Wildfire threatens some lovely homes

When you live in the West, you always have to accept the possibility of wildfires.

And the last few days, with the humidity in single digits and the temperature in triple digits, fires have been burning all around the Los Angeles area.

We owned a home in La Canada Flintridge for more than 18 years. Homes in our small city have sold for a median price of more than $1 million, making it one of the most desirable areas in all of Southern California. That's why even though we were selling in the middle of a housing crash and a national recession, we came very close to getting the price we were asking.

Boy, did we sell at the right time.


Less than three weeks after we closed and collected the cash for our equity, wildfires have destroyed most of the forest above La Canada. Families living within a mile of where we lived have been evacuated, and firefighters have been working day and night to save their neighborhoods.

We haven't been through a lot of anguish, but if this fire had happened a month ago, we would have been right there with our tenants/buyers doing whatever we could to keep the fire from destroying our property.

Ah, Southern California.

It's definitely paradise, as long as you don't mind earthquakes, fires, mudslides and the rest.