Lure of land gives way to frustrationAugust 12, 2008
June and Terry Ellingson are two of hundreds who came to Hudspeth County after purchasing a cheap “ranch” they learned about online or in newspaper advertisements. But instead of the American dream, these property owners find barren, barely habitable scrubland. Most give up, leaving behind a desert dotted with dilapidated dream homes and lost life savings.
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Written by Brandi Grissom , The El Paso Times
SIERRA BLANCA – Weathered skin hanging over her petite frame, June Ellingson says she is happy with the desert home that leaves her perched precariously close to death nearly every day. “It’s quiet, peaceful,” she says, flashing a two-toothed grin. “I can look out and see the stars at night and almost count them as they pop out.” But when night gives way to another scorching day, Ellingson and her husband, Terry, start a daily struggle for survival miles from water, electricity and other humans on 20 acres they thought would be their little piece of the American dream. The Ellingsons are one of hundreds who came to Hudspeth County after purchasing a cheap “ranch” they learned about online or in newspaper advertisements. But instead of the American dream, these property owners find barren, barely habitable scrubland. Most give up, leaving behind a desert dotted with dilapidated dream homes and lost life savings. The dry, dusty, isolated swaths of desert where June Ellingson and her former neighbors bought land seem a far cry from the idyllic setting described on the Web site for Sunset Ranches, one of the biggest so-called land developers in the area. Photos show a windmill, a watering hole, a happy family roasting marshmallows over a campfire. Stores, theaters and restaurants are just a short jaunt away in El Paso, according to the Web site. “The El Paso area is a thriving center of shopping, dining and entertainment. Near your property, you can easily find lots of fun and good food,” the Web site advertises. Hudspeth County Judge Rebecca Dean Walker has been trying for years to stop the sale of these remnants of what were once sprawling, working cattle ranches. She has asked the sellers to be more forthcoming about their products, sought legal intervention from the Texas Attorney General and begged lawmakers for help. But there’s nothing illegal about what many of the sellers do with the large parcels of land. The land business has exploded in Hudspeth County as more people buy and sell property online. Some of the deals are illegal under Texas anti-colonia laws, but the financially strapped county has few resources to slow down what has become a booming industry. “Hudspeth County has probably been victimized the most in the state of Texas by these kinds of sales,” says the county’s chief tax appraiser, Zedoch “Sandy” Pridgeon. Into the Sunset The Ellingsons first bought land from Sunset Ranches in about 2001 and moved to the desert from South Dakota. They were lured by the company’s ad in a local penny saver. It said they could own 20 acres for just $99 down and $99 a month. “That was one of our biggest dreams, to buy some land,” says June Ellingson, 47, whose weary features seem to belong to someone many years older. “You couldn’t beat the price.” But like many who buy land out here and try to make a go of it, the Ellingsons didn’t have much money. With only her husband’s disability checks for income, June Ellingson says, they couldn’t keep up with the cost of the land while supporting their teenage boys and driving them dozens of miles into town for school every day. So, they joined the nearly two-thirds of Sunset Ranch customers the county tax appraiser estimates default on their payments. “They repo’d it,” she says. After losing their land, the family moved into Fabens but decided to move back because it was cheaper. Now that the boys are grown and living in the Fort Worth area, the Ellingsons live in a tiny gray house about 70 miles east of El Paso. They have no electricity, no running water, no transportation. Every week or so, Ellingson’s husband, who is 61, takes a backpack and some water and walks 20 miles into Fabens to charge the cell phone. It’s their only means of communication with the outside world. “The only thing we worry about is one of us getting bit by a rattler,” she says. With their seven dogs, the Ellingsons subsist on disability checks and about $100 a month in food stamps, which isn’t enough to feed them. A man the couple knows only as “Benito” each week delivers water, dog food and even gives them cash sometimes. Once, he brought chickens. “If it wasn’t for him, we couldn’t stay here,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at a panting black mutt lying in the dirt, seeking relief from the noontime heat in the shadow of its small doghouse. It’s tough living out here, and they have nearly run out of water a few times. Life on their Sunset Ranch isn’t quite the dream the Ellingsons imagined, but she says she’s learning how to make it. She’s raising a few chickens that give them eggs. And she’s struggling to keep a garden growing. It still has six onions even after critters got into it, she says proudly. “I’m a very stubborn person,” she says, “and I’m staying.” But many Sunset Ranch customers haven’t been so determined. The desert is littered with refuse from their forsaken attempts. Thousands of tires are piled in a lot where the previous owners planned to use them to build a home. On one lot, falling-down animal pens, horse skulls and scattered bones, and a trashed trailer are left over from an owner who raised wolves. One day he decided he’d had enough, let the pens open and headed for greener pastures. Jars of pickles and mustard still sit in the flung-open refrigerator. Driving on rough roads that Sunset Roads carved out of the desert, some grown over and others washed out, crumbling homes, half-built cinder block structures, weather-beaten campers and recreational vehicles speckle the landscape. Some customers have left more than trash behind. Gregory Pederson drove from California in 2005 to visit the land he bought. When he didn’t call after a few days, his wife got worried and called the local sheriff. After searching the maze of roads nearly all day, officers found a beige Toyota with Pederson’s body and dozens of empty pill bottles inside. “Obviously, it was a mistake to try these ‘roads’ É paths on anything except 4WD or a dirtbike,” he wrote in a suicide note. “But the Web site did say guaranteed access. Once again, I am abandoned of common sense.” Land rush Sunset Ranches owner Jack Giacalone declined to be interviewed for this story, saying that his company had been in Hudspeth County 16 years and that he has had plenty of conversations with county officials. Giacalone’s operation does not fall under colonia laws in Texas that prohibit the sale of property without utilities in the border region and apply only to lots smaller than five acres. The lots Sunset Ranches sells are 20 acres or larger. A “property owner’s information guide” that potential customers can download from the Web site lets them know they will have to pay to get utilities on the land. It says getting a water tank would cost about $2,600, and filling it every month would take about $85. Or the landowner could pay for a well, for which the cost “will vary.” Randy Barker, manager of Hudspeth County Underground Water Conservation District No. 1, said it could cost $10,000 – at the low end – to dig and install a well, and there’s no guarantee the pipes will produce water. Sandy Pridgeon, Hudspeth County’s chief tax appraiser, has an entire cabinet filled with Sunset Ranches transactions. He estimates Sunset Ranches has some 250,000 acres in the county, and when customers default on their loans, he said, the company buys the land and sells it again. Giacalone, he says, is among the top 10 taxpayers in the county. He calls Sunset Ranches one of the better land sellers in Hudspeth County. With the advent of online sales, speculators and investors have started buying and selling land at an alarming rate. The county has about 3,000 residents, but his department mails out some 53,000 property tax bills every year to people all over the world. “There’s something wrong with those numbers,” he says. Some landowners, he says, probably couldn’t even find Hudspeth County on a map. They just buy the title so that they can turn around and sell the land for a higher price to someone else. “People will go out and just get their hands on anything so they can resell it,” Pridgeon says. At least Sunset Ranches sells property that has been platted and provides land deeds. Others just sell land on eBay or other Web sites without filing the legal paperwork. Most sellers, Pridgeon says, are smart enough to at least sell plots larger than five acres to avoid anti-colonia regulations. But some do not. “We’ve got places in Hudspeth County where people are selling 25-by-100-foot lots that you can’t even get to,” he says. The Texas Attorney General’s office has filed a lawsuit against one landowner who sold smaller lots without utilities in Hudspeth County, but Pridgeon says there are many more. County Judge Rebecca Dean Walker said she doesn’t have a problem with developers. She has a problem with people putting their lives in danger and squandering their money to chase illusory promises from unscrupulous developers. “I resent it,” she says, “and I resent it for the poor people.” She has a problem with piles of rubbish all over her county. She has a problem with spending county money to hire more staff to send out thousands of tax bills, some as small as $5. And County Sheriff Arvin West has a problem with irate landowners who get lost and come to his office wanting help to find their new home in the middle of the desert.
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“My first reaction is a big smile,” he says, “and I tell them, ‘Welcome to nowhere.’ ”
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