Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/06/modest-silicon-valley-home-bre.html
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Knock it down, build a few more floors and sell condos; profit!
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And people wonder why some of us are expecting full on class warfare someday.
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I read that as Sunnydale and was thinking that it is expensive to live on the hellmouth.
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Although to be fair, sounds like most techbros totally lack any class
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At least it makes me feel better about house prices here in the UK. Over here that would be worth half as much, and you’d get an actual house rather than a bungalow. Of course, that’s still about five times more than I could ever afford…
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… and, someday, will again.
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Jealousy is not very becoming.
And of course, you know nothing of the buyer’s life history, simply assigning him to a class based upon his current financial means. It is entirely possible that he was raised poor or lower-middle class, studied and worked hard, and fairly earned the money used to purchase this home through such efforts.
So much easier to simply put the buyer in a tiny mental box, right? Makes you feel better about your own choices, no doubt.
I think you mistake outrage over inflated compensation packages in an area where the homeless and unemployed are a major social issue for jealousy. Also, anyone who is plopping down $2 mil cash for a sub 1000 sq/ft house is engaging in a form of conspicuous consumption that many find gauche and low. Many of us also understand that a major reason this person can pay $2 mil in cash, in 10 days, is because they and their employer are not being taxed at a reasonable rate. They, more than most are benefiting from all those little things taxes pay for and are paying significantly less in taxes than they should. This is also happening at a time when the average person has not seen a pay raise in 5-10 years, is struggling to keep up with cost of living increases, and is facing a government who wants to reduce the tax burden on people like this home buyer while squeezing the middle and lower income brackets for every damned penny they can get. Finally there is the issue that paying $500K over asking price which does nothing but raise the tax burden on everyone around them and contributs to the inflated housing prices which continue to hurt everyone who isn’t sniffing the same rarified air as this person.
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What you said (you were a lot more articulate than I would have been).
Only one thing to add on my own behalf… there’s a difference between expecting class warfare and advocating it.
Next time, try and not assume the motives of someone’s comments.
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Someday? The ‘haves’ are in full war mode as we speak. They are winning.
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Hear! Hear! My good man! I wholeheartedly endorse your judicious proclamation!
You people just don’t appreciate the finer nuances of real estate.
Sure, $2M is a lot of money in an absolute sense. But look at what he’s getting. That hose alone is probably 50’ long, and that’s not even factoring in what he’ll save in annoyance when he goes to water his lawn and realizes his new house didn’t come with a hose.
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To be fair, that was some very enticing pan&zoom…
Maybe an exodus might help. Mr Rich Guy might lose his shirt on that house he just bought. Not anytime soon but,…
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Less becoming is immediately interpreting a statement like that as an attack on an individual instead of as a broader and admonitory condemnation of a society that considers grotesquely unbalanced markets like this and the dangerous inequality that leads to them to be the “natural order”.
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I grew up in the Bay Area - San Jose, to be exact - and left in 2000 for Southern CA.
This latest boom is absolute insanity. I work in “high tech” as an infrastructure engineer (Windows, VMWare, etc…), my wife works for a company in the health care industry. If we got recruited for the absolute best possible jobs up there, it would be a major stretch. How in the hell is anyone even surviving on a teacher salary?? Or cop, or a someone making minimum wage?
I worked in a grocery store for a long time as a younger person. Back in those days, someone could do that and own a home. There were paths for working people. This is insanity.
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“That is $2,358 per square foot, the highest price paid per square foot ever recorded by the MLS in Sunnyvale.”
It’s all relative.
“For instance, the average price per square foot in Manhattan currently sits at $1,773, according to NeighborhoodX’s analysis”…For instance, the current highest price per square foot is Sting’s 15 Central Park West apartment; the 5,417 square foot apartment is currently on the market for $56 million, or a price per square foot of $10,337."
Says someone living in a much, much cheaper city.
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