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Non-Tech : The ENRON Scandal -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Baldur Fjvlnisson who wrote (3308)	3/11/2002 12:58:12 AM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

A case study in the value of a home chron.com March 10, 2002, 9:32PM When Archie Bunker bought in Queens, he invested well Reuters News Service NEW YORK -- It's a statistic that could make even TV curmudgeon Archie Bunker leap from his armchair and resist the urge to tell his wife, Edith, to "stifle it." The two-story home, in the New York borough of Queens, featured in the opening scenes of the classic 1970s sitcom All in the Family, could be worth 2,000 percent more now than when it was purchased right after World War II. Many U.S. homeowners are benefiting from one part of the sluggish economy that appears to be holding up: home ownership. Rising residential real estate prices are helping compensate for the loss of household wealth from lower stock prices, according to a report, part of the daily Global Markets Wrap by Moody's Investors Service. A perfect example of this, it said, comes from Bunker's house. It was here, at the fictional 704 Hauser St., that Archie, the middle-aged, bigoted, blue-collar patriarch played by the late Carroll O'Connor, called home. "According to someone thought to be a reliable source, an attached and very small two-bedroom bungalow in the decidedly middle-class Queens neighborhood of Middle Village ... was recently sold for $309,000," wrote John Lonski, Moody's chief economist. "This is almost exactly the type of home where Archie Bunker of TV sitcom fame resided. If my source is correct, this is one of the more incredible bits of economic news I've come across in some time." The Bunkers actually lived in Astoria, another Queens neighborhood. Had a 26th place ranking in the Nielsen TV ratings not consigned him to cancellation in 1983, Archie, a loading dock foreman who drove a cab to earn extra cash, might by now have reaped solid profits from his castle. Archie paid $14,000 for 704 Hauser after the war, according to Donna McCrohan's book Archie & Edith, Mike & Gloria. After a January when sales of existing U.S. homes soared 16.2 percent to a record annual pace of 6.04 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors, Archie could have cashed in big-time. If that house could now fetch $309,000, that would translate to annual appreciation, before inflation, of 5.7 percent. That's well ahead of the current 12-month inflation rate of 1.1 percent, and the 4.1 percent average annual inflation rate since the war, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. chron.com