Vaguely Realizing Westward

Triple-riveted into the American Dream is a shining picture called The Little Gray Home in the West. And nowhere is it shinier than in real estate brochures aimed at retirement-age oldsters. Sadly, in all too many cases, the grass and sparkling water, recreational facilities and well-paved roads of Retirement Land are only so much printer's ink. Items:

> Hawaiian Ocean View Estates was advertised as a 10,000-acre development on a "gentle slope" near both ocean and golf courses. What the developers did not say was that much of the slope was lava from Mauna Loa volcano, the beach was 25 miles off and the golf course 51 miles.

> Rio Grande Estates, 32 miles from Albuquerque, was offered as "the biggest land bargain in the nation'' (at $199 per half-acre lot). But California authorities warned buyers that it was "desert acreage in a remote area." where "purchasers will be required to develop their own water and sewage facilities."

> Some U.S. promoters described their 3,500,000 acres in the Amazon Valley as a wonderful investment at $10 an acre. The U.S. Post Office barred their brochure from the mails when Foreign Service officers reported that the area was impenetrable jungle swarming with insects.

Biggest theater of operations for land-grabbing hucksters is Arizona, where some 630 so-called subdivisions have sprung up during the past 18 months and 60,000 lots have been sold, mostly sight unseen. Determined to get federal intervention to stop what may blow up into a national scandal, Arizona's Real Estate Commissioner J. Fred Talley recently testified before a U.S. Senate special committee, and concentrated his fire on an Arizona desert development called Lake Mead Rancheros.

Advertising in newspapers around the country, Lake Mead Rancheros promises 1 1/4-acre lots for as little as $595 with easy terms ($10 down, $10 a month). Its brochures show bikini-clad cuties splashing in the lake's blue waters and proclaim "livable now! . . . not raw, undeveloped, inaccessible land." But, said Talley, Lake Mead is some 50 miles away. And at the property, "there are absolutely no utilities available. Six miles from the nearest lot and ten to twelve miles from the principal part of the subdivision is a tank-operated machine where one can deposit a quarter and water runs out of an old innertube. At the same distance away are a telephone line and power line running down the highway." Scratches bulldozed in the desert are given glamorous names such as Riverside Drive. And in the center of this wasteland of sage and sand stands a giant billboard saying: THIS IS IT!

Lake Mead Rancheros claims that it is now willing to change its advertising. But it will probably take federal intervention to accomplish lasting reforms (only five state laws require "full disclosure" to purchasers about the state of the property) because of the difficulty in determining jurisdiction when promoters are careful to sell their land outside the state in which it sits.

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