May 29, 2006--"I Wish You Had A Good Job"
Now that it's finally Memorial Day, it's time to get serious about finding a weekend place in the country.
If you live in New York City and want a retreat within, say, a two-hour drive you turn first to the NY Times Sunday Real Estate Section. Not just for the ads but for the articles which, community-by-community, give you the lowdown on the pros and the cons, especially “who’s there” and by exclusion, who’s not. So if you need to see Steven Spielberg on Main Street you had better be thinking East Hampton and not Litchfield Connecticut. Martha on the other hand, can be seen both places.
And if you really want the drive to be two hours, in spite of what’s advertised, you had better find a spot that’s 90 minutes away since it will take you at least two hours to make that 90 minute drive because one truism about weekend properties is that everyone—not just brokers—lies about how long it really takes to get back and forth.
So when I turned to the Times recently, before flipping to the classified, which by the way could be included in the Book Review section under, “Fiction,” I paused to read the intriguing article, “My Broker, My Therapist” (linked below) since I could always use some more therapy. And also to see if there was some guidance there about how to behave when house hunting—in a hot market behaving just the right way could easily prove to be the difference between being shown that special place and only ones north of the Highway.
Here is a smattering of the insights that can be gleaned from this piece from the Times—
Older men who have embarked on a second marriage are inclined to “make grander real estate gestures” since “they have less time to be happy” (or perhaps the usually younger second wife has more time to be happy and is thus thinking about her own future).
Couples who have a great sex life want to be sure that their bedroom is situated in a way so that their bed “is away from their children’s rooms” (or maybe it’s the children who have the great sex lives and don’t want to be near their parents).
Men who think their marriages are on shaky ground prefer to buy condos and want them in only their names (or the wives want it that way because they sense the real estate market is flat and are happy to have the place in his name just so long as the Euro account is just in hers).
And then there is the broker/therapist’s problem with all the frequent public fighting that goes on when he wants this and she wants that.
Particularly when talking square footage and location, location, location—the twin pillars of real estate.
A Corcoran agent who works on the East End of Long Island tells a story about an unhappy wife who had her eyes on a $3.0 million house south of the Highway which her hubby said they couldn’t afford. In front of the agent, she shouted, “I wish you had a good job so we didn’t have to live this way!”
If there is a god . . . .
If you live in New York City and want a retreat within, say, a two-hour drive you turn first to the NY Times Sunday Real Estate Section. Not just for the ads but for the articles which, community-by-community, give you the lowdown on the pros and the cons, especially “who’s there” and by exclusion, who’s not. So if you need to see Steven Spielberg on Main Street you had better be thinking East Hampton and not Litchfield Connecticut. Martha on the other hand, can be seen both places.
And if you really want the drive to be two hours, in spite of what’s advertised, you had better find a spot that’s 90 minutes away since it will take you at least two hours to make that 90 minute drive because one truism about weekend properties is that everyone—not just brokers—lies about how long it really takes to get back and forth.
So when I turned to the Times recently, before flipping to the classified, which by the way could be included in the Book Review section under, “Fiction,” I paused to read the intriguing article, “My Broker, My Therapist” (linked below) since I could always use some more therapy. And also to see if there was some guidance there about how to behave when house hunting—in a hot market behaving just the right way could easily prove to be the difference between being shown that special place and only ones north of the Highway.
Here is a smattering of the insights that can be gleaned from this piece from the Times—
Older men who have embarked on a second marriage are inclined to “make grander real estate gestures” since “they have less time to be happy” (or perhaps the usually younger second wife has more time to be happy and is thus thinking about her own future).
Couples who have a great sex life want to be sure that their bedroom is situated in a way so that their bed “is away from their children’s rooms” (or maybe it’s the children who have the great sex lives and don’t want to be near their parents).
Men who think their marriages are on shaky ground prefer to buy condos and want them in only their names (or the wives want it that way because they sense the real estate market is flat and are happy to have the place in his name just so long as the Euro account is just in hers).
And then there is the broker/therapist’s problem with all the frequent public fighting that goes on when he wants this and she wants that.
Particularly when talking square footage and location, location, location—the twin pillars of real estate.
A Corcoran agent who works on the East End of Long Island tells a story about an unhappy wife who had her eyes on a $3.0 million house south of the Highway which her hubby said they couldn’t afford. In front of the agent, she shouted, “I wish you had a good job so we didn’t have to live this way!”
If there is a god . . . .
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:24 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home