The Bobcat Nation

It's fun to do this periodically to let everyone in MT know how fortunate you are to live in a place where you can buy a great house for a sane price.

http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2013/ ... -will-buy/

None of the houses discussed here are in highly desirable neighborhoods, either. They aren't sketchy 'hoods, but are considered the "cheap" places to buy in SF.

I keep seeing references to houses selling for a couple hundred thousand over asking routinely around here ... kind of insane. The worst part? Many of the houses are horribly ugly and often have virtually nothing for a yard.

Yeah, a million bucks doesn't get you much in my neck of the woods, either.

However, I am trying to convince my wife to let us move a few hours away, just because I think this place could be pretty cool:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/2 ... 08802.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Grizlaw wrote:Yeah, a million bucks doesn't get you much in my neck of the woods, either.

However, I am trying to convince my wife to let us move a few hours away, just because I think this place could be pretty cool:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/2 ... 08802.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That's awesome! There is one similar in the Mission District of SF that was supposed to be developed into condos, but for some reason the NIMBYs blocked it. Then in the middle of the night, a porn studio bought the whole place (as it had been zoned for studio work because it was used for scenes of one of the Star Wars movie), and the NIMBYs had no legal grounds to hold it up. So now they do lots of bizarre porn out of there.

Bay Area Cat wrote:It's fun to do this periodically to let everyone in MT know how fortunate you are to live in a place where you can buy a great house for a sane price.

Fortunate to live in a place where you can buy a house cheap only goes so far if that same place has a strong job market as well. You are very lucky to live in a place like the Bay Area that is loaded with job opportunities and opportunities to make a lot more money than 95% of Montana residents. Now, the numbers aren't exactly balanced between median income and median home prices, but it truly does come down to choices. Do you want to make a lot more money and have a lot of career opportunities or are you happy with few job options but cheaper housing? The grass is definitely greener in MT, but it's not that green!

rtb wrote:

Bay Area Cat wrote:It's fun to do this periodically to let everyone in MT know how fortunate you are to live in a place where you can buy a great house for a sane price.

Fortunate to live in a place where you can buy a house cheap only goes so far if that same place has a strong job market as well. You are very lucky to live in a place like the Bay Area that is loaded with job opportunities and opportunities to make a lot more money than 95% of Montana residents. Now, the numbers aren't exactly balanced between median income and median home prices, but it truly does come down to choices. Do you want to make a lot more money and have a lot of career opportunities or are you happy with few job options but cheaper housing? The grass is definitely greener in MT, but it's not that green!

It sure looks greener to me many, many days.

You're absolutley right, though.

Someday I'm going to show up on BAC's doorstep to sleep on his couch. I've never slept in a castle before.

I will take montana. I will visit the cities. The "make more money" thing doesn't justify paying ten times more for housing, spending hours commuting, mega bucks on gas, just to be a slave to a property, and give your ego a boost competing with others that have to work long hours to pay their cost of living.

allcat wrote:Someday I'm going to show up on BAC's doorstep to sleep on his couch. I've never slept in a castle before.

As soon as I own a castle, everyone will be invited over for a sleepover!

Bay Area Cat wrote:

allcat wrote:Someday I'm going to show up on BAC's doorstep to sleep on his couch. I've never slept in a castle before.

As soon as I own a castle, everyone will be invited over for a sleepover!

Your house doesn't look like the one that Gritzlaw posted?

allcat wrote:

Bay Area Cat wrote:

allcat wrote:Someday I'm going to show up on BAC's doorstep to sleep on his couch. I've never slept in a castle before.

As soon as I own a castle, everyone will be invited over for a sleepover!

Your house doesn't look like the one that Gritzlaw posted?

If it did I probably wouldn't devote so much of my life to bitching about how small and unlivable our house is. I'm dreaming of 1,500 square feet -- that would be a mansion for me.

ppffftt... look what you could get for <500K in Detroit.

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Mr. and Mrs. Spartanpot did entertain the notion of a possible move such as this but when they added up all the insurance costs (auto would have tripled alone), upkeep, closeness to gang turf, utilities, etc... they decided to stay in the 'burbs. They did, however, gain a lot of decorating ideas when they visited such properties.

the coolest feature that one house had was a "voice tube" which essentially was a hole in the wall from the 3rd floor master suite where a tube lead down to the maids quarters on the 1st floor... intercom in 1910.

From your lead in BAC I expected them to be miserable. Those are pretty nice houses and they have a decent yard. We had to swallow a big pill here and adjust to a much higher housing cost than we've lived with before. It would be easy to spend $1MM here too, but you would get more house/land than those in SF.

Grizlaw, when you buy the castle you HAVE to get rid of that floral wallpaper. It makes my eyes bleed!!!

Bay Area Cat wrote:

allcat wrote:

Bay Area Cat wrote:

allcat wrote:Someday I'm going to show up on BAC's doorstep to sleep on his couch. I've never slept in a castle before.

As soon as I own a castle, everyone will be invited over for a sleepover!

Your house doesn't look like the one that Gritzlaw posted?

If it did I probably wouldn't devote so much of my life to bitching about how small and unlivable our house is. I'm dreaming of 1,500 square feet -- that would be a mansion for me.

So I shouldn't complain about our 1800 square foot house that we paid 190 for?

BTW we just about completed our first week of parenthood. Mom and baby came home yesterday and I finally got to sleep (well sort of) in my own bed. YAY!!! I never really appreciated sleep. It's a luxury.

Bay Area Cat wrote:

Grizlaw wrote:Yeah, a million bucks doesn't get you much in my neck of the woods, either.

However, I am trying to convince my wife to let us move a few hours away, just because I think this place could be pretty cool:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/2 ... 08802.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That's awesome! There is one similar in the Mission District of SF that was supposed to be developed into condos, but for some reason the NIMBYs blocked it. Then in the middle of the night, a porn studio bought the whole place (as it had been zoned for studio work because it was used for scenes of one of the Star Wars movie), and the NIMBYs had no legal grounds to hold it up. So now they do lots of bizarre porn out of there.

Here's a photo of the porn castle I was talking about. My wife and I actually took a tour of it (one of the more ... interesting ... tours one will ever take). It's an amazing old building.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?f ... =1&theater