Ecstatic With the Pride of Rentership
Nothing makes me happier than other people’s happiness. At least, that’s what I tell myself. No matter how many unfair body blows the fates deliver to me on a daily basis, I always bounce right back onto my feet, secure in knowing other people are happy. That’s why people seldom see me without a smile.
Happily, I’m living in the happiest place this side of the Playboy mansion. For the umpteenth year in a row, Orange County residents have told pollsters they’ve pretty much got the world by the tail. The latest survey results, released in cooperation with UC Irvine last week, indicate that 90% of the county’s residents say their quality of life is “going well.”
That’s a little different from the Midwest, where I grew up; there, one out of every two people you meet is likely to be “a real sourpuss.” Not to mention that if a pollster asked people there to rate their quality of life, 63% would respond, “Why don’t you mind your own business?”
Not here in sunny Southern California, and especially the Orange County wing of it. In the last 10 years, the lowest “happy” rating was in 1994, when 71% thought things were going well. That was seen as near-meltdown status.
While leafing through the 2003 survey, I found particular joy on Page 3, titled “Real Estate Market.”
I couldn’t wait to read it, because I already knew that thousands of Californians have made a killing in the housing market during my 17 years in the state. Imagine how exultant I was after learning that Orange County median home prices rose 19% in the last year to a record $440,000. And that home sales in October hit their highest levels in Los Angeles and Orange counties since 1988. And were expected to keep going.
I wish I could adequately explain how serene it makes me knowing that so many people have made oodles of money while I’ve sat on my hands in the same rental property since 1988.
Naturally, then, I read the survey section on housing. Eighty-six percent of homeowners said it was either an “excellent” or “good” decision to buy a home in Orange County. Even renters, to the tune of 69%, thought it an excellent or good idea. My category would have been, “An excellent idea, but for some reason just didn’t seem to get around to it in the last 15 years.”
I hadn’t thought much about it lately, until my next-door neighbors told me a few weeks ago they were moving. Before I could stop him, he blurted out the current value of other townhouses in our complex.
For a moment, something came up in my throat and I thought I might vomit, but I warded it off, remembering that I’m happy when other people get rich.
I thought back to the time he’d learned I rented. After saying, “Oh, really?” he grew uncomfortable and averted his eyes. He told me not to worry, things would work out for me.
I’d almost told him then that friends selling a townhouse in our complex 10 years ago had given me the first shot at it. They tried everything to persuade me to buy the place. They offered a real estate agent and assured me of a fair price.
After carefully mulling things, I opted to continue renting.
And so I sit, year after year, in my rented financial tomb. “The market has peaked,” I tell myself. “I must remain footloose. It makes no sense to buy.”
I repeat those things nightly, like a chant.
Knowing none of it makes any sense would drive a normal person to despair.
Not me. As I make out rent check after rent check and claim no federal tax deduction year after year, I rejoice in other people’s good fortune.
Like 90% of Orange County residents, I’d say things are going really well.
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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
