Iranians with fortunes to invest

Press, 20 February 1979, Page 19

Iranians with fortunes to invest

Things have changed since Sir Francis Drake beached the Golden Hinde on the shore of what is known today as Marin County California, to have his sailors scrape off her barnacles, 400 years ago in June. Drake called this country New Albion, and that name for what is now the American West Coast was still used by English mapmakers in 1810. When Drake stepped ashore on what hi s chaplain described as "a goodly country and fruitful soyle, st<ued with many bless-

ings for the use of man,” the men using it were Indians who had never seen a foreigner. Someone landing on Marin County’s foreshore today could be greeted by an Iranian millionaire. Wealthy Iranians are buying homes at such a pace that in this county just across the Golden Gate from San Francisco there is talk of limiting, or even prohibiting, the sale of property to foreigners. There is also some counterbalancing enthusiasm — from real estate interests.

There are frequent accounts of Iranians who, with little or no dickering over price, take $250,000 or more in cash from briefcases and count it out on the spot in exchange for deeds to property. An Iranian business man is reported to have paid $400,000 in cash recently for a luxurious house. He told an interviewer that he had also brought enough cash with him to live on while his children finish school here. For several years, residential purchases by Ira-

nians, as well as by other buyers from Middle East Oil companies, have been increasing in the scenic suburban county, but in the last few months the chaos in Iran has brought a sharp upward trend. At Tiburon, a waterside town where expensive homes are in great demand because of climate, views, and easy access by ferry to San Francisco, 40 per cent of homes sold in 1978 were bought by Iranians, an official estimates. Marin, about the size of Rangiora, irf.-small as Call-

fornia counties go. It was an isolated, sparsely-popu-lated area of small towns, dairy farms, and comfortable summer homes for well-heeled San Franciscans when the Golden Gate Bridge was completed. In a rush, it became a favourite suburb for San Francisco commuters, and it now has a population of about 250.000. The Iranians, however, seem to choose Marin. County because a small nucleus established itself

there a few years age and the word spread to their countrymen. Some present purchasers explain frankly that they have large amounts of ready money, and want to spend it on property at Marin rather than subject it to the uncertainties of politics at home. Drake, who claimed all Northern California in the name of Queen Elizabeth, and then sailed away without putting up a “For Sale” sign, must be spinning in his grave.

By

JOHN HUTCHISON,

i, in Cal'fornia.