Look Out: Bulldozer Ahead!

By Sonja Steptoe/ Los Angeles

When he visits the West Los Angeles neighborhood where he grew up, Charles Levan feels sadness and disdain. One by one, the charming two- and three-bedroom houses that decorated the streets of his childhood are being bulldozed and replaced with bloated mansions on tiny lots. "Half the houses on our block have been leveled," says Levan, 34. "The thought of that happening to my house tugs at my heartstrings."

Join the club, Charles. Folks with no visible trace of their roots are fast multiplying. Teardowns, once the province of the exceptionally rich and developers rehabbing crumbling neighborhoods, have gone mainstream. Today well-kept homes are being knocked down by the thousands so that builders can get at the valuable ground beneath. "There's a certain sadness about what's happening to those great little cottages," Brit Fennell, a Coldwell Banker broker, says of Levan's old neighborhood, known as Brentwood Flats. "But the mansionization trend is consumer demand at work."

From the Flats in West L.A. to the suburbs of Chicago and Boston, any block with smallish homes near desirable workplaces, good schools and popular stores and entertainment is red meat for carnivorous builders. The National Trust for Historic Preservation in a 2002 report documented more than 200 historically significant communities in 20 states where teardowns were prevalent. In the Chicago suburb of Hinsdale, the report said, an astonishing 1,200 homes (20% of the supply) had been demolished since 1986. The trend has intensified since then. Nationally, as many as 75,000 of the single-family houses built last year were put up on parcels where a house had been razed, builders estimate.

Brentwood Flats is a microcosm. In one case, a buyer paid $745,000 for a humble 70-year-old, three-bedroom house in 2003. It was promptly ripped down, and 18 months later the two-story, five-bedroom Italian villa erected in its place sold for $2.7 million. Around the corner, one lot has changed hands three times in four years. Its original two-bedroom Southern Colonial went for $567,000 in 2000; the four-bedroom traditional that replaced it brought more than $2 million last August.

Some who live in future teardowns are caught in a financial catch-22. Real estate agents all but guarantee Corey Glave a six-figure profit if he sells his two-bedroom Hermosa Beach bungalow outside L.A. But where would he and his family go? Soaring prices across the region have put anything suitable out of reach. "To get the same yard and ocean view that I have now would cost way over $1 million," he says.

So, for now, the Glaves are sitting on their equity, staring daily at the towering new edifices around them that they consider eyesores. But they must know that it's just a matter of time before they take the money and run. When that day comes, they'll be sure to soak up a final view--and on their way out, sidestep the bulldozer in their driveway. --By Sonja Steptoe/ Los Angeles