Wednesday, June 20, 2007

A room with a view..

LOFT: 1 - an upper rookm or floor
2- a gallery in a church one of the upper floors or a warehouse or business especially when not partitioned

While driving to yoga class, I notice at the corner of Melrose & Larhmont they're building another complex of "lofts". Lofts; indeed ! The new marketing word for over price, one bedroom housing apartments that will sell for over five hundred thousand! They're building a complex of "lofts" just up the street. They use to call these places studios apartment! Dosen't anyone build condos, town houses or heaven for bidded houses anymore? Then why spend your money building those when you can build cheep, one bedroom, tiny kitchen tiny (if you're lucky alivingroom) and get people who are fool enough, to dish out a half a million for the privilege to be ripped off! We're such sheep!

A loft use to mean you got the huge, warehouse space in downtown Los Angeles, but as soon a rush of young artists started to move in the rich, greedy Japanese business owners bought up these spaces and now you can touch these places of under a million. You can buy a mansion in South Pasadena, Pasadena or San Marino for the cost of those lofts. There most be a lot of foolish millionaire out there. For that kind of cash I would rather by a home along the coast line and deal with the daily nightmare of PCH!

Prices in California went up with the Asian invasion. Nothing racist about that, can't blame the people fleeing Red China. My mother had a friend who sold real estate and said that just before Hong Kong was going from British Rule to China. She would tell my mother she couldn't believe that these lovely people were willing to pay such high prices for a house and in cash! So the greedy American's took advantage of these poeple, charging higher and higher prices and making the sale and in cash!!!! Well, the last laugh is on us, buying a home in California is almost an impossible dream! Of course, I'm not blaming the Asian Americans; I love living in a city with such rich racial and cultural diverseness. That's what America is all about! Besides there are more than one reason for the overprice housing in Southern California.

Still, would love to be able to buy a house! I wonder how young couples with kids so it out here without moving far from the maddening crowd way out in Upland, Redlands and Riverside for example!

When I work at the City there were guys driving in from Frontana! That was a good two hour looooong drive! Well, it beats living in a loft!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So true! I'm sure there are many who would die to say they live in a "loft on Melrose".
It's just like NYC. When Greenwich village was all hippie artists and writers living cheap, and it got SO fabulous that it became outrageously over-priced.
So all the struggling artists moved to Soho and lived in abandoned buildings, making fabulous bohemian homes for themselves. Now THOSE spaces are being commercialized and being turned into pricey "lofts"!
I cannot help but despise the shallowness of some real estate efforts.

-K- said...

I drove past there just this weekend. I guess this means Larchmont won't be a convenient north-south route for much longer. But if the zoning people ok'd the Grove and the huge apartment complex on 3rd, they'll approve anything anywhere.

Clare said...

Hi! Thanks for stopping by my blog and leaving such a nice comment! The housing prices are INSANE in California. And you're right about how lofts are not what they originally were. Now they're just small studios with kind of high ceilings. Crazy!