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Land Baron
Oct. 12th, 2008 11:40 am
You don't have to read Greek tragedies to know that strength is weakness, and weakness is strength. So it is for me with the property values around here.
The golf course and waterfront properties are expensive, and are covered with particle-board McMansion vacation homes to prove it. These are the biggest and most opulent homes in the county, and for the most part sit empty 50 weeks of the year.
Eventually the owners of these properties will retire, move up here, and put McCain-Palin signs (or the time-local equivalent) on their front yards. They'll stay for two years, maybe, until the winters get to them. Then they'll either buy a new second home down south and leave this one empty for half the year, or they'll sell outright.
But off the waterfront, property is still cheap. Most of the local people work too blasted hard for too little money, and many of them can only afford the Little Slice o'Heaven of two to ten acres of scrub forest and a mobile home, somewhere out in the pickers where property taxes are lower. Plenty of space for them to post their McCain-Palin signs, though.
Me, I'm a Land Baron. I have a house and four extra lots, totaling almost an acre. The house and one lot I bought many years ago, and have on a mortgage. The second lot I bought on a credit card because that was the lowest interest rate I could get for such a small loan. The third and fourth lots I got by trading my former neighbor my old pickup truck for them.
The recent crash in real estate values hasn't touched me at all. I bought my house a long time ago now, and its value isn't going to drop below what I paid for it. Besides, the house you live in is not an investment; you can't get that money back except by selling the house, and if you do that you just have to get another house anyway. At most, I consider my house an "investment" in that its value might make a down payment on a home located in some more popular area, if I ever have a chance (or the desire) to move to one. But even at the maximum inflated value I can see for my house, and the minimum crashed value of a house in, say, California, you'd need at minimum four or five houses like mine to buy one out there.
I only bought the house in the first place because buying here is about a third cheaper than renting an apartment, an apartment much smaller than my house is at that. In the years since, my "rent," my mortgage payment which My Betters tell me is such a good investment because it creates something called "Equity--" although you can't eat equity, it won't keep you warm, you can't smoke it or drink it, or.. well, you can't do anything with it, so I don't know what bloody good it is-- anyway, my mortgage payment hasn't risen, and won't. So in that sense buying is also a good deal.
But strength is weakness. The cheap land prices here mean I will never have enough invested in the house to let me buy one in some place that a sane person would want to live. The cheap land prices mean I'm kind of stuck here.
The golf course and waterfront properties are expensive, and are covered with particle-board McMansion vacation homes to prove it. These are the biggest and most opulent homes in the county, and for the most part sit empty 50 weeks of the year.
Eventually the owners of these properties will retire, move up here, and put McCain-Palin signs (or the time-local equivalent) on their front yards. They'll stay for two years, maybe, until the winters get to them. Then they'll either buy a new second home down south and leave this one empty for half the year, or they'll sell outright.
But off the waterfront, property is still cheap. Most of the local people work too blasted hard for too little money, and many of them can only afford the Little Slice o'Heaven of two to ten acres of scrub forest and a mobile home, somewhere out in the pickers where property taxes are lower. Plenty of space for them to post their McCain-Palin signs, though.
Me, I'm a Land Baron. I have a house and four extra lots, totaling almost an acre. The house and one lot I bought many years ago, and have on a mortgage. The second lot I bought on a credit card because that was the lowest interest rate I could get for such a small loan. The third and fourth lots I got by trading my former neighbor my old pickup truck for them.
The recent crash in real estate values hasn't touched me at all. I bought my house a long time ago now, and its value isn't going to drop below what I paid for it. Besides, the house you live in is not an investment; you can't get that money back except by selling the house, and if you do that you just have to get another house anyway. At most, I consider my house an "investment" in that its value might make a down payment on a home located in some more popular area, if I ever have a chance (or the desire) to move to one. But even at the maximum inflated value I can see for my house, and the minimum crashed value of a house in, say, California, you'd need at minimum four or five houses like mine to buy one out there.
I only bought the house in the first place because buying here is about a third cheaper than renting an apartment, an apartment much smaller than my house is at that. In the years since, my "rent," my mortgage payment which My Betters tell me is such a good investment because it creates something called "Equity--" although you can't eat equity, it won't keep you warm, you can't smoke it or drink it, or.. well, you can't do anything with it, so I don't know what bloody good it is-- anyway, my mortgage payment hasn't risen, and won't. So in that sense buying is also a good deal.
But strength is weakness. The cheap land prices here mean I will never have enough invested in the house to let me buy one in some place that a sane person would want to live. The cheap land prices mean I'm kind of stuck here.
