🚀 go-pugleaf

usenet201@hotmail.com wrote the quoted material below:
" While I am a young 26 year old engineer living the bay area, paid a
" decent wage by national standards, but I still can't afford a home, not
" even a menial condo.

And so what?  Why do you think you're owed the right to buy a home at age
26?  My parents weren't able to afford to do that.  Throughout most of the
history of this country, people as young as you weren't able to afford to
buy a home.  That's why they lived several generations to a household.  

" My only hope of affording a house (not a mansion)
" is to get rich on stock options. This area seems to breed greed.

Well DUH.  The Bay Area is not Disneyland.  It's a very tough place and
has been so for 150 years.  What we're seeing today is exactly like the
Gold Rush of the 1950s, but unlike that Gold Rush, eggs haven't been
priced at $2 apiece as they were then (which would make them worth about
$500 apiece in today's currency).  

" [....] It seems like the only people who can
" afford to live here are the stock options millionaires and CEOs.

I can afford to live here.  Maybe you can't afford to live alone.  Maybe
you can't afford the luxuries you want today, but damn it, get with the
program.  You're only 26 years old.  You *can't* get it all now.  You
don't have enough experience or enough connections yet.  

" I have
" to wonder are prices going to ever drop in this area, or will it simply
" be like New York City, where prices just keep going up.

As long as people like you choose to move here the prices will continue to
go up.  When something is in demand, people charge more for it.  Why do
you think you're getting a high salary?  Because you're pretty?  No, it's
because you have something that's in demand.  So, you can charge more for
it.  It's basic economics.  

" Is part of the problem that fact that people who plan on moving out of
" the area waiting, since a few months of waiting could add to profit when
" they finally sell?

Huh?  People charge what they can get.  If you were selling a home would
you sell it for $150,000 if you could get $600,000 for it?  


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(C) 2000                                Porky Pig's father was Phineas Pig
David Kaye                                                                
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