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P I C T U R E W I N D O W : A view o f New berry Springs from an abandoned service station on old Route 66. • ' Photographs b y M a r k B o s t e r L os Angeles Times M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E ; Real estate broker Fred Steam scans his 11-acre lot from the utility pad. H e says Newberry Springs buyers “all come into the office with cash. They're insulted if you bring up terms.” The ex-New York police officer moved here fo r the clean air. lim e will tell if those buying dirt-cheap in Newberry Springs really had the smart money. B y M i k e A n t o n Times Staff Writer N E W B E R R Y S P R IN G S , Calif. — A sh raf Fahim insists he is not a gambler. Yet when he de­cided to begin betting on real es­tate, he headed straight to the high-stakes table in California’s remote desert. Tw o years ago, as some ex­perts cautioned that soaring housing prices were creating a m arket bubble, the Egyptian-born pediatrician borrowed about $400,000 against his River­side home and began buying dirt where, until recently, land could i j dirt-cheap. languish on the market for years Fahim concentrated his pur- until it sold, chases on an area he felt w as un- That w as before Fahim and discovered, a skull-scorching other speculators swooped down stretch o f sagebrush and farm - on New berry Springs, land 20 minutes east of Barstow “Sometimes you do things in of these things?’ I told her I didn’t know. It w as just all very cheap.” A s analysts debate whether the real estate slowdown will re­sult in a soft landing or a crash, investors are trolling for bar­gains — and a big score — in the middle o f nowhere. One such hot spot is New berry Springs, a vast, unincorporated area in the M o­jave D esert that’s home to just a few thousand people spread out in homes on large parcels. L ast year, $15.6 million in real estate sold in the Z IP Code en­com passing much of New berry Springs, nearly seven times the am ount in 2000, according to D ataQ uick Inform ation Systems in L a Jolla. Figures through July are on pace with last year. Buyers run the gamut, and in­life and you don’t know why elude sm all developers betting you’re doing it,” sard Fahim, 42, that urban refugees will buy who bought several parcels for a luxury homes on private m an-few thousand dollars an acre — a m ade lakes, and a dentist whose few fo r just hundreds o f dollars license revocation and bank-an acre. “Even my wife w as yell- ruptcy inspired him to p u t a ing at me, ‘W hy are you buying all [See Land, Page B8] E N D O F T H E R O A D : Relics, tumbleweed dot the landscape. A n acre in Fontana can run $700,000; here, the price o f a used car.