Monday, May 09, 2005

Four Pickups

Jaru and I have been doing some furious house-hunting over the last week or two. Despite the fact that we're living solely on Jaru's visiting prof salary, we can afford a house down here. They run like 100k a pop -- I told a friend that he should sell his place in Silicon Valley and buy a half dozen down here -- my dad could sell his house and move into a lakefront or golf-course-front mansion.

But they would be in Texas then...

While looking at houses we drove past one nice little place (right around that 100k range) and in their two car driveway there were parked four pickup trucks. Not a bunch of little runabouts either -- two were identical extended cab jobbies, one looked like a big work truck, and the other was a small runabout kinda thing (maybe for the cat). That's like a hundred and twenty thousand dollars of pickup in front of 100,000 dollars of house; or 160 square feet of pickup bed in front of 1400 square feet of house.

Anyway, we've cancelled the house search since our circumstances are so volatile now and buying/selling fees in one or two years would cost us more than we gained in equity.

What kind of family could possibly need two tons of cargo capacity???

4 comments:

dan said...

buying a house in texas sounds like a baaad idea to me. better to be able to pick up and leave at short notice when you finally can't take the place anymore

Steve Peterson said...

Actually, I'm a bit uneased at even taking a long-term lease in Texas -- but San Antonio actually is pretty nice and it's part of the small bluish band in central Texas.

Anonymous said...

It's so that they can store their guns and liquor.

Steve Peterson said...

...and Mootopia -- you always need a truckload of high-protein-low fat & sugar-lactose-free milk-like fluid...

Wait a sec, that sounds extremely disgusting when put that way...