patrick.net

And since this is the housing bubble blog afterall, I will tie into the overall cost of housing.

The main reason housing is so expensive in the Bay Area is because land is scarce. Land is scarce for many reasons, but the primary one is that so much it has been tied up in the inefficient and archiac method of transportation we use, namely automobiles. How much cheaper would housing be in the Bay Area if we did not dedicate so much land to parking, roads, freeways and the like dedicated to automobile users?

Worse yet, our slavish devotion to the automobile causes our cities to be spread out more than they need to be, aggravating the effect. A spread out city not only requires more land dedicated to the automobile, the effect feeds on itself because spread out cities lead to people taking longer trips, which lead to more congestion, which leads to more freeway building, which leads to being spread out more.

Hey, if you hate planning and you love long trips by automobile, just move to one of the cities that have decided to go that path like Houston or Atlanta and enjoy your time in traffic.

Of course, deep in my heart I really want other people to join the boycott - when it is time to buy… less competition.

this would become like game theory... all the 'boycotters' would be sneaking out to buy property, and it would be game on again... not to mention the specuvestors harvesting the windfall of slightly cheaper properties and 'keeping the dream alive'... aka the tragedy of the commons... whatever... where's randy?

this would become like game theory…

Exactly. Either that or I am evil. :twisted:

Could this possibly be real? It was on a Trulia real estate site in a New England town not to be named. I cannot be more specific, to avoid legal hassles. It’s 10,000 square feet on 6 acres, 9 BRs, 9 baths. Priced at $3,670,600. (What could that final $600 possibly signify?) Some builder gave steroids, Mescaline, and ketamine to the notion of a neo-Georgian house, and this is what you get in that state of “dissociative anesthesia.” (Or perhaps more like aphasia.) Note the three fountains arbitrarily deployed so as to defeat their purpose as focal points. Note the unnecessary brick planting boxes for the cedar shrubs. Note the chimney runs interrupted by windows. Note the blank wall first floor beneath that. Note the triplex fake Georgian windows above the front entrance (scary!). Note the fanlights at left with no windows in them. We have absolutely lost it.

Could this possibly be real? It was on a Trulia real estate site in a New England town not to be named.

Nice until the river rises a few feet after a heavy rain.

Patrick says

Nice until the river rises a few feet after a heavy rain.

Looks like that house has been there a while and is high enough with the rocks to have been through plenty of heavy rains just fine. I would be more worried about the loudness of that running river.

AI generated rivers in AI generated photos do that?