Author: Aaron Weber

Davis Square Housing At $2.77 Per Square Inch

I think it’s fair, or at least pretty much reasonable, to charge $400 a square foot on a nice condo in a nice part of Somerville. So when I found out that the Building 5 Lofts had a place just shy of a thousand square feet asking $415k, I figured it would at least be worth my while to drop by and have a look. After all, the flyer price is down from the $429k listed on the website, and I seem to recall them asking a half-mill for these pre-construction. This is shaping up to be a bargain, right?

And I know the neighborhood. I’ve been here for years. I could live hear for many, many years more. At the very least, I want to be here at least another ten years, so that I can be around when my neighbor’s daughter (now age 3) hears the story of how, shortly after figuring out how to take off her pants, she somehow got into my yard and crapped on the lawn. Yes, I’m saving this story til then for maximum embarrassment factor. That’s community investment right there, bucko. That’s what holds a town together: Shared humiliation of other people’s children.

Seriously, though. Look at this address. Scroll the picture around and turn to where the construction site and parking lot are… OK, the picture is unimpressive, but look around the neighborhood. It’s a great neighborhood. Imagine it in a year, after the construction is done and the landscaping comes in. This is really a hell of a good place to live. Walk to the train. Walk to the bus. Walk to restaurants, bars, towns, bike path — although not so close that kids are rollerblading past your windows at night. It’s a really good location. An excellent location. Plus, off-street parking and basement storage. This is a desirable condo, worth top dollar. Not Back Bay top dollar, but still.

Don’t leave. Seriously. I’m getting to the point. Honest.

Being me, on the way over I had imaginary conversations with myself. “Never trust a mortgage broker, never trust a realtor – not even your very own buyer’s agent, never trust an assessment or inspection or seller….” I’m not a trusting person. And I read a lot of pessimistic websites.

Of course, once I got there, I didn’t say any of those things. Besides, the people who were showing the place were very nice. And when I asked how they calculated the 961 square feet of the place, they were pretty honest that it was a figure larger than what was visible. I was mollified. It’s not even a dishonest figure: A builder calculates the square footage of the building site. A buyer calculates the square footage of what they’ll be living in.

Nonetheless, a lot of people end up with inflated figures. And there’s too much variation between one person’s square foot and another that it’s impossible to judge what people are really asking. In other words, I don’t think enough people really know what they’re buying or selling or renting. And that’s why people like me wouldn’t dream of showing up for a serious tour of an apartment or condo without a measuring tape and calculator to measure each room. It lets the realtors know we’re not to be trifled with. OK, it lets them know we’re assholes.

Still: No square footage inflation for me!

And yes, as soon as I walked in that door, the $432/square foot they were asking looked a lot more like $518/square foot to me. It was a beautiful home in an excellent location. But it was not even close to a thousand square feet. And I don’t care how lovely those hardwood floors and high ceilings are, I’m not paying more than $2.77 per square inch for housing.

Not For The Squeamish

I finally went to the Mutter Museum while I was in Philly. Yeah, morbid: Friday morning we went to a funeral, and Friday afternoon we took a trip to the museum of medical history, to look at preserved fetuses of spina bifida victims and skulls showing the ravages of syphilis. What a town.

For something equally squick inducing but totally unrelated watch this horrible motorcycle crash. The bit where the guy’s leg flops around at a hundred miles an hour is really intense:

Funeral Food

Cut out of work early Thursday and drove to Cinnamonson, NJ for a funeral. Wake on Thursday, mass on Friday at the departed’s favorite golf spot. Then, since we were nearby, we stayed the night in Philly. I’ve been thinking a lot about death and transit all weekend for obvious reasons.

  • I miss Philly. What a great town that is. We ate at Ansill, which was pretty much worth the drive all the hell the way down from Boston.
  • Gasoline is expensive, but it’s obviously not expensive enough to keep jerks in SUVs from driving 90 miles an hour on the turnpike. Tailgating is Jersey’s national sport as far as I can tell.
  • If I go to play chess against someone who knows even halfway what they’re doing, I’m pretty much guaranteed to lose, and quickly. But if you’re going to play, you at least play until they say “mate in three” or something like that, and you know exactly how it’s going to play out. And then, do you go ahead and play those narrowly defined moves? Or do you just give up?

I guess this is what it feels like to be a laboratory rat

Every morning I get up and go into a maze. I sit in a reasonably comfortable chair and I press some buttons. Eventually there is food. I divide my time between solving puzzles that are presented to me and amusing myself in inscrutable ways. There is enough light and water and I am in the company of others like me, although we are kept somewhat apart as well. I have adequate veterinary care.

I can’t help but think there must be some sort of larger scheme involved in directing these actions. It might be evil, or good, or indifferent, but either way I’m pretty sure it has only marginal concern for me.

Too Little, Too Late

Boston’s Real Estate Cafe is having a coffee meetup to talk about projected ten percent decline in the price of single-family homes in the next year. I don’t know what to say except “woohoo?” Loss of population, price declines, and the MBTA aside, housing in these parts is still too scarce, too expensive, and too far from public transit. For as long as I’ve been paying attention, the problems have been obvious and the solutions have been simple, if unpopular (Dense mixed-income housing! In your colonial town!)

Meanwhile, The Times tells me that Bernanke is “clamping down on exotic and subprime mortgages,” something that’s been obviously necessary for at least four years. Keep this up, boys, and you just might get the barn door closed by the time the horse gets bored of romping around the farmyard and decides to come back out of the rain.

I Spit On Your Grave

More and more on the legacy of Jesse Helms. I’m not saying he was a bad person or a racist, but he spent years railing against “pinkos” and “Yankees,” thought that Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement were fronts for communism, socialism and sex perversion, and that Social Security was a terrible idea. When Carol Moseley-Braun was elected to the Senate, he sang “Dixie.” He thought that interracial marriages were abominations. He thought that AIDS research was a waste because gay people deserved it. In response to a protest in Mexico he said that “Latins are volatile people…. I was not surprised at the volatile reaction.” He refused to attend a joint session of congress addressed by Nelson Mandela.

Oh, wait, I am saying he was a racist and a bad person.

I’m sure I could find common ground with him on something, at some point. Perhaps I could be convinced that the NEA is probably not the best use of government money, or that kids these days are up to no good. But blocking treaties against the use of land mines? Why not just vote that puppies and kittens should be stomped to death?