Waynesword September 2007
“Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world…”
--Jerry Garcia
People have said to me, do you write a real estate blog? I said no, I’ve never used that word, but maybe I should start. That seems to be what people crave—the fast-food of thought, the instant cup o’ reaction. But I imagine myself more of an essayist, procrastinating my thought processes for too long to be a minute-by-minute blogger. For the same reason, I’m not into text messaging or Blackberry telegrams: a form of ongoing haiku I wish I could emulate, but it’s hard for me to be terse and brief like that. I’ll try to mix it up a bit from here: pompous contemplation counter-balanced with knee-jerk interruptions of the moment.
{Contemplative Intro…}
I was never a huge Grateful Dead fan but certain lyrics of theirs, like the above, stick with me, songs from over thirty years ago…
When I got up this morning, I didn’t turn on the t.v. or the
Internet or check my email. I got my coffee and pulled on my old grass-stained sneakers and walked out back instead. Before any bad news could set in or strike me, I took a look for myself at God’s Green Earth (or Earth’s Green Goddess, whichever you prefer), and breathed deep the first chilly but clean air of September, laced with mountain dew—the real thing, not the soda. This is where I’ve chosen to live, and
I realized that, for me, for my family at this point in our lives, I’d made a good real estate choice, out of many that could be made.
I realized that Green and Gold, my old high school colors for sports teams, dominate the local landscape on days like this. The rich green of the lawns is obvious, and the cathedral trees of the Kaydeross Valley behind our property provide the backdrop. There is no need for discussion of “preserving greenspace” in our sector—nature is proliferating unimpeded in Middle Grove and Greenfield and the Greater Saratoga area in general: you have to beat it back in fact to maintain your space. They sell you various machines and tools that rotate and cut and mulch and purge and prune and trim, just to keep it all from overtaking your property. There is not much danger of paradise being paved over, and turned into a parking lot, out here.
In fact, unless you live next to a shopping mall, or in one of the older, established river towns of Saratoga County, you don’t have to worry about a lack of greenery surrounding you anywhere up here.
As for the gold, the first thing I saw as I opened my front door, was a couple of streaking goldfinches, the neighborhood clowns, cart-wheeling in the air through the front yard, chasing each other. Out back, goldenrod in the un-mowed fields was at peak height, and beginning to tip over from the weight of the nearly-frosty dew last night had left. Golden shafts of light penetrated the cathedral oaks and pines that protect our back perimeter, slanting back toward our home’s rear windows, promising a brilliant day. At seven o’clock on a Sunday
morning, all was quiet in the middle of a Labor Day weekend, other than the sounds of birds chattering and squawking and singing, but even that seemed more muted than normal.
In a couple of days, I figured, the workmen will be back next door, finishing the last house to be built in our neighborhood. Car doors will be opening and slamming shut as parents start hauling their kids down to the bus stop again. Morning Top 40 music, along with news niblets and traffic reports, will be in the background, inciting us to move along and take part in the per diem world once again. But for now, a few precious hours while my family still sleeps, I get to enjoy the quiet lull before fall starts again.
{Blog Counterpoint}
(In case you think my life is too serene, I’m here to tell you that moments like the above don’t last—within an hour the work crew started up next door, my kids and wife woke, looking for coffee and breakfast, and the idyllic pre-Sunday morn routine was history as time continued to the sound of the coffee grinder, the refrigerator door snapping shut, the hammering next door, and milady not too happy that the blue-collar boys had to be pounding away at 9 a.m. on a holiday weekend… but we turn up our own music instead to drown out the staccato carpentry…I’m searching the dial for Pocos Pera Locos, the syndicated Latin hip-hop show that used to adorn my Sunday morns, but now seems unavailable(not a good change, JAMZ 96.3). Meanwhile while my better half digs out the Beth Orton CD “Central Reservation” which always reminds her of early camping trips we took on the Islands of Lake George… in either case we have to try to mask the sound of Thin Lizzy or AC/DC which echoes forth from the hollow walls of our neighboring lot, where the weekend crew is working…not that I mind blues-based, balls-to-the-wall rock-- just not on n earlay Sunday morn…
O well, it’s better than the country station we heard last week, the morning right after we returned from vacation…)
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ROAD-TRIP RETROSPECTIVE…
Two weeks before, we were on the road, packed to the gills in search of a getaway road adventure. Not only had we, as a family, not yet had the chance to take more than one-day-away-at-a-time vacations, but I, as a well-informed Realtor and citizen, was sick of the pessimistic information my brain and eyes were receiving. If you listen even incidentally these days to broadcast news, radio talk shows, or random local street conversations, you’d think the world—and the national real estate market-- was in a shambles already from which it might never recover. If you scour the Internet news and read some of the immediately rendered responses of the various right- and left-wing retaliators, you’d think the country was ready for another civil war, or not-so-civil war. The world and national news is full of strife and bitter rhetoric and the threat of pending chaos. There have been stories that turn the stomach and upset your sense of safety and make you fear for your family’s future. In the real estate world, there are portents of bottoms falling out and sub-prime loan disasters, homes that don’t sell after a year on the market…
Ho hum…on we go. Or simply put, “So it goes,” as the late departed Vonnegut used to say.
Forgive me for being the voice of experience, but I’ve heard all this before, a couple of cycles worth. No one could have been construed as any less optimistic about the world’s fortunes than me as a cold-war-fearing kid and nuclear-doom-obsessed teen and hedonistic 20-year old…
“BUT YOU AND I, WE BEEN THRU THAT,
AND THIS IS NOT OUR FATE…
SO LET US NOT TALK FALSELY NOW,
THE HOUR IS GETTING LATE…”
(“All Along The Watchtower”, Writ by Dylan, via Jimi before & Dave of late)
So, in addition to the refreshment and inspiration offered by the Dave Matthews Band at SPAC in mid-August, we needed a vacation.
As a couple of the current masters of “The Secret” have correctly pointed out—it’s OK to be AWARE of the news of the day, but you don’t need to be INUNDATED WITH IT.
I wanted a news fast; a cessation of nastiness; and people taking sides and sparring on every issue under the sun. I just wanted the sun. Wanted some surf sounds, some seafood, some coastal saturation.
I wanted to be neutral, the center of conditions, the Switzerland of personalities for awhile.
(POST-VACATION BLOG…)
We swam a lot that last day away, and came away with a head-full of surf from Misquamicut Beach. Late that night we returned, and as soon as I crossed the threshold of our house, after a 3.5 hour drive… my sinuses started leaking profusely—like a seawater brain drain… symbolizing the cleansing change of mental state I’d been after.
But there were influences other than just saltwater working on my head… the second day out on the trip, I pick up a USA Today, breaking my news fast, but finding an interesting story in the Arts Section about the 50th Anniversary of a seminal novel’s publication that was once very critical to my way of thinking, and inspiring to those of us who prefer to travel by car…
I picture myself in an updated version of ON THE ROAD. In this sequel, the 52 year old quasi-Jack Kerouac character does all of the driving himself, instead of admiring Dean Moriarty’s manic skill behind the wheel… In fact, instead of a Benzedrine-chewing cohort alongside and beat poets in the back seat, Kerouac Junior has a wife and 3 kids crammed into a black Chevy HHR, replete with travel bags, three iPODs, duffles, and camping equipment. Instead of cruising for local lovelies and searching out late-night jazz bars, he (and his family) search for historical museums, local lore, and mythical, uncrowded beaches. They also continually seek the next best place to eat and relieve themselves, then look for a KOA Campground or a Hampton Inn with a pool before dark…
PICKING UP REAL ESTATE BROCHURES ON THE WAY…
You know you’re starting to get far enough away from home when the real estate brochures begin to look exotic to you. I grabbed up a copy of The Real Estate Book in Mystic/Old Saybrook, Connecticut area, and then over in Greenport, New York on the North Fork of Long Island, and in both places the prices were an eye-opener. Though I knew there’d be a premium for ocean-zone properties and any seaside lots that were left, I was still surprised at the asking prices on the fixer-uppers on the side streets in these places, even 80 or 100 miles out from the City.
The tourist town my wife loved the most was Stonington, CT, where the first three pages of the glossy real estate magazine featured nothing less than a million dollars anywhere in or near the historical coastal village. We climbed the lighthouse tower with its great view of the local bay and the Long Island Sound beyond, and we learned about how the local farmers and and residents—a ragtag militia hastily assembled—fought off an attack from 5 ships of the famed British Armada at that exact spot during the War of 1812. I knew nothing of that tidbit of history before this trip, and was glad there was no sign of attack while we were on vacation…
Prior to that we had taken the ferry from New London across the Sound to Orient Point, Long Island, and explored the North Fork for a day and a half before returning to the Connecticut side. We found Greenport to be a hip little town, a smaller seaside version of Saratoga, perhaps, but I was again surprised to see that real estate values in that vicinity were far higher than what we find in our native village, far from the ocean’s summer allure. The lowest price I noted in a quick scan of the North Fork’s version of The Real Estate Book in that quaint settlement was listed at $499,000. for a fixer-upper on a sidestreet. The price of individual building lots was much higher than the median price of liveable housing in our home region, and I realized we wouldn’t be
buying any summer homes down here until and unless I received a hefty advance on a book contract. We hadn’t even made it to the pricier South Fork—Montauk and The Hamptons—and I was already daunted by the asking prices.
ANOTHER WORLD ALTOGETHER…
What really put things in perspective, however, was picking up a copy of the New York Observer, with its sarcastic coverage of the Manhattan real estate scene, and specifically astronomical escalation of prices in the world of $ 50-60 Million Dollar Townhouses in the heart of the high-end. People who had purchased these 35’ wide townhomes a mere four or five years before had re-decorated them in apparently extraordinary fashion and were realizing profits of four or five times what they paid. The upper crust was exhibiting no fear of the real estate bubble, at least not in mid-town Manhattan.
This served a functional purpose for me as I thought about things on the ride home late one night as the kids slept in the back. Our market back in Saratoga Springs was indeed NOT as over-priced as I thought. You had to see what the numbers were like elsewhere before you realized that $800,000. for a condo within a block of Broadway was not outrageous…. that houses with unique charm that required updating and hefty carpentry were reasonable at three or four hundred thou… and that the “affordable” housing is still available at $150,000. to $250,000. in our immediate area does not even EXIST in many of the towns we just visited.
So the coastal road trip from Old Saybrook to Rhode Island, including the boat ride over to Long Island, served its purpose in multiple ways: we tasted the ocean breezes, my wife and daughter ate lots of lobster and seafood, the boys got battered for hours by the waves at Misquamicut, we saw some unique and informative museums, and
Dad (aka, Kerouac Junior), came back with a refreshed perspective on what was reasonable in the much-maligned world of real estate.
(Blog On Out…)
Everything is relative, of course. If we had road-tripped in the other direction, western New York, the old mill towns, central Pennsylvania, I might have come back depressed about the economy and thinking we were still in the stratosphere of housing prices…but why would you choose to vacation in places that give you that downtrodden feeling? You need to be tempted by Better Scenery, Oceanic Vistas, A Sense of Wealth and Splendor, when you get away, right? If your mood is not improved, then what’s the point? Even a working-class Kerouac would be carrying a gold card and a stack of cash on a road trip these days…
My mood was definitely improved, and it felt good to get home and have a few days to absorb it all before work and school resumed…and then during the first week back at SPA Realty, I sold 3 homes right off the bat and was back in my real estate groove. Viva la vacation!!
---Copyright Wayne Perras 2007