Jeremy Bagott

Jeremy Bagott was born and grew up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, that sprawling, smog-choked Levittown of the West. After an adolescence marred by frequent family moves -- never outside the San Fernando Valley -- fights with local toughs and run-ins with the gendarmes, he left home weeks after his 17th birthday in a van bound for the Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station, Los Angeles. After a four-year tour in the Marine Corps, college, and stints as an embassy translator and a part-time editor at a European business newspaper, he was hired as a copy editor at the Los Angeles Daily News, where he penned headlines, wrote photo captions, proofread galleys and edited news copy during the closing days of the 20th century. Today, Bagott writes about land use, agriculture, finance and public policy, and holds the MAI and AI-GRS designations from the Chicago-based Appraisal Institute.