So SDXB and I went over to the hillside neighborhood I “discovered” below the hiking trails at North Mountain. The trails themselves have become counterproductive for exercise walks, partly because they’re so damn crowded — especially with morons charging past you huffing and puffing their germs into your face — and partly because it’s just not that safe to take Ruby the Corgi up there. Same reason: morons (they bring their own out-of-control dogs), plus rattlesnakes, cactus thorns, and sharp rocks.
“Discover” isn’t exactly the term for it, because we both have had friends who lived in that neighborhood, over the years. But the two things I found of interest were a) the paved (!!) sidewalks and roads that curve up and down and around and b) the houses that look like they were constructed by the same builder who installed the houses here in the ’Hood. SDXB agreed that they were alarmingly like our places…and also that the relative quiet of the neighborhood was striking, as was the absence of derelicts and other sketchy types.
Basically, the houses are much the same as the ones here, only in a safer, quieter area. With nice gentle grades to walk Ruby (and me) on. And of course a steep mountain trail out back, for the purpose of getting some serious exercise.
So when I got back I googled real estate in that zip code. HOLY maquerel! In the first place, nothing’s for sale in there just now., In the second place, Zestimated prices for houses similar to ours are breathtaking! Here’s a shack for sale just to the west of the neighborhood, certainly not a better area and arguably not as desirable: YIPES!
Okay okay, 5 bedrooms IS a little much.
But almost 700 grand for a tract house that faces on Thunderbird Road, one of the Valley’s mainest of main drags and a major commuter road??? Give…me…a…BREAK! (aaanndd…btw, how happy ARE you that you don’t have to clean those shiny marble floors?) And the pool where passing golfers can peer at you as you’re splashing around or enjoying a cocktail at poolside — no skinny-dipping for the likes of you!
So I go to look up prices here in the ’Hood…could I make an even trade, more or less?
Zillow thinks my house is worth a measly $565,600 grand. Redfin puts it at $606,
699. Either estimate is a far cry from the $235,000 I paid for this place in 2004, or the $100,000 for the identical model I first bought here, about three houses in from the horrible Conduit of Blight Blvd.
We have arrived in California territory, price-wise. How on earth do young people ever get in the door of a real house (not an apartment, not a condo)? One semester I had a student who, with her husband and two small kids, lived a ways to the west of that North Mountain tract. Their tract was what I’d call working-class construction — I had occasion to see it when we had a major storm that blew the roof off the house, and the young people needed some help until such time as one or the other set of parents could get into town. Just the most standard, cheaply built stucco-and-styrofoam stuff — their place was largely trashed by the storm, and some of the other houses there were even worse off. The prices over there are now similar: $600,000+++ for tiny little tract houses! I can’t even imagine how a young couple would come up with that kind of money, even with both of them working full-time.
Soooo…. It looks like we bought my son’s house more or less in the nick of time. If, as he prefers, I live in this house until I croak over, he’ll inherit a paid-off shack that right now is worth 600 grand but in another ten to fifteen years will presumably be pushing a million bucks. His house is worth about $500,000 now (sez Redfin). If he inherits this paid-off house, he could…well…think about it! He could…
- Move here and sell his house, netting around a half-million dollars
- Move here and rent his house, providing a moderately steady second income
- Stay in his place and sell my place, netting around 600 or 700 grand, put the money in his retirement fund, and knock off working early
- Stay in his place and rent this place for some truly outrageous amount of money
- Sell both houses and move to rural southeastern Utah or southwestern Colorado, one of his daydreams
- Sell them both and move overseas, where (depending on his choice) he could live like a king and never work again
- Or of course just keep on keepin’ on, holding his job and collecting a decent salary until he reaches retirement age and then moving to the South of France on the proceeds of both houses, his retirement fund, and my retirement fund. 😀
Financially, it would give him a lot of choices.
Probably the most advantageous strategy for him (and maybe for me, too), would be for me to stay in this house until they carry me out feet-first. It’s a nice neighborhood with pleasant neighbors…its only drawbacks are the startling crime and vagrancy rates and the noise from the main drags and the constant cop helicopter buzz-overs. But both of those come under the heading of Life in the Big City.
The young people aren’t affording these houses. Significantly fewer Millennials own houses compared to Gen X and Boomers at the same age. They’re also behind prior generations when it comes to investing/retirement savings. Fewer are getting married or having children. They can’t afford it. Stagnant wages, educational debt, and rapidly rising rental prices are creating a significant squeeze.
Ayup. But I think the degree of behind-itude varies according to a broad spectrum of conditions…parents’ attitude toward money and toward saving, investing, and spending; what kind of jobs young people can access and what the pay is like, shifting attitudes toward family and toward the woman’s role (which does STILL seem to be shifting), the shockingly uneven quality of public education not only across the country and from state to state and city to city, but even within given school districts, the persistent racial and cultural inequality in schools and in housing… All of those and many more factors that we’re all familiar with have had set up conditions for young people that range from the usual difficulty we all face to freaking disaster.
Leaving that much $$$ to a one kid is immoral. I have two, they will be lucky if they get anything.
Konenko!! Welcome to FaM!
Having only one kid and no great desire to leave the vast fortune to anyone else, the kid is getting it foisted on him. 😀 Well…unless I use it all up before I croak over.
Dayum, I miss the SBA gang! And miss your good ole’ ornery uniqueness, you old wild man! <3 Are you all still meeting? Say hello to them for me!