Compound interest

Bryan and Amanda Callen live in a dream home -- someone else’s, that is.

The former owner had “built it for his wife,” said Bryan Callen, an actor and stand-up comic. The three-story cabin-like residence is on an approximately three-quarter-acre compound in Echo Park.

Not that they don’t appreciate the virtues of the property, for which they paid $1.3 million several months ago. “There’s old growth pine trees and wood everywhere you look,” he said.

But a large part of the appeal of the Callens’ three-bedroom, 2,600-square-foot home was that it came with a one-bedroom apartment of about 1,000 square feet beneath the garage and a similarly sized one-bedroom cabin near the driveway.

Although living on a compound is new for them, Callen said, the presence of others on the property has hardly caused a ripple in their everyday life.

“Everything is pretty well separated, and there’s plenty of privacy,” said Callen, who noted the compound was also a source of income, particularly handy given the sporadic nature of work in his field.

Neither the National Assn. of Realtors nor the California Assn. of Realtors tracks this type of housing, per se, but innumerable compounds can be found sprinkled throughout Southland neighborhoods. They are created by owners with large lots where zoning permits such housing and by buyers purchasing multiple adjacent properties.

People of all types purchase home compounds, said Cory Weiss, estates director of Prudential California Realty in Beverly Hills. “We have foreign buyers as well as owner-users that want to live in a unit and then rent the others out.” For example, he said, those in the entertainment business live and work in one unit and use the others for guest suites.

Wide appeal

The concept of a compound can appeal to celebrities seeking privacy and to multi-generational families. Weiss said one client, an executive producer of a television show, was interested in a large piece of land with a personal residence, a detached building for offices with a separate entrance and an additional guesthouse -- all within walking distance of Brentwood Village.

“It took a bit of patience, but I found it. The residence was a little smaller than they would have preferred, but they realized the ability to have three separate structures on one property two blocks from the village was something they might never see again,” Weiss said.

Although compounds appear on the market occasionally, he said, it’s unusual. The most effective way to sleuth them out, he added, is by being persistent and by eyeing properties with contiguous parcels or zoning for more than one building. Weiss currently has a compound listing in Venice that has three units on the property. It includes two modern, three-level lofts and a two-bedroom cottage -- plus a saltwater pool -- for $2,995,000.

Regina Petterson, a psychologist with Specialty Depression and Anxiety in Los Angeles, thinks that the interest among some in housing such as compounds reflects their desire to recapture the same sort of social change they witnessed or were a part of in the 1960s. “The difference is that it’s more structured and less about experimentation.”

Living together in a compound, she added, can not only increase the time a family spends together but also enhance the traditional nuclear family. “The family now lives among other families that promote common goals of strengthening the unit by working together as a whole,” Petterson said. “Sharing chores, bartering goods, providing child care when needed allows families that live in a commune type of community to spend more time with their nuclear family unit.”

For some buyers, a compound is one way to get some help paying the mortgage. Chad Parsons, a film and television writer, along with his partner, Wolfgang Bauer, an artist, paid $399,000 in 2002 for a multiunit zoned gravel lot with a 1,000-square-foot cottage in Venice. They moved into the property after the original space, a 1920s cottage, was renovated.

Two units added

Over the next two years, they planned the design for a loft-style townhouse, whose two units were to be erected side by side. In 2004, they started building it with the help of a silent partner, dermatologist Peter Goldman. Each unit, which consists of three floors, is about 1,650 square feet. They reside in one of the units; the other and the cottage are rented out. And though the two rentals don’t cover the entire cost of the mortgage, insurance and taxes, they come close, Parsons said.

It wasn’t an easy decision, however, to go the compound route. Parsons and Bauer were concerned that doing this, instead of building a single-family home, might interfere with the solitude and privacy they value. But Parsons, 37, says that when he and Bauer, 42, are inside their unit, they feel as if they’re living in a single home. They credit their architect, Magdalena Glen-Schieneman, owner of MGS Architecture in Venice, who persuaded them to build the compound.

Glen-Schieneman said clients seeking a compound setting were often young, well-heeled and financially savvy. “They’re looking to maximize their real estate assets by generating revenue with outlying structures. The multiple residences also allow clients to live on site in comfort while a main house is being built or substantially remodeled.”

Parsons and Bauer finished their 6,000-square-foot compound by adding a swimming pool, which the tenants can use too. The pool is in the middle of the residences and is surrounded by bamboo, lending the area a sense of privacy.

“Although the tenants are around,” Parsons said, “you don’t often see anyone else on the property.”

Parsons thinks properties like theirs could become increasingly popular in overpopulated areas. “I think as the population grows and the space disappears in Los Angeles and other metro areas . . . it’s less realistic for people to have large pieces of property with a single home.”