Houses

Golden Housemates

by May 23rd, 2013

Aging, unmarried boomers are considering who will take care of them when they’re too old to care for themselves—nieces and nephews, perhaps?—and they’re increasingly looking at shared housing situations. This reminds me of something …

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The Great Gatsby is Really About the Housing Crisis

by May 22nd, 2013

The Great Gatsby got a modern upgrade last week thanks to Baz Luhrmann’s directing, Leo’s acting, Jay-Z’s soundtrack, and Prada’s costumes, but those aren’t the only reasons the film should resonate with a 2013 audience. Gatsby’s Roaring 20’s lifestyle—ull closet, extravagant parties, boats, cars, and especially his mansion—has something to teach us about an era of more recent cultural memory: the Clinton-Bush boom years and the Great Recession that followed.

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Jon Stewart Takes on MERS

by May 8th, 2013

MERS—The Mortgage Electronic Registration System is losing deeds to houses and making it difficult to fight against wrongful foreclosure practices.

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Raising Twin Girls, and Building a Future in a New Home

by May 7th, 2013

From managing an upscale restaurant and dating a DJ to raising twin girls and owning a home.

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We Will All Retire to Trailer Parks and It’s Going to Be Great

by April 22nd, 2013

TRAILER PARKS are great, A+ locations for seniors to live and grow old and then die in, writes Lisa Margonelli.

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An American Story

by April 16th, 2013

Neil Reisner is 60 years old and is on the verge of losing the home that he and his wife and two children have lived in for the past few years.

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What Would Jesus Do About Gentrification?

by April 15th, 2013

My local Catholic church in Washington, D.C., however, has taken a more radical approach, using the story of Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion as an allegory for the changes gentrification has wrought on our neighborhood. Usually, this is done at holy sites, but in this case, the church stops at food banks, AIDS clinics and other local establishments in our rapidly gentrifying neighborhood and talk about the need to preserve social services and provide more affordable housing.

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My Slight Real Estate Problem: The Housing Market And Me

by April 9th, 2013

Jenn That has purchased some places.

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Mark Your Calendars for the Next Housing Crash

by March 7th, 2013

We’ve got seven years until all the boomers try to sell their single-family, large-lot, suburban houses and there is no one willing or able to buy them!

“By 2020, there were will be around 35 million over-65 households in the U.S. That year, [University of Utah researcher Arthur C. Nelson] calculates, seniors who would like to become renters will be trying to sell about 200,000 more owner-occupied homes than there will be new households entering the market to buy them. By 2030, that figure could rise to half a million housing units a year … Between changing preferences and declining median household income because of poor education … that means we can predict the next housing crash, and that’ll be in about 2020.”

So you know, maybe you WILL be able to live in that fancy house at the end of the block with the wraparound porch and the old oak trees that you always thought you’d grow up to buy, back before you realized that you will not be buying that or any other house. I mean, you still won’t be able to buy it (or maybe you will!), but what I’m saying is, squatting may be an option.

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Adventures at the Intersection of Homeownership And Sewage

by March 6th, 2013

It started with black dirt around the basement’s floor drain, discovered just a couple weeks after my wife and I moved into the house we’d just bought. Because I’d only rented before then, and don’t tend to learn new things until there’s an immediate necessity to, I’d never had occasion to know much about home maintenance beyond filling holes in the wall with toothpaste and hoping my landlord didn’t notice.

But even we knew that stuff was supposed to go into, not out of, the floor drain, so I went online and found a sewer guy named Rick, and Amanda called him. We scheduled the appointment for Saturday morning. Amanda would be in class, and I’d be left to deal with Rick.

No sooner had Rick arrived than the first crisis arose. Friendly and voluble, goofy but kind of blustery, gray-haired and large-bellied like we hope all skilled laborers will be, Rick lumbered downstairs and immediately worked himself into a lather of panicked disbelief.

“Oh no. Oh, this isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.”

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