remember that definition: a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into.
Nope, for an investment you instead counted on buying your North Park craftsman, or little Spanish style east of 805 so you could watch it climb up two or five or 10 percent a year, depending on the given moment in housing history here and how many people – folks pretty much like you and me -- were moving south from LA or west from who knows where at those given moments.
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