Our philosophy was to maximize the water views, to keep the open space that's typical of carriage houses and to keep the feeling of a Tuscan farmhouse, which is obviously what the architect in 1910 tried to do.

The only limiting factor is water but with more town houses and flats, there won't be space for lawns to be watered and if the water becomes scarce, the price will go higher and everyone will only use that quantity that is needed. The answer is technology.

It seems so many big houses are going up and so little green space, there's going to be too much impervious ground cover.

This space used to have two houses on the front. Then a developer, James Mathias, purchased it and was going to build 48 apartment units. But he was patient enough to allow us to acquire the funds to buy the land.

You don't see any houses any more. I saw only four rooftops that were covered by water; everything else was covered by mud.

Luckily, we are on higher ground, so we'll be one of the houses out of the water first when it recedes. What I can say is that we're the best of the worst.