The Real Estate Bubble Bursts the American Dream
The stories keep coming, and none of them are good: - A friend
and her fiance are trying to buy a house in the Northampton-Hatfield
area of Massachusetts. Shacks with wet
basements are on the market for $300,000. They not only sell
instantly, but, usually, for more than the asking price.
Since he lives in Suffield, Conn. and she lives in Greenfield,
Mass, their only chance of ever living together is by finding
a house in the middle. Otherwise, they'll keep on burning
up rubber on the road. They have been house-hunting virtually
every weekend for two years
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The Real Estate Bubble Pops
Here.
A post card came in the
mail, from a Keller-Williams agent. (Is it just my imagination
or have they taken over the market lately?) It was about
the Gary house, down the street from me. The asking price
is $334,900. I remember the Garys, from back in the day.
Nice people. Salt of the earth. He was a deacon at the church.
She loved
him desperately. The mantle was already filled with pictures
of grandchildren when I met them, in the early 1980s. I went
there regularly for block meetings. They said we were crazy
to pay $49,000 for our house.
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Well? IS There a Real Estate
Bubble?
I
still don’t want
to talk about the real estate bubble, because this is a time
to celebrate. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA! But I’ll write
about it anyway, because I promised. Let me start with Manhattan
apartments, reminding you that every market – indeed
every neighborhood and sometimes every block – is different. Charles
and I have friends – very successful but not
super-rich – who bought an 1800-square foot two-bedroom
apartment on Central Park West, in a great building, for
$980,000 in 1997. The really neat thing about it is a terrific
terrace overlooking the Park. Not one of those little cookie-cutter
kind of slabs beneath the identical one above, but, rather,
a true terrace with room for plants and furniture and nothing
above, because it comes at a floor where the building sets
back
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