From time to time, I have offered up posts about the insanely-skyrocketing prices of homes here in my fair city (one of the few long-term “long” positions from which I have ever benefited). Now we have jumped the shark, as today’s morning paper reveals:
The Palo Alto Daily Post is packed, cover to cover, with real estate ads these days. Most of the houses range from $5 million to $12 million, but in case you got into Facebook (or one of their target companies) early, maybe that isn’t enough. Perhaps that’s why, day after day, the Post is running a full-page ad for a $21 million residence in Italy, of all places. Here’s the web site for the residence, in case you want to kick the tires.
What I decided not to buy yesterday from my local Whole Foods:
My town has changed. When I first came here, in 1984, it was a pretty standard college town. Sure, the houses were kind of pricey, but the look and feel of the place wasn’t that much different than you’d probably get in any other town next to a big, well-known college.
But things have changed a lot lately. And I’ve got to say, the kinds of changes I’m seeing weren’t really apparent during the Internet bubble. For some reason, the self-importance and money-worship didn’t really take root until recently, after the financial crisis. (more…)
