Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1924-Jan 1925)

Cfsvw^ Soon after Aileen Pringle built this home, there was a stunning advance in the value of the property four thousand dollars. They wanted two hundred and fifty dollars down ; the rest could be paid like rent. The cutter had fifty dollars in cash and two hundred dollars' worth of liberty bonds. Before he had paid off the four thousand dollars "like rent," he was offered sixty thousand dollars cash for the house, and refused it. A lot of them have cleaned up fortunes ; but I imagine that Agnes Ayres is the queen realtor of them all. Her experience sounds like a miracle. She didn't have any more money than the Talmadge cutter when she started out. She was then getting fifty dollars a week at the Lasky studio. Altho it was very hard, she compelled herself to save fifty dollars a month from this salary. She and her mother were at that time living in a' rented bungalow in Hollywood. Someone called her attention to the fact that she could make a small payment down on a bungalow; she could then buy it on the instalment plan for just what her rent was costing. Accordingly she put down her first five hundred dollars and became a landed proprietor. When they raised her salary at the studio she made a first payment on a second bungalow, and rented it to another movie girl. The rent paid the instalments as they came due, so she virtually got her second house for the five hundred dollars' initial payment.: her tenant bought the house for her. From this she edged her way into realty. Her Scotch sagacity told her that the opening and paving of Laurel Canyon (T\ would create a new r28 lA0£ settlement at Gardner 'Junction at the edge of Hollywood. She bought some cheap property there and, when the boom came, as she had foreseen, the bank was glad to let her have the money to build an apartment-house. Her rents from the apartment-house helped to build a second apartmenthouse. And so her fortune builded. Miss Ayres is a rich woman now — a fortune built from nothing in four years. She has two business blocks at Santa Monica ; two apartment-houses in Hollywood and valuable harbor property out at San Pedro, the naval base. "Real estate," she says, "is a cinch for any girl whose finances have compelled her to hunt bargains in departmentstores. It's the same thing. I go prowling around among my neighbors and talk to everybody I meet. That way I hear about bargains. You cant make any money out of real estate sitting in a house and waiting for the money to come up the street to you in a basket." Another real estate sensation in Hollywood is Harold Lloyd. And Harold has gone about it in exactly the opposite way. Among his possessions were an uncle and a father. Both were business men. His uncle, I believe, had been an efficiency man in a big railroad corporation. Harold mobilized them. He digs up the money by playacting for motion pictures ; and Pa and Uncle find somewhere to put it. They devote their whole time to his investments. Not, however, that Harold is an innocent child in relation to finance. He is, in fact, an exceedingly shrewd business man, with great financial sagacity. Not a nickel is invested by his Uncle and Father that has not been passed upon by Harold himself. * Since Viola Dana bought the Foothill Garage and put her chauffeur in as superintendent, the place has more than doubled in value