Real You Is in Your Real Estate
When I started going out to big parties in college, conversations began with, “What’s your major?” That was the way you categorized people. Oh, she’s a social-science type--probably plays the guitar and cares about cats and people. Or, he’s a lit twit--probably eats madeleines and smokes a pipe. Or, he’s studying engineering--actually needs to earn a living.
Sometime after high school, I think we all become aware that there is some kind of class system out there. But we also sensed that “petite bourgeoisie” and “lumpen proletariat” didn’t quite describe America.
After college and whatever graduate education we used to put off growing up, the party question became, “What do you do?” Oh, an options trader--how interesting. (Yuppie scum.) Oh, a tenants’ rights lawyer--how wonderful. (All that education for a lousy 35K.) Oh, an artist. (What does your daddy do?)
But today all these inquiries seem irrelevant. You aren’t what you majored in. You aren’t what you do. And contrary to recent theories about the importance of ZIP codes in identifying socioeconomic groups, I don’t think you are where you live. Not exactly. It’s how and when you got there. You are your real estate situation.
It’s more subtle than renters vs. homeowners, although these are the obvious major distinctions.
Recently I had dinner with Bud and Kitten (not their real names), two apparently successful baby boomers. They had just moved to Los Angeles from New York. They sold their beautiful house on Long Island Sound for 450K and were now looking for something comparable on the West Coast. It turns out that a fixer-upper, three-bedroom home in any neighborhood they would consider--one with amenities such as Uzi-free nights and fewer smog-alert days--begins in the 700K ballpark. Their timing was wrong. Their direction was wrong. They were forced into downward mobility.
It occurred to me that the party question should be, “Are you in the real estate market now, were you in the market five years ago, or are you shut out?” But the groups are even further distinguished by how the deal was done.
My friend Cinderella views herself as one of the Real Estateless. She’s in her 30s and a successful writer. She has a deal with Spielberg. She has a handsome boyfriend. She’s naturally thin. She lives in what the ZIP code demographers call a “Money and Brains” neighborhood. But she’s a renter. Although she appears to have it all, timing shut Cindy out of the real estate market. “I’ll never be able to buy a home, and I hate everybody who has one,” she says.
Her hate isn’t doled out equally. The people whom Cindy hates most are the people who buy with RR financing--that’s rich relatives making the down payment. Cindy’s folks need every 40K they’ve got, and her boyfriend’s parents don’t even have that.
Cindy says she has some respect for another group--the Self-Mades. These are people who have actually purchased homes with money they earned. (Money made from selling drugs does not count. Drugs are like rich relatives--addicting and debilitating.)
The Self-Mades don’t have to be at the mercy of their landlords or their rich relatives. Instead, they’re at the mercy of their mortgages, which tends to make them politically conservative. They did it. The system works. So what’s everyone else’s problem?
The problem for many RRs is guilt, whence all liberalism flows. They are plagued by their good fortune. But RR minus guilt equals conservatism. I got mine--call your own daddy.
The Real Estateless are either apathetic pessimists or coffeehouse radicals. They want the rules changed or they won’t play your Monopoly game. They want to see rent control on Park Place and low-income housing on Marvin Gardens.
One Real Estateless guy I know invested in the stock market instead of the housing market. By the time he tried to buy a home, he was priced out. Now he’s trying to pass an ordinance limiting home prices in his neighborhood, a move one Self-Made called “Spoiled Brat Economics.”
Conservative RRs and Self-Mades vote their square-footage. How did baby boomers help elect corny old George Bush? It’s just that longing for home . . . ownership.
While they strongly support a clean environment, a lasting peace and reproductive choice, they want to do it from their own 3 BR, 2 BA.
