Catching up with yesterday’s insightful comments. Oxide argued that wishing prices may be budging here in DCVAMD, but that it would be a horse race between two duelling variables, house affordability and house deterioration. Grim prospect. It’s not like anything around here in Northern VA was ever built to last, and the building codes permit really crappy construction. At the same time, rent prices ARE rising precipitously. Maybe the Repubs coming in in January will finally get something going with chasing the illegals out.
On the erstwhile home front. I have previously noted that I was fortunate to have escaped the Northeast, CT in particular, some time before the bubble burst. It was clear that something very, very bad was going to happen, what with the tweeked up hustling and such. People may have sensed that the CT e-CON-omy had switched from private sector to public over the previous fifteen years. If so, it was never expressed aloud, only with the general desuetude and grim set of shoulder. CT was stagnant then, and it is rotting now.
One of my friends - really - is a realtor, and her husband was a builder. There were so many couples with this configuration that it’s sort of like macaroni and cheez. He built ‘high end’ houses - he actually has taste - and she sold ‘em. Both had been doing this since after the 80s bust. When the bubble burst, they got stucco holding several of said houses. Which they lost. There are things you don’t talk about when you’ve known people for a long time, and when you have genuine fondness for them. When I went to visit them, I was in a celebratory mood, having paid off all of my debt (about which I crowed here, quite immodestly and at great length) without dipping into my assets. The old je ne sais quois flashed, briefly - “we don’t have any debt either!”
She is now doing foreclosures and short sales, and says they are like pulling teeth, they take a year to close. She says she retired, and is drawing Social Security. She has found hedonic substitutes, although she has become subdued. She follows the stock and financial instrument market, and has permitted
herself a round number that she places into positions on the basis of discussions and research with her investment club. It is a productive way to fill time, and you do learn something from it. He retooled in his 50s, learned a new industry - securing, bundling and reselling bandwidth - and spends most of his time at a desk, the only greybeard among 20 somethings. The only employee who can talk to the site services managers comprising their core customers. I figured he’d wind up OK - he has humor and cynicism as well as practicality, and is the son of an old world craftsman. His father taught him a thing or two, and he took the training to heart.
That area of CT has become damped down and muffled. The apologists are strident. This is THE Chosen Land, beyond whose borders there is no known civilization. Nobody actually leaves other than the kids who couldn’t make it into an out of state college and get left behind.
The discussion that proved fruitful was, “wages are flat and declining. Heating oil price has gone steadily up. How comfortable are you with staying warm, given one of the highest electricity costs in the country (thanks for the graph, DennisN!) , and given that you have to fill up your heating oil tank a minimum of every two weeks from October 1st to March 30th?”
My long time friend cloaks herself with the trappings of dignity, as occasion demands. Nevertheless, after two days, we were talking reasonable criteria, and decision rules, for Plan B. For when life DOES get worse, heaven forbid. For when heating oil DOES go to $4/gal again, and stays there forever or gets even more expensive. For when there have been no closings whatsoever for a year, when he is faced with a salary cut, or a precipitous increase in co-pays, or…or…etc.
I told ‘em my Plan B. The Oil City Plan, with the additional twist of 40 acres, running water, a woodlot and a mule. In view of my observation that we as a society may be in in a post industrial decline. That our grid control systems are susceptible to incursions and exogenous disruptions. We agreed that water, garden space and a woodlot would be key. She then said we all ought to buy up a couple of hundred acres of farmland in depopulating upstate New York - and we left that as a reasonable stalemate until next time.
I would, in fact, find it pleasant to be around both of my old friends, in some kind of proximity, during the Plan B scenario. Our senses of humor play off of one another nicely. At the moment, though, until the Medicare kicks in, they need health insurance (which the
private sector job provides).
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