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Being Rich…
I thought I’d share with you what being rich looks like. This is a photo of one of pricier housing markets in our area. There are three wealthy towns around here—Atherton, Woodside and Hillsborough. Hillsborough is sort of “dang you must be rich”, while Atherton and Woodside are more like “you’re fucking loaded”. Although, I won’t be able to live in any of these towns anytime soon—or in this lifetime—Hillsborough is sort of middle income, approachable rich, which the other two towns are so rich you can’t step on their lawn without being buzzed in.
Anyhow, the small parcel of land on the right side of the photo is a 3300 square foot, 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath ranch style home built in 1957 with central heat and nothing else. It sits on about half an acre, which is pretty typical for most homes in the area. Really nothing special about it other than it’s zip code, AND it’s on a busy street. If it went on the market today, it’d sell for about $2.5 million—one of the lower priced homes for the area. The cheapest home in the photo goes for about $1.9 million.
The larger parcel is owned by the chairman of the company I work for. He and his wife bought it as a fixer-upper and basically saved the home from demolition, as a pet project. The home was built in 1900, and is a 46000 square foot, 12 bedroom, 9 bath home with a hidden floor dedicated to closets, a vault, a basement garage and all sort of other interesting details. It’s got its own movie. The value is pretty much unknown and would be based more on how much you’d be willing to spend, to own the largest and most well-known home on the peninsula on about five or six acres.
Now let’s talk about how the real folks live around here. My mom’s house is valued at about $700k, and is a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home built in 1953. It’s about 1,000 sq. feet of living space on 1/10th of an acre, which is large these days. Most new homes, don’t even get that much acreage and are basically backed up to each other. She bought it at the end of the 1970’s for about $70k. She’s made her money on it, but it’s still crazy.
So, welcome to the lives of the rich—and not so rich—here in California. Makes you want to move here doesn’t it.
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2 Responses to 'Being Rich…'
The money you’re talking about would buy an UBER-mansion here in Iowa. We’re talking Neverland, without the molestation, or the Playboy mansion. Or the Hurst Castle!! Expensive homes here run about 300k. But they are HUGE!!
Ugh. I’ll be shopping for houses in Iowa next time around. This market is just CRRAAAAAZY.
My two bedroom, 1.5 bath townhouse cost me over $350k. It’s now worth about $500k in just a couple of years. If we sold, right now, we couldn’t even afford to buy back into our own complex. And unless someone very nice leaves me a house in their will, we probably won’t be able to afford one.