Archives for July 2003

Have I mentioned that I love our neighborhood? A short walk to the town center, where the library is; a short walk to the playing fields of the high school, where the kids can run around; a short walk to the downtown, with lots of shops and restaurants and small-town kind of things.

Our neighbors stop us on the street and introduce themselves. A couple walking their extremely large silver-grey poodle stopped me on the street near the civic center and welcomed me to the street—they’d noticed me and the kids, I hadn’t had a clue.

One of the things I worry about raising the kids here is that there isn’t going to be a heck of a lot of diversity in a place where all the houses cost over (koff, koff) three-quarters of a million dollars. I probably shouldn’t admit that out loud, but hey: welcome to the wonderful world of California housing prices, people. Normal, well-kept houses require gigantic incomes around here.

Which is why I don’t understand why the house across the street has been, for all intents and purposes, abandoned.

It’s a nice house: about average size for this neighborhood, two story, on an odd-shaped plot of land. The lawn clearly hasn’t been mowed in months. The front porch light is always on. There’s a Datsun 280Z that has evidently been parked in the driveway through many a gust of wind and perhaps a rain shower or two.

I don’t get it. Yes, I know the job market has tanked around here, but the housing market hasn’t (and probably won’t until interest rates start their creep back up). If someone had defaulted on their mortgage, the bank would have had this puppy on the auction block post-haste, no? And if the owner simply doesn’t want it any more, why not sell it and probably clear a few bucks? Or a few hundred thousand, depending on when he or she bought it.

The neighbors on our right side, who moved in six months ago, have never seen anyone in the house.

If this house is a symptom of the economy…whoa.

Otherwise: investment oppportunity!!!

(Okay, probably not.)

Update: Of course today I see that the lawn has been mown and there’s now a huge pile of yard waste to one side of the house. The lawn isn’t being taken care of in any other way, though: it’s brown without the watering you need in the heat we’ve been having. And that Datsun is still there.