Monday, July 24, 2006

It sure is a cute little house...

Check out this adorable little cottage:



This is what $400,000 buys you.

FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS.

This little house sits on a 90' by 60' lot around the corner from me. I live about 40 miles north of Chicago, and admittedly it is a nice spot to live. It is a suburb that was an actual town before urban sprawl, with a real sense of community, great schools and a cute little downtown with local shops and restaurants--but this is insane.

Tiny houses with huge mortgages, kids leaving college $100,000+ in debt, credit cards maxed out across the country, the inflationary ripple effect of gas prices starting to show up in everything we buy from strawberries to replacement windows all at the same time that the president is treating the treasury like his personal trust fund. Some people may look at the picture above and see a cute little house. I look at it and see impending disaster.

3 comments:

drmagoo said...

But when rich people have more money, we all benefit. Don't you see the trickle-down?

We're shopping for a car, and the salesguy told us that "most people nowadays are going with 72-month loans", which is the only way they can afford their cars. Or, and I'm just spitballing here, they could buy cars they could actually afford, and not have the car always die before it's paid off, so that they throw negative equity into the next one and are trapped forever.

Anonymous said...

Trickle down economy makes it viable to spend billions killing foreigners.

Besides, you don't want someone who can afford that house living next to you, do you?

Anonymous said...

Real wages are flat but the real estate market has gone crazy. That means the money is coming from the banks, in terms of mortgages. Adding to M1, the money supply, more dollars are chasing the same number of assets (insert INFLATION here).

The problem with real estate is that the dollars are really fake, all based on over-extended mortgages with no real assets behind them. Could that house be foreclosed for $400 grand?