Forget Bailing Out; Just Move To Greater Boston

Cosmo wrote a post the other day about Tim Cahill’s statement that we have essentially been immune to the real estate crash.  And while I wouldn’t call us “unaffected” on my best day — the $120,000 our house lost when the bubble popped is what allowed us to buy it — I’m not selling anytime soon, and I’m not in trouble with Fannie or Freddie….  My heart bleeds for people who are, but, well — not it!

I often reach out to first-time buyers in this blog — the next generation of homeowner, the 20-somethings wasting good money on some of the highest rents in the country, is my Obi Wan Kenobi.  But it hasn’t occurred to me before that the crushing of other markets might be good for our own.

If you look at just about any national economic indicator right now, it looks like the end of the world.  Capitalism has failed — pick up your hammer and sickle and report for re-education.  But I can’t say it’s hurting me very much.  My mutual funds are down a couple of thousand dollars, and I still owe my soul and the souls of my first 3 children to Great Lakes Higher Education Lending, but I have a great job — and people keep trying to hire me for other jobs!  The national unemployment rate is well over 6% — how is this possible?

Am I alone in my relative prosperity?  Not really.  Coming from a market that always gets the nasty end of the stick in these things, I feel a lot of survivor’s guilt.  My college-educated friends in Pittsburgh are cruising towards their 40s doing drywall, opening drains, and rehabbing houses worth around $25,000 on average — they aren’t happy a lot of the time, and while we’re all doing better than we were a decade ago, their working lives aren’t even close to what they imagined they would be.

But here — well, I have all all of these friends with “worthless” humanities degrees, and they’re all doing pretty well.  One got hired — and trained — to handle IT for a financial firm; another manages a lab at MIT with relatively little science background.  Even the adjunct professors in our crowd are finding better and better niches.  Nobody I know is unemployed, or in danger of becoming unemployed, and nobody seems on the edge of starvation or homelessness.

Of course, I run with an educated crowd.  There are poor people here, and it’s a tough place to be if you ain’t got that dough-ray-mi.  But even (say) retail jobs pay like 50% more than they do in other markets.  Experienced cooks in the ‘Burgh were lucky to pull $8.50 per hour; dishwashers here would walk away from that money.

This is, in fact, typical of greater Boston.   Yes, it is expensive to live up here — houses cost 6-12 times (or more) what they do in Pittsburgh, or Cleveland, or Tennessee.  Rents are ridiculous.  But if you suspend your initial objections to the cost of living, you might find that your skills — or even just your buttocks in a chair — are worth way more here than you think possible.  And the market downturn means that it is cheaper than it has been in a decade to move to Massachusetts; it won’t be cheaper again, unless civilization crumbles (The Rapture, for instance, would be terrible for housing prices — but probably not in heathen Cambridge).

So my message of hope is: move where the food is.  Your chances are better in a prosperous market, a market where the standards for education and social services are higher than they are elsewhere.  People may object to this very idea — one commenter recently told one of our bloggers that eastern Mass.’s “time will come!”  — but this state is in way better shape than the rest of the nation.  Could it be because the political forces that got us into this mess are relatively powerless here?  Can’t say for sure…how are those red states doing lately?

If you take my advice, think about using the relatively inexpensive North Shore to get the best of both worlds — cheaper digs with great access to that downtown birdseed.

Here are some open houses to get you thinking:

4 Cherry Road
Beverly, MA 01915
Beds: 3/Baths:1.5
SQ.FT.:1488
$299,000
Open House: Sunday, September 28, 2008 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM

7 Bow Street
Salem, MA 01970
Beds: 2/Baths: 1
SQ.FT.:875
$210,000
Open House: Sunday, September 28, 2008 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM

7 Cypress Street
Salem, MA 01970
Beds: 3/Baths:1
SQ.FT.:1494
$249,000
Open House: Sunday, September 28, 2008 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

6 Condos In Beverly…Under $100,000!

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