Real Estate Business - 27th Street Development

One morning after the demise of the cosmetic business, I was driving around with nothing on my mind, and saw an old friend and stopped to talk.  He was getting his car ready to go downtown to sell ten acres of timberland that he had in front of his house, and all of it in a square corner plot on good highways.  (Between Westport Road and Blue Ridge Cutoff).  The only difficulty I could see with it was that it had a creek running through it, three gullies, and a heavy forest of trees covered about fifty percent of the plat.

I called my brother, Forrest, and told him about it.  he came out and looked at it, and we decided to buy and develop the land.  Forrest would provide the money and I would do the work.

To start the operation, we first had to clear the ground.  We bought a new D4 Caterpillar tractor to do the heavy work.  I had never driven a tractor of any kind, and had to learn to operate it quickly.  We hired two amateur woodsmen to do ground work, and I operated the tractor.  We had but little trouble in clearing and burning the small brush, but there were several huge trees more than three feet in diameter that we had to reckon with.

We dug around these larger trees until we were able to push them over.  Then we would pile the brush and burn it.  I was able to sell the larger trees to a wood yard that sawed them into stove lengths and sold the wood.  We retained the nicely-sized trees for decoration where at all possible.

When the roads, curbs, and landscaping was all done, I thought we had a beautiful development.  It was just 20 months from the day we bought the land until the grading was done.  Streets were in and paved, 49 beautiful homes were built, painted, ready for occupancy, and sold.  Each home was different from all the others.  Today (1983) they sell for $30,000 - $60,000.

I personally sold 41 of the new homes, as well as 11 of the houses that were taken in trade.  I didn't think we did a bad job of developing, but conditions didn't look good for the future, and we were tired, so we suspended operations until things looked better.  I was happy with the outcome and my brother was also well pleased.

Besides the home built for Jim and Kitten on an unusually large corner lot, we also built a nice big house for ourselves on an acre of ground that joined the development, and was only 100 yards from Jim's house.  Our home was at 9314 E. 27th Street, Independence, Mo.

It was always green when Grandpa owned it

Note:  I remember taking lunch to Grandpa on the tractor.  I love this picture of us.

Cousin Anne Graham, who is a granddaughter of Forrest F. Moseley, has this lighter.
Grandpa and his brother, Forrest, built homes off 27th Street in Independence