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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J. P. who wrote (67540)	11/29/2006 2:02:11 PM
From: TheStockFairy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

I didn't know when I was growing up that I could be a lawyer or doctor or financier. My parents didn't know any of those people and none of my friends had parents that were in those jobs. School district plays a big part also, in Kildeer you could pay $900k for a great house and send your kids to Lake Zurich. Right across the street you could spend $1.4 mil to get your kids into Stevenson. At the $1.4 range you have one of the cheap houses in the Long Grove area so you end up sending your kids to a school where you are the broke guy. But at Stevenson they had 5 perfect 36 scores on the ACT last year and the entire school averages 25 on their ACT vs. 22 at Lake Zurich. So your kids get to hang out with other rich kids whose parents are lawyers, doctors, business people, ect and those parents are pushing them to do well in school and go to good schools. On the flip side your 6th grader is doing 4 hours of homework per night and not spending a lot of time just relaxing. I never studied, never competed with any other students and I would bet that I would be one of the most desired neighbors at any housing level due to my business experience. You could make the argument that for the $500k in housing price difference you could send your kids to private school or just pay for several ACT prep courses, and $500k over 18 years invested is an arseload of cash, just pay your kids to be idle if you so choose. Then your kids would at least be relaxed.

To: J. P. who wrote (67540)	11/29/2006 4:09:58 PM
From: Think4Yourself	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

"I'd say that nice houses are pretty much inhabited by people making good money" Sounds logical but it just ain't so, unless you are talking million dollar homes as "nice". I know lots of people living way beyond their means. Many doctors and lawyers surely have nice houses, but they may be living next door to factory line workers, postal workers, and teachers. Anyone with a fairly decent job can own a nice home these days. "House prices are out of whack so that most people in the lower and middle spectrum couldn't realistically afford their own house." That affordability part was true before 2001 but is not the case at this point in time. My neighbor's kid, a 21 year old high school dropout, owns a nice home. His 20 year old girlfriend owns a luxury condo. ANYONE can get a loan these days. The only requirement is that you are breathing, and I hear they are planning on removing that requirement as well :) "If you understood the Chicago area you may know what I was talking about." I used to live at Bryn Mawr and Lakeshore, a few blocks from the black glass twin skyscraper, but confess that was quite a few years back.