Delco brought engineers, high prices
Influx of arrivals created mini-frenzy in housing market

By SCOTT HADLY
NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER

	NEWS-PRESS FILE In this aerial photo from 1962, homes were sprouting up along Highway 101 in Goleta.

An engineer with a good-paying job and a nice house in Milwaukee, Bill Cattoi got a shock when he began looking for a home he could afford here.

"I was irate," Mr. Cattoi said.

But that was more than 30 years ago, when he was one of more than 460 Delco employees and their families who moved from Wisconsin en masse to bolster the Goleta plant's expansion into aerospace.

Back then, the $57,000 price tag on a four-bedroom Goleta track home produced sticker shock.

"Little did I know what would happen with real estate," said Mr. Cattoi, who now lives in a condo off Modoc Road. "I should have bought two homes back then."

When he and his co-workers were making offers on homes, the median price of a house was about 25 percent to 30 percent more than the cost of similar homes in the Midwest. Now the difference is as much as three or four times greater here.

Delco Electronics, a division of General Motors, moved the employees between 1972 and 1973. The company actually sent full plane loads of employees from Wisconsin, and gave them three days to find a home and make an offer, said Mike Cavalier, a 40-year Delco employee who came in one of the first waves of workers.

The Fairview overpass can be seen in the center. At left, children play near Goleta homes under construction.

"I was fortunate because we came out first and there had been a slight depression on the housing market in the months before we got here," Mr. Cavalier said.

He was able to buy his five-bedroom home with a pool for about $54,000, less than the asking price. But as real estate agents learned of the waves of Delco engineers headed for our shores, a mini-housing frenzy began. Prices jumped about 30 percent quickly, homes had multiple offers over the asking price, and Delco employees found themselves bidding against one another.

"No one paid less than asking," Mr. Cavalier said.

Many of the Delco workers helped develop the guidance and navigation systems for NASA's Apollo space missions. Mr. Cavalier said something like that mass move couldn't happen today because Santa Barbara is just too expensive.

"Engineers are paid pretty well, but I don't think any have inflated to the point that they could afford a million-dollar home," he said.

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