HOMES: Californians, here they come

Years ago I was the HR manager for Keytronic in Newport, Wash., so I attended the local Chamber of Commerce meetings. I would hear all the anti-California comments so I said, “Yeah I know, you guys don’t want anymore Californians until you want to sell your house and then you want just one more!” Did they ever hate that!

Well, we’re doing a mighty fine job of luring many more of those folks with all this building — houses by the acre here in Post Falls. They were even building during the recent recession! I went to see the mayor but he gave a politically expedient answer. It’s crazy. My modest home lost 70-80K in value and with all these new homes there’s little hope that it will ever regain its pre-bubble value.

Can you imagine how attractive these new homes must be to a Californian? And they’ll even be able to water their lawn! All I can hope for is that we’ll get so many coming up here that my house will inch back toward its earlier value.

JIM KORVER

Post Falls