NY Times' Magazine Real Estate Issue
Quite a few interesting articles in the recent magazine:
- The For Sale Society:
What could be more solid, more firmly rooted, than real estate? A house stands while occupants come, hopeful and expectant, and go, transferred, perhaps, divorced or just in search of something better. But people leave their marks. They knock down walls and tile the bath; they plant poplars in the backyard. A house becomes a statement of taste and priority and a daily source of pride or rebuke. "A most simple majesty" is how Franklin Hata, the emotionally-constricted protagonist of Chang-rae Lee's "Gesture Life," described this sensation of dominion over real estate. Hata also saw in a house "the shape of one's life, how it has transformed and, with any luck, multiplied and grown."
- Home Sweet Home:
Does taking on greater financial risk to own a house prevent you from bonding with it?
- Battle for the Burbs:
The metropolitan-policy expert talks about the decay of older suburbs, the merits of long commute times and why the suburbs might endanger democracy.
- Fixing a Hole:
For upwardly mobile young couples, restoring an old home is a rite of passage. And, as their blogs often show us, a nightmare.
- Big Gulp:
Long before Martha Stewart, Edward Bok peddled a vision of the proper middle-class home.
- This very, very Old House:
What the story of one 400-year-old house in Amsterdam can tell us about today's housing market.
- Après Le Deluge, Moi
How Patrick Quinn is trying to become the Donald Trump of New Orleans.
- Who Needs the Mortgage Interest Deduction:
Most people think of the tax break on mortgage interest as fair social policy intended to make respectable homeowning citizens of us all. They are wrong.
- Club Med for the Multimillionaire Set:
Tim Blixseth, founder of the exclusive Yellowstone Club, wants his superrich club members to unwind, even if he can't.
- How to Build a Low-PVC, Reduced-Plastic, Polar-Bear-Sensitive House:
One couple's efforts to construct America's most ecologically friendly dwelling.
- Home Economics:
Why do houses cost so much when there's plenty of land to build on? Is public housing a good thing? Why do people still move to Detroit? Ed Glaeser has some answers.
- Master Suite, Ocean Views, Harem Room and Piano Bar (Seats 200):
Some $40 million homes are harder to sell than others.
- Psst... Have You Heard About Bushwick?:
How an undesirable neighborhood becomes the next hot spot.
- The Suburban Solution:
How do you build affordable housing without federal money? Hitch on to a rising real-estate market and let the private sector do it for you.
- Homesteads
- There Goes the Neighborhood:
On the streets where we live, bigger may not always be better.
- Agents Provocateurs:
The brokers and developers who are as hot as their properties.