Here's Why California Pot Growers Are Paying Millions for Old Greenhouses in the Salinas Valley

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Buying and selling greenhouses in the Salinas Valley was never going to be the stuff of a reality TV show. But it was a good, quiet living for commercial Realtor Chuck Allen.

Then marijuana came to the valley. Now, agricultural real estate is booming.

The largely empty greenhouses where flowers once were grown are fetching multimillion-dollar prices, and Allen, 76, is raking in commissions bigger than many people’s annual salary. A couple of weeks ago, he closed on a $2.6-million deal that netted him $78,000. 

“It’s kinda fun, actually,” said Allen, who works for Keller Williams. “A year ago, I didn’t even know what it looked like. I thought they were Christmas trees.”

Monterey County’s land rush was touched off by efforts to ban the crop from the canyons and forests of the Big Sur area and sequester it inside existing greenhouses, where it can more easily be monitored, and perhaps most importantly, taxed. 

And...

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