Got a spare $6.6 million burning a hole in your pocket? If so, you might just be able to snap up an entire town. Campo, California, a quaint, unincorporated community in San Diego County is up for grabs, offering a mix of residential and commercial real estate across a sprawling 16-acre landscape, per SFGate.
Hitting the market with quite the proposition, the property deal includes 28 buildings on the chunk of land, which could be your next investment dream—or a hefty project, depending on your vision and appetite for renovation. According to a Patch report, real estate agents Nicolas Hernandez and Joseph Barela of Top Gun CRE are advertising the lot as "ripe for revitalization" and a chance to "put their own touch on a small community and shape the future of Campo." But the deal, which encompasses nearly all of Downtown Campo, does not include a small, county-owned fire station.
The property spans 95,000 square feet of interior space—priced at $69 per square foot—and features various buildings that have been updated with new roofs and vinyl plank flooring. Real estate aficionados point to this town as a living slice of California's "Old West" history, with Campo serving as a historical landmark dating back to its stop on the Arizona Railway in the late 1800s. Nicolas Hernandez remarked in his marketing spree, now better-motivated after a stalled sale attempt in 2019, that "the potential for high cash flow and significant upside through strategic development and honed operations," is tangible for the right investor.
From a frontier cavalry unit to World War II army barracks, Campo has had quite the journey. Housing the Buffalo Soldiers during the war, and later, Italian prisoners, the town went through a transformation post-WWII when soldier barracks were transitioned into apartments, as noted in a Realtor.com article. Investors now have a decision to make: they can either build, to maximize current land density without altering existing structures, or they can go for a complete redevelopment to slap a modern face on Campo's profile.
Interest in purchasing Campo seems to be as varied as its backdrop, with Hernandez sharing tales of potential buyers with visions ranging from a mini-resort to a bed-and-breakfast setup. The community has even caught the eye of a major LA media group considering the backdrop for a new TV series. Whether Campo will witness a new dawn under a single proprietor's guise or dissolve into a collective of disparate dreams remains open, but one thing is for certain: owning a small town is not a fantasy reserved for the Monopoly board—it's a California real estate reality, ripe with opportunity.
