An Investors’ Dream or Just a Mirage? [Southern California]
Ashraf Fahim insists he is not a gambler. Yet when he decided to begin betting on real estate, he headed straight to the high-stakes table in California’s remote desert.
Two years ago, as some experts cautioned that soaring housing prices were creating a market bubble, the Egyptian-born pediatrician borrowed about $400,000 against his Riverside home and began buying dirt — dirt-cheap.
Fahim concentrated his purchases on an area he felt was undiscovered, a skull-scorching stretch of sagebrush and farmland 20 minutes east of Barstow where, until recently, land could languish on the market for years until it sold.