When Joe Sobczak was on the lookout for a recent home in Groveland, California, his priority was unique: he needed a property that would house his airplanes.
That is when the 69-year-old test pilot found a residential airpark on the Pine Mountain Lake Airport. In 2017, Sobczak bought a 3-bedroom, 7-bathroom, 5,000-square-foot home with a 3,600-square-foot hangar for $698,000. He has a mortgage of $4,000 a month.
“It’s an outstanding social environment because you will have a direct group of people that have common interests,” Sobczak tells CNBC Make It. “The services are somewhat limited, however the trade-off is well offset by the serenity and peacefulness of [the community].”
There are about 90 homes with hangars which have deeded access to make use of the taxiways and runway on the Tuolumne County airport within the residential airpark. In his hangar, Sobczak keeps a Beechcraft T-34 Mentor plane he bought with one other pilot for $175,000.
Sobczak bought the home for $698,000 and has a monthly mortgage of $4,000.
Katie Tarasov. Photo by CNBC Make It
The 2 of them split the price of maintaining the aircraft. They lower your expenses on repairs because Sobczak is an FAA-certified A&P mechanic, so he often does the work himself.
As a test pilot, Sobczak works primarily out of the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). As an alternative of doing the three-hour drive, he jumps in considered one of his airplanes and takes a 45-minute flight to nearby San Carlos Airport and drives quarter-hour to SFO.
“The explanation I feel safer within the airplane is because I even have total control of my environment, versus driving a automotive where it’s me and the 5,000 other cars that pass me by on the solution to the Bay Area,” he says. “Within the airplane, it’s all under my control.”
Sobczak normally flies right down to work on the San Francisco International Airport in his Beechcraft T-34 Mentor plane.
Erin Black. Photo by CNBC Make It
Fueling the plane costs about $1 more per gallon than a automotive, he says. He pays around $120 roundtrip for jet fuel, so the price is comparable to what he would spend driving his automotive to and from work.
Since the Tuolumne County airport has no control tower, residents of the airpark use a typical traffic advisory frequency so pilots can broadcast their position and intended flight path.
“I do not really need to tell anybody if I’m going flying. All I even have to do is taxi out and take off,” Sobczak says. “It’s never loud …. It is so quiet that it’s noisy.”
A part of Sobczak’s deed includes access to the Tuolumne County airport.
