Although Rick Hazeltine has spent much of his career writing and editing sports for the San Diego Union, Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Daily News, real estate has always been his favorite topic. He and his wife, Sandy, bought their first place a year after graduating college for $91,000 in Rancho San Diego. Since then, they have purchased, sold and flipped houses around Southern California and Texas. For the past eight years, the Hazeltines have been restoring a 115-year-old house they relocated 10 miles from its original site to Camarillo, Calif., when it was to be demolished. The house is now a county historic landmark.
Our house mover was a grizzled veteran of the trade, having learned under his father in Chicago. When the house was sitting on our lot in three separate sections, with no roof and supported by wood blocks, he asked me why I wanted to save the house. I told him, ‘I like a good challenge.’ He looked at me with an all-knowing gleam in his eye and said, ‘You'll be a very happy man.’"