Jun 18 2001
Real estate madness
Our neighbor across the hall has her apartment for sale for $489,000. Yup, almost half a million dollars. This just amazes me. Our building has 6 apartments, 2 on each floor. Each has one bedroom and one bathroom, that’s it (though they are pretty big, at 1,200 square feet each). Ours is in the back, is very quiet, and overlooks gardens and trees. Hers is on the front of the building, facing a very busy main artery street, with traffic all day and all night, and still more buildings across the street looking into her windows. Neither of us have parking spaces, and our apartments are the exact same size and same layout. She doesn’t have an en-suite laundry room or anything else that might make hers more valuable than ours as far as I can see. I just don’t get it.
She had an open house yesterday afternoon — very clever, since traffic is slowest on a Sunday afternoon! — and around 12 people showed up in the three hours it was open. I could hear most of them asking about the parking (and not liking the answer) and being horrified by her dark red hallway and mustard yellow walls in the kitchen. I will be interested in seeing how long it takes to sell that place and what price she gets for it. We paid much less than HALF of her asking price when we bought our place 6 years ago. And on the weekends, it’s bird song that wakes me up, not traffic.
By the way…the real estate people do not know their history. They list our building as “Edwardian” when it was built in 1927. Newsflash: Edward VII (the Edward of “Edwardian”) died in 1910. George V, the present Queen’s grandfather, was King in 1927. But you can’t call it “Georgian”, since that refers to George III (whose rule ended in 1820). Maybe it’s high time we finally cut loose from England once and for all and created our own categories. How about “Jazz Age” building? I think that has a suggestion of luxury, elegance and fun about it. “Spacious jazz age apartment” — doesn’t that sound nice?
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