Mxsmanic wrote in
news:et9dovkh7lvkkhp9h22ken3t4sotu1as8s@4ax.com:
> Hatunen writes:
>
>> In some places in the USA that is considered desirable.
>
> Often more because of a Hollywood fantasy than because of reality,
> though.
>
Many of the more desirable places in the US to live or to retire foster a
sense of the "old fashioned" in their environments. It's part of the
appeal and part of a traditional USAian "reaching out for a brief and not
well marked past" The oldest extant house in a nearby city dates from
1857. I've neighbors whose newly built homes look much like it (well, on
the outside...). I've a cousin who lives in our grandfather's house, built
by his father in 1873, a stately vertical Victorian villa on an esplanaded
Galveston street lined with such. Her recent "rehab/renovation" cost more
than my house did, and air conditioning rooms with 12 and 14 foot ceilings
and floor to ceiling windows does run up the electric bill, but both are
choices and expenses which she choses (and I applaud, still able to take a
bit of Christmas at the family seat - substantially more grandious than the
stone cottage near Inverary from which that branch of the Campbell
descended upon the New World to take up land, soon after evict the Redcoats
and move West.
Nostalgia is a prevailing emotion among those with short pasts and brief
memories.
It's hard for me to compare "freedoms". I hunt dove, turkey, deer and
feral hogs and fish (modestly, hardly sportingly) on my own land, with a
few minutes of my home. Tomorrow, I'll join 70+ thousand other ijits 100
miles away for a football game between traditional rivals played on the
same weekend in the same stadium for 70 years or so. The drive will take
less than 2 hours. Parking may take longer. My income comes from several
sources, a couple of them involving work, often on nights or weekends, to
meet the needs of my clients. Some's from rent (by check and in cash from
one tenant hardly up to having a bank account), a bit from natural gas/oil
royalties, the rest from "other investments", a catch-all which even
includes a bit of strategic money lending.
For many - admittedly mostly those of inherited or self maintained
affluence - North Americans (and here I include substantial Canadians) the
most relevant freedom may be the capacity to choose between vastly
different living environments and lifestyles (and to switch back and
forth), although most NAmericans seem vastly more likely to (and more
"free" to) own homes, farms, ranches, "ranchettes' country places, beach
houses, hunting camps, etc.. Other than hotels or temporary apartment
stays, I can't iamgine being a renter (and my first "wealth" was based on
the appreciation in value of a home I struggled to buy yet rapidly tripled
in value).
By any standard, Americans are vastly more "free" to own real property,
either for a home or other use, and our "home mortgages" are much more
significant and a far more integral ingredient in financial markets than in
Europe. In my suburban community, less than 3% of 3,500 total housing
units could be described as apartments and 95% of homes are "owner-
occupied". Even when traveling, most European apartments seem constricting
to US tourists, a sort of "shoulders wider than the hall and no closets"
syndrome. I can remember staying in my sister and brother in law's (then
both USArmy physicians) apartment in Bremerhaven. The "living room" was no
larger than our master bathroom, and although modern, well equipped and
modestly convenient, the rent was far more than my mortgage payment(but
then New York and San Francisco do have small expensive apartments).
TMO |