Yay me

So we bought our first home yesterday–a 1200 sq. foot condo north of Boston. It scares the hell out of me because we are now very, very poor. All said, the condo will eat more than half of my monthly pay. My wife stays home with the our two daughters, so my income is all we have. On paper it *barely* covers us, so the truth is one of us will have to get a part time job.

But, as painful as this all is going to be, there is the pervasive idea that “YOU MUST BUY”. Rent is cash down the drain, a mortgage is an investment in your future. Property values have been one of the most stable sectors of the U.S. economy. You get great tax benefits. So the math tends to add up. YMMV of course.

Here in the Boston area it’s a great time to buy a home. The market has dipped a little after years of excessive growth. I’m not expecting it to come back as strong as it was–I think that was simple unsustainable. And really, it gets the consumer NOTHING. If you house value grows 50% in two years, don’t get too excited, because so did all the other houses. Unless you are a housing developer, “flipper”, etc., then the rapid growth comes out in the wash. You sell your house for a lot more than you bought for, but the house you are going to buy went up just as much. And frankly the rampant greed of the developers has flooded the market, and is a huge contributer to the current market conditions.

Frankly a saner market, with stable but not outrageous growth, is better for everyone. If prices stay reasonable, the more young buyers can enter the market. If more buyers can enter the market there is less incentive to leave Boston. The resultant positive feedback loop–more young people staying to work in Boston, buying houses, spending money locally, and generally moving up the economic ladder–is good for everyone.

What we’ve had instead is rampant greed driving the housing market out of control, driving the best and brightest away, making it damned hard for companies to fill open head-count, fewer start-ups and less innovation. Generally fucking those of us left.

So lets all raise a glass to slower growth!

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Hoping that Ian is stoopid

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Showing my true Mental Age

Cindy Sheehan was arrested… ho hum — except the amusing part is the Texas Dept. of Public Safety’s spokesperson’s name is Tela Mange. Immediately strikes me as looking like an anagram for something… hmm, she may or may not be an Elegant Ma or contain Angel Meat… and I’m missing whatever symbolism there might be in an Enamel Tag… but one thing’s for sure: wasting resources going after the likes of Cindy Sheehan makes her a pretty Lame Agent.

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