There's a few enclaves of Southern California where the legal lots are almost microscopic in size. Many are in old beach communities, but there's a patch of them up in Box Canyon, which is in the Santa Susanna Mountains just East Of Simi Valley between Simi and Chatsworth.
Basically 1000 sq ft narrow parcels of California land were dubbed encyclopedia lots because, early in the area's history, they were used around the turn of the 19th-20th century as a marketing gimmick to promote the sale of Encyclopedia Britannica's multivolume book set.
Various developers and municipalities sold the lots to the encyclopedia company, which, in turn, handed out deeds to the lots with the sale of a set of books for $126.
The tract pictured is six of them "tied" together to create a lot of 6000 sq. feet , for sale at $ 35,000 which is more than I paid in 1973 for my first 3 br 2 ba home about six miles due south of this location. This was before the local oil companies struck upon the idea of purchasing the underlying mineral rights, and there's an area in Huntington Beach where these tiny lots struck oil and became quite a lucrative purchase.
If you're interested in this or other small lots , check with the city/county first to make sure there's no deed restrictions, covenants or easements which would prohibit building. But you knew that , didn't you?
No comments:
Post a Comment