Military couple sells dream home

SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - When Jay and Aline Humphrey set out to build their home, they made a list of the top 10 things they wanted, and got pretty much everything on the list.

Now, more than 20 years later, they want to move to the Southwest, where development hasn’t gotten quite so tight, and have put their dream home on the market.

“I don’t begrudge them wanting to be here,” Jay said of the new residents whose houses have popped up near his own. “I just think it’s time to move on. When we moved here it was kind of country. We’re looking at places where the subdivisions are 40 acres minimum.”

They were retired military personnel in 1983, a former Air Force sergeant and an Army nurse. Half Moon Bay had a building moratorium then, but they wanted to build, so they bought some land and waited their turn for sewer permits to be approved.

They got lucky, and Jay turned to his old high school buddy-turned-architect Jim Geldert to design the house. Geldert had them make the list. Aline wanted an indoor swimming pool, while Jay wanted a big garage and for it to be affordable to build. He’d taken out an Air National Guard loan for $55,000 at 15 percent — a “deal,” he said.

Later, when Jay Humphrey’s father died, his mother came to live in an in-law addition built by Geldert’s son, Thad Geldert.

“With his dad’s help, they made it really blend,” Jay Humphrey said.

The house has a small indoor pool with a current that simulates swimming upstream, capped by a glass atrium. Sunlight through the atrium can and does heat the whole house if they open a connecting door, according to Jay Humphrey and his real-estate agent, Alex Lehr.

“It [the heat] just goes zipping right up stairs,” Jay Humphrey said. “We love it here. It’s light and airy.”

Around the time they moved to the Bay Area, both the Humphreys joined the reserve units of their respective armed forces branch. And Jay Humphrey changed day jobs, switching from a utilities-supervisor role at the Stanford Linear Accelerator to a sheet-metal mechanic job for United Airlines. That made their years in the house full of fun vacations, he said.

Where: El Granada

Asking price: $1.35 million

Property tax: $17,550*

What: 3 bedrooms, 4 baths, 2,270 square feet

Amenities: Indoor pool under glass atrium, in-law unit, wine cellar, ocean view, fireplace, deck.

Agent: Alex Lehr, Lehr Real Estate, (650) 766-5300, www.lehrrealestate.com

*Estimate based on 1.3% of asking price.

kwilliamson@examiner.com