Sure, We Can Make it Work

Right?

I grew up in a four-bedroom behemoth of a house right on the main drag in a very small town in Ohio in a galaxy far, far away. 1750 square feet of — ahem — “Turn key century home with original woodwork. All wood floors, period-correct Craftsman oak kitchen with soapstone counters, and farmhouse sink. Walk-up attic, partially paved shared driveway, and covered front and back porches.”

When I scored my current rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment (in an elevator building two blocks from Central Park) for under $600 a month twenty years ago I burbled all this in delight to a friend back in Ohio. That friend had also scored. A three-bedroom house built in 1948 just around the corner from that house I grew up in.

He laughed when I dropped my coup de grâce: $597 a month rent. His mortgage for that 1900 square foot beast with a two-car garage and finished basement was…wait for it…$480 a month.

What I didn’t say but what I was thinking so loudly he had to have heard me was that his $480 got him the exciting privilege of seeing the house I grew up in from his kitchen window. While my $597 got me a by-NYC-standards nice, big one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. So there!

Decades later he has long since lost that house to foreclosure — variable rate loans are tools of the devil — and I am now…