May 30, 2008
The Homebuyers’ Cartel - Viva La Revolucion!
All this speculation about recessions and inflated oil prices has gotten me to thinking, and put me in a sort of conspiratorial mood.
After all, volatility breeds suspicion and secretiveness, and as far as housing goes, no one knows whether we’re resting at the bottom or teetering on the edge.
So as a non-homeowner, I say enough of this uncertainty crap. It’s time to collude and overtake the market, and I propose we do it the same way Rosa Parks was avenged: with a demand-side cartel.
We’ll officially limit the number of homes non-homeowners buy each year, so that current ratio of owners to renters is maintained.
While it is a heinous artificial restraint on the economy, it’s far better than, say, loaning $300,000 to someone with no ostensible income, and it should keep housing prices closer in line with their actual value. Good-bye artificial demand, good-bye bubble, good-bye oversupply and crash; hello stability.
I understand that if you currently own a home, you may not be in love with this idea. But keep in mind that it will still leave you with a good chunk of equity; an investment that will be less prone to market volatility, and growing at the same rate as the rest of the economy. That’s a much better return than you’d get on a Benz, a MacBook Pro, or even an Aeron chair.
In fact, in the end, I think the hardest part about this plan might be finally convincing people that the intrinsic value of a property really is based on things like how long it takes you to get to the dentist, or how likely you are to get murdered on your doorstep.
So in closing, here are some houses you should resist buying until after you’ve cleared it with the cartel:
396 Beacon St. #7 - $412,000
1 Bed, 1 Bath, 568 sq. ft.
Read the description on this bad boy? Yeah, it’s “redesigned by architects”. A lot of places don’t say that, I’m assuming because they were redesigned by librarians or street performers or something. The cartel will reduce the frequency with which people change homes, so you want to buy for quality and the long term.
425 Marlborough #1 - $575,000
2 Beds, 1.5 Baths, 893 sq. ft.
Check out the past sales on this one: see that drop between January and August of ‘96? Assuming the place didn’t catch on fire or get infested by hobos (which it almost certainly did, given the precipitousness of the decline), it’s prove that houses don’t magically accrue value, like lint on a sticky hand.
97 Pinckney St - $5,250,000
5 beds, 7 baths, 5,500 sq. ft.
Aside from the fact that this place is larger than the state of Rhode Island, it also offers tremendous locational advantages. While most write their Congressmen with concerns, this place lets you really get his attention by egging his house. Conversely, you could sneak into big donors’ mailboxes and intercept $2,000 campaign checks before the mailman comes.
Image: Ernesto “Che” Guevara. From original work “Guerrillero Heroico”, by Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, 1960. Public domain because Cuba has reasonable copyright laws, via Wikimedia Commons.
