Transforming the Valley: Helping Newcomers Gain Entry

Gilberto Cortes stood on an Encino sidewalk one morning this week, a tidy figure in a gabardine suit, bouncing on his heels in the cold.

He was early for an appointment--just a morning’s work for him, but another small step toward the slow transformation of the San Fernando Valley.

The Sun Valley real estate agent specializes in less-expensive homes and immigrant first-time home buyers. His clients are from Guatemala, Mexico, Eastern Europe, even China. As they buy up the aging housing stock, they are giving the Valley a new, yet familiar form, their aspirations renewing the Valley’s historic role as the stepping stone to the middle class.

On this day, Cortes was in a hurry and his clients were late. But at last, a brand new silver Ford pulled up at the curb, and out stepped a bleached-blond mother, a daughter, and the mother’s aunt--the latter a self-appointed overseer of the home-buying enterprise.

The family is from Armenia. For 10 years they have been living in a cramped apartment in Northridge, saving their money for a house. They nod distractedly to Cortes’ description of probate sales.

The mother is a hairdresser. Her husband, off at work, is a mechanic who works in Oxnard. Their only daughter, a green-eyed 12-year-old, goes to school nearby.

Why did they immigrate to America?

You need to ask?

“This country--you dream to come here,” said the mother.

“Of course, there have been disappointments, but . . .” she broke off with an impatient shrug, and veered back to the business of home-buying. “I like a big backyard,” she said. “Dining area, sitting area.”

The trio eyed the house without enthusiasm. They took in the brown lawn, the dingy fiberglass-sided porch, the sun-bleached garden hose looped across the dirt. The house looked so tiny it was hard to imagine how it could have the two bedrooms advertised.

An elderly tenant answered Cortes’ knock good-naturedly, and shuffled in behind the group. “Watch out, there’s two cats in the bedroom,” he said, as the group filtered through the house.

A 19-year Valley real estate veteran, Cortes switched from selling to better-heeled “South-of-the-Boulevard” buyers because, he says, first-time immigrant buyers are more fun.

“They appreciate it more,” he said.

“When I moved over, I thought I would lose income. But it was just the opposite,” he said. “The first year I made twice as much. . . . There are many more buyers, even though they are smaller buyers.”

The job, he said, comes with all kinds of unforeseen cultural complications: Buyers who won’t buy a house facing east, buyers who won’t live near graveyards, buyers who want to live near relatives, and, most often, buyers short of cash.

Cortes has a personal interest in these buyers. Now 63, he moved to this country from Zacatecas, Mexico, when he was in his 20s. He recounts with pride how he arrived on a Friday night and began taking his first English classes on a Monday.

It is an abstract interest at best. He does not present himself as a crusader for ethnic integration, or even for the preservation of stalwart old houses. He is simply, as he declares proudly, a salesman: “I have been a salesman all my life,” is his first answer when asked his background.

In the end, he is what his clients are, what many are: an immigrant who came here with little but his wits, just trying to make a living in Los Angeles.

Demographers have painted immigrant home buyers as the new version of the World War II generation, moving to Southern California and moving up into the American middle class.

In the Valley, many times it is immigrant capital and aspirations that are rescuing what brokers call “entry-level” homes, pulling up the stained carpets, replanting the weed-grown lawns and carrying on the post-war dream.

But middle-class status in America today is not so easily obtained for immigrants as it was for the young servicemen of the ‘40s, and this process is occurring only slowly. So the houses wait, growing dingier all the while.

The house Cortes was showing on this day was sadly in need of rescuing. Part of a G.I. housing tract off White Oak Avenue, it was built in 1949 and seemingly not touched since then. It is a Cinderella house--a little sullied, looking for that last chance to be discovered at the ball lest it be relegated to a shabby decline.

But as the aunt walked through the house, she was already drawing up her shoulders in an extended shudder. Stains seemed to leap off the walls and carpets. Flea-market paintings and a faint smell of cats didn’t help. The backyard was barren except for some overgrown ivy and a couple of rusty metal sheds. Only the bird bath, chipped and dirty, hinted sadly at the personality of the home’s former owner, recently deceased.

The clients made a polite exit. “My God,” said the aunt, safely out on the sidewalk. “It needs . . . stripping.”

As they loitered on the sidewalk, the mother and aunt gave Cortes a rundown of the family’s dream house: Wood floors and no additions, two bedrooms and a bath. And it must cost less than $140,000.

Cortes nodded politely, knowing he would not make the sale that day. The house would await another buyer. But “this business is mountains and valleys all the time,” he said lightly. “Mountains and valleys.”

And then he was off to meet his next client.