Over in the fringe precincts of North Central’s Richistan — within walking distance of my son’s house — we had an unholy event the other day. Some nut case — a rather prominent one — murdered his entire family and then blew out his own diseased brain.
The horror of this happening aside…that place is in a lovely area, and right in the middle of the part of Phoenix I frequent. Not only could you walk to M’jito’s place from there, you also could walk to the beloved AJ’s and over to several decent restaurants and even down to my car mechanic’s place without much trouble.
When the unholy story came in across the Internet, an unholy thought leapt into my fevered little mind: I wonder if I could buy that place at a fire-sale price?
Lots of unholiness going around today, no?
Seriously, though: that house is in one of the nicest, prettiest parts of old North Central Phoenix. It’s a lush, irrigated district, far away from the slums of Sunnyslope and West Phoenix, where my house resides.
Dreadful as it seems to think about this…I am seriously thinking of calling one of my Realtor friends to find out if we could glom the house at a price comparable to what we could get for my ever-so-much humbler (and less bloodied…) abode.
On the one hand, you don’t even wanna think about what it would cost to render it livable. Presumably the flooring would have to be replaced, along with a fair amount of drywall. And everything repainted.
One wonders if their homeowner’s insurance would cover any of that. Probably not. Blowing away your family a natural disaster does not make. Besides…who’s left to receive the money?
On the other hand, even if you had to pay every penny of the repairs, it would be worth it. Those are million-dollar houses down there, in a beautiful, mature centrally located district. So…oh, my goodness, what a place!
On the third hand, I hafta admit: I’m not sure I could even afford the property taxes for one of those places.
But ohhh…it would be a long way from Tony’s Home for Juvenile Delinquents, from the oceans of crime represented by Sunnyslop to the north of us and the run-down slum apartments to the west of us.
Seriously: my neighborhood itself is very pleasant, but it’s flanked on two sides by truly dangerous districts. The fancy-Dan neighborhood that recently hosted the scene of the crime is a very nice area, indeed, and the humbler areas (if you can call them that) around it are on the high side of middle-class. Upper-middle-class, really.
If I could get my hands on that place at a fire-sale price…well… Maybe I could afford it.
Tony’s instant slum across the street will cut about a hundred grand off the asking price for my house. But with a suicide/murder scenario in place, buying that place in North Central could be a wash.
That’s assuming I can get the previous owner’s insurance to clean up the blood and repair the damage.
Think I’ll jump in my car and drive down there…see if I can get close enough to shoof around.
