overthinking housing
Coveting Thy Neighbor's Condo | The New York Times
I found this article fascinating. Maybe it's because of having spent the past three months in turns ogling the gorgeous, airy apartments that the first wave of employees to Abu Dhabi got, and staring longingly at their candle holders, wishing for any space of my own to have such a definitive home-indicating item. Maybe it's always having dreamed of living in New York, anywhere in any conditions as long as it was somewhere in the city, but knowing it'll never happen with the money even we as a couple make. Maybe because my mother was in the real estate business as a broker until about nine months ago when the Florida market all but disappeared overnight.
Or maybe the reason why all the wistful longing for a spa bathroom and Zen gardens drove me up the wall was that affording any sort of property slips further out of reach for an alarming number of people (myself included in most markets) every day.
Flipping through the real estate sections (yes, plural) here in Abu Dhabi of the more established Gulf News is an exercise in futility for anyone in this country who is not Emirati, independently wealthy, or heads up a government-backed entity. I remember a luxury highrise advertising all over the city's light poles that buyers will be entered into drawings for a private island and a personal jet. Another offered the choice of a Bentley or BMW with the purchase of a condo. Meanwhile, vacancy rates for non-condominium rental properties in Abu Dhabi are below 1 percent, and hotels are constantly booked solid because people have no other options. This also means absolutely nothing is for sale.
As far as the U.S., yes, a lot of people were able to buy homes now being lost to foreclosure who never should have qualified for a home loan, or never should have been approved for a property they couldn't afford. But the threshold for the former is getting higher and higher - what is it all heading toward?
Some of my fondest childhood memories are of nature. In our backyard was this beautiful tree with thin, flowing branches that created a canopy all around it. I smuggled a chair and small table underneath and would have the most fantastic dinner parties with the characters from my books. Up the hill from my house was a forest - not scrubby pines, not dried-out Everglades, but a genuine forest, with gigantic trees and ruins of forts that crumbled ages ago and for some reason were never preserved, huge fields and paths maintained only by people walking on them. And I know cities have green spaces - even Abu Dhabi - and children grow up there quite happily every day. Hell, I've loved all four of my apartments. But that's not the point either.
I remember not knowing when my neighbors were smoking, or hammering a nail for a picture frame into the wall, or what they're having for dinner. But is that on the way out? Will the majority of the working class live in ever-taller skyscraper cubby holes, doomed to the idiosyncrasies of the people next door? Will our lives shrink correspondingly? What kind of, say, retirement, would a lifelong renter have to look forward to?
Or maybe all this is because I hate planned green spaces and am bitter about this apartment not having a single square inch of closet space.
I found this article fascinating. Maybe it's because of having spent the past three months in turns ogling the gorgeous, airy apartments that the first wave of employees to Abu Dhabi got, and staring longingly at their candle holders, wishing for any space of my own to have such a definitive home-indicating item. Maybe it's always having dreamed of living in New York, anywhere in any conditions as long as it was somewhere in the city, but knowing it'll never happen with the money even we as a couple make. Maybe because my mother was in the real estate business as a broker until about nine months ago when the Florida market all but disappeared overnight.
Or maybe the reason why all the wistful longing for a spa bathroom and Zen gardens drove me up the wall was that affording any sort of property slips further out of reach for an alarming number of people (myself included in most markets) every day.
Flipping through the real estate sections (yes, plural) here in Abu Dhabi of the more established Gulf News is an exercise in futility for anyone in this country who is not Emirati, independently wealthy, or heads up a government-backed entity. I remember a luxury highrise advertising all over the city's light poles that buyers will be entered into drawings for a private island and a personal jet. Another offered the choice of a Bentley or BMW with the purchase of a condo. Meanwhile, vacancy rates for non-condominium rental properties in Abu Dhabi are below 1 percent, and hotels are constantly booked solid because people have no other options. This also means absolutely nothing is for sale.
As far as the U.S., yes, a lot of people were able to buy homes now being lost to foreclosure who never should have qualified for a home loan, or never should have been approved for a property they couldn't afford. But the threshold for the former is getting higher and higher - what is it all heading toward?
Some of my fondest childhood memories are of nature. In our backyard was this beautiful tree with thin, flowing branches that created a canopy all around it. I smuggled a chair and small table underneath and would have the most fantastic dinner parties with the characters from my books. Up the hill from my house was a forest - not scrubby pines, not dried-out Everglades, but a genuine forest, with gigantic trees and ruins of forts that crumbled ages ago and for some reason were never preserved, huge fields and paths maintained only by people walking on them. And I know cities have green spaces - even Abu Dhabi - and children grow up there quite happily every day. Hell, I've loved all four of my apartments. But that's not the point either.
I remember not knowing when my neighbors were smoking, or hammering a nail for a picture frame into the wall, or what they're having for dinner. But is that on the way out? Will the majority of the working class live in ever-taller skyscraper cubby holes, doomed to the idiosyncrasies of the people next door? Will our lives shrink correspondingly? What kind of, say, retirement, would a lifelong renter have to look forward to?
Or maybe all this is because I hate planned green spaces and am bitter about this apartment not having a single square inch of closet space.