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Won't You Be My Neighbor?
From Slope of Hope: After reading the "0.1% Problems" post on ZeroHedge (which was about a snippet from a local paper about a fellow complaining that billionaires can get whatever they want, whereas 'average millionaires' in Palo Alto cannot), I thought I'd share a property listing with you good people in case you want to join me here in my fair city (my house, mercifully, I bought into back in 1991 when prices were merely above-average, and not insane).
May I present to you 258 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto, California, which is located within walking distance from my house and is a mere $1,800,000 (well, that's the asking price, but it'll probably go for more). The property features ample storage in the back........
A spacious kitchen to prepare everything from snacks-on-the-go to sumptuous Thanksgiving feasts........
A family room where you may gather with loved ones to share stories from the day, catch up on a good book, or sing around the piano.........
A bedroom where you may relax or - heck, it's Palo Alto! - start the next Google!
Or relax in the well-appointed bathroom featuring running water (and, once the hot water heater has been installed and tested, your choice or either hot or cold).......
It should be noted that the foundation isn't absolutely perfect and may require some attention; (please note that a Home Depot is just across the freeway, in colorful East Palo Alto, for all your home improvement requirements....)
Thanks to rock-bottom interest rates, if you've got a little over a third of a million dollars saved up for the down payment, and a $300,000 income, you should be good-to-go:
I mentioned the storage, right?
Incidentally, I didn't do a Google Image search for "hovel" and come up with a fake post. The above pictures are, honest to God, from the real estate listing.
And, in a rare moment of Realtor honesty, I close with this:
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Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4nI7AgUKwk (1:30)
You can buy seven or eight houses like mine for this price in Coastal, NC. $350k gets you a beautiful 10 year young, 3,000sq.ft., 3-4 bedroom, 2 ½ bath home in a gated golf course community, $1,600/yr property taxes, 4 miles from the beach, and 30 minutes from an international airport (but, why would you want to leave?).
As someone who spent half his life living in CA, I can honestly say it might be time to vote with your feet. But, hurry. Now that I'm here, I'm thinking about petitioning the County Planning Board to prevent any more people from out of state getting in, expecially people from NY, NJ, and CA.
For 1.8 million you could buy 30 or 40 houses in the shape that one is in in the small town I live in southern oregon...!
You should keep this to yourself. The maroons from Cally will bring their millions, drive up your real estate value, and vote for higher taxes. I hope they vote with their feet too. By staying in their own pigsty, beautiful as it is.
If only there were a way to short real estate.
Um, you can short real estate. I'll let you google it since you've been down too long.
There may be some valuable artefacts inside the house.
Not habitable? It looks perfectly habitable for the average hobo and his crack addict brood of whores.
But hey, what's a couple of million between Federal Reserve friends of friends of Janet.
Looks like the perfect orgy place for Janet to spread her creaky legs and let her lips flap.
Put that in your mental image file and head to the bathroom to puke.
Janet Reno?
Around here homes have stayed put for the most part. Some drop off after '08, but i bought in '05 and i haven't lost anything on it...although living in a house is not free. Property taxes, utilities, heating/ac, upkeep... it all adds up. The big one over the last decade is house insurance...its a crock how expensive is has become. If you live in the flood plain up here, your house is basically worthless because of how much you'll be paying for insurance.
Janet to spread her creaky legs and let her lips flap.
I want to gouge my eyes out now!!!
Guess the loafer who lives in his departed parent's house (Old man probably worked in a factory circa 1950's as a supervisor and brought home a decent chec, mom stayed at home and took care of things) is going to have a nice payday and probably squander it on something.
In the 1960's a family in that house watched Star Trek and believed in Warp Drive.
Welcome to silicon valley!
Trailer Park Boys!
Well the fact that it is not habitable and located in a flood zone shouldn't detract.
Not only that, it is located on a flood plain.
If this is what a tearer downer on a flood plain goes for wonder what they want for a good house.
No, no, no! If the house was actually habitable, the property would be worth less. Geez! Don't you get it?
/s
Seriously though, I can't imagine the code and ordinance structure of a place like Palo Alto. You can bet your ass lawyers have flocked there to lobby for local legislation that makes this 'hovel' more attractive than an actual, habitable home.
Idiocracy at it's finest- Thanks for the post, Tim.
Tim forgot the split level front porch, not that it's level.
And craziest of all is the 30 year fixed. Someone is gonna get an ass whoopin' on that.
It's actually a really good deal, considering the purchasing power of $2 million in 20 years is going to be probably about what $50K is now.
So it needs a little work..
Obviously, the musician and photographer that lives there is too consumed with his art to be bothered with minor property maintenance issues.
Actually it was the artisian nail polisher at the local beauty spa, mother-of-six, father's child support payments constantly late (because of jailtime), trips to the welfare office and waiting in line for hours at the dmv getting her license back because of CA emmissions failed testing on her suburban; which she drove constantly after failing. And God, the cost of babysitters these days...
Is that a fault line or a sink hole hiding underneath? I mean, that looks like solid cement stairs split in half and at angles not the way it was when originally poured.
Gotta love realtors! :-)
Know the area well Tim... But it's the 'knowledge' economy after all, right...? Just the location and the fact that the technological 'hub' is fairly well anchored in this area, prices are not likely to plummet - unless of course, we have a real, honest to goodness economic wash-out, where layoffs in tech are measured in the thousands per week and population as a result, actually begins to decline in these areas due to relocation. Nothing is written which says a scenario like that can never play out however...
The "knowledge" economy ha ha ha. What kind of savvy do you demonstrate paying $1.8 mil for that rat trap?
Ya Palo Alto is full of the world's most brilliant people ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Nonsense. I'd never let anyone I care about purchase anything in Palo Alto these days. If I could just buy puts, on the other hand.......
That's a quaint fixer upper in need of someone that's good with a screwdriver.
...or dynamite.
...... or a bulldozer with Musk strapped to the front....
...with Zuckerberg, the Google twins and Schmidt, Bezos and a bunch of others.
& lotsofit.
Was quaint..if anything screamed bulldozer..this place does.
Location, location, location.
It actually looks a lot like my house and my house ain't worth shit.
A real estate listing would describe the house as:
A house with fabulous fixer possibilities. Quaint. A retro-enthusiasts dream home. Large yard, mature trees, artistically situated in the area's finest neighborhood. All the amenities. Room to store your boat and motor home. Seller motivated.
Shit holes in my area (Wisconsin) always come with the word "bungalow" attached.
Looks like a nice value.
Here's a nice home for the 1%
as in, you could have it for about 1% of the price of the Palo Alto house, with cash leftover for some new windows.
And you could actually live in it. Mere blocks from the Mississippi, too.
Best feature: the well stack right in the middle of the paleo driveway.
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/314-De-Soto-St-De-Soto-WI-54624/210485...
That is not a house, it is a lead gathering device.
There must be many bullets going through there every day...
Here it is on Google Maps. They'd probably be asking $2 Mil for it as a vacant lot.
In Ca. it will cost 500K just to tear it down ...must catalog every bord and paint chip .
What's with the blood-stained futon-couch out back? Was the previous occupant a Liberian national, by any chance?
Federal Reserve chosenites printing themselves hundreds of $Trillion$ while the rest of us slave for scraps of bread...