All the political talk about John McCain owning seven houses and Barack Obama owning just one house only does one thing for me: It reminds me that I do not own a house! Not even one! I’m a renter in Los Angeles and I’m suffering from an extreme case of I-want-a-house-itis.
It’s not that I’m not grateful for my apartment because I am. It’s a cute two-bedroom, one-bath place in one of the more walkable neighborhoods in the city. Plus, it’s rent-controlled so I pay like half what the guy downstairs pays for the same amount of space. But I want a yard so my sons will have somewhere other than the living room couch to bounce. I want to be able to banish my husband and the boys to a second bathroom where they can leave up the toilet seat as much as they want. And I want to be able to soak in the tub without my four-year-old running in, yelling, “Mommy, I gotta go poop!”
Ten years ago when I first moved to LA, I had no idea I’d be living here longer than two or three years. I was scraping by as a teacher and had tons of student loan debt. The idea of buying a house was the furthest thing from my mind. Plus, I was living a fun, single life, and apartment dwelling was great for that. I mean, every single gal on TV lives in an apartment, right? So, I felt no jealousy when some Z-listers bought the four-bedroom, three-bath house across the street for $200K.
But after two kids and a whole lot of neighborhood gentrification going down, I want to kick myself for not somehow stacking enough cash back then to buy something. That same house sold for over $900K last year. True, I am seeing the phrase “bank owned” more frequently on the for sale signs around here, but houses are still priced in the outer reaches of insanity. We’re still waiting for the housing bubble to burst in this neck of the woods.
Not that some folks aren’t still buying around here because they are. A single twenty-something acquaintance of mine who comes from money but is doing alright for herself in the industry bought a two bedroom Spanish bungalow one street over from my place. It’s cute but it’s a serious fixer-upper ... and she paid $576K for it. Did I mention that it’s only 900 square feet? (Shh, don’t tell, but I looked up the property on Zillow to find all this out.)
I’m not jealous of how much she has to pay for her monthly mortgage, or how much she’s having to pour into rehabbing the place. I tend to think it’s total insanity to pay that kind of money for a place of that size, especially given where the market might be heading. But I am jealous that she can get a dog and paint the walls a different color.
