Bryan Park #2

At Bryan Park #2 we built and sold 11 homes located on Rodney Drive. I built these houses in 1964.

I have an interesting story regarding this tract. It does not involve one of the houses I built, but one of the houses in this tract. This tract map was filed in 1957. In those days you had a land developer who would buy the land, process the subdivision map and then put in the street and utilities. The land developer would then offer his lots for sale. Builders would then come in and buy lots. This tract did not sell well. The lots were larger than the surrounding area. The developer thought that he could extend "Willow Glen". Nobody thought of this area as "Willow Glen". Consequently the houses were very hard to sell. At the time this tract was at the end of town.

There were finished houses with the broken windows and weeds grounding around them. It was common for the land developer to finance the sale of the lots to the builders. He would have to subordinate his lien to the construction loan that the builder obtain. This meant that the bank was in first position. If the builder could not sell the house and make the payments, the bank would foreclosure. In order for the developer not to be wiped out, he had to pay the bank the back payments and then start making the payments himself to the back. There were a lot of houses which the developer was starting to have to make payments on. The developer was hemorrhaging cash.

In 1962 I was approached by a Japanese family who wanted to buy a house. At this time I had my real estate license, but had not yet starting building houses. Because his last name was really long, he had everybody call him Mr. Y. They were having a very difficult time finding some one who would sell them a house. 1962 was only 17 years from the end of WWII. There was still extreme prejudice against the Japanese. No builder would sell to a Japanese in fear that it would hurt the sales of his other house. It was also hard for them to buy a resale. There were a lot of people who did not want to live near a Japanese. He could not find anybody who would sell him a new home. I knew about this tract. Because the developer was so desperate to sell his houses, I was able to convince him to sell to this Japanese family. As a result of my help, Mr. Y was extremely grateful, He became a life long friend.

The Address of the Houses We Built in Bryan Park #2 are located at the bottom of this page.