What a quarter million dollars buys...

This is ridiculous. Someone paid $250,000 for a parking space in the Back Bay. Look…Mapquest shows you where!!! The other good part about this map is that I live somewhere on the page, but I won’t say where…hee hee.

I am certainly not the only person to ever bring this up, but that kind of money can buy you a pretty spectacular spot to live in most of the country. Heck, I grew up in the third biggest city in the county and a quarter of a million bucks buys a LOT. Same goes for my other place of residence…the Phoenix area. 250 large goes a long way out there, too.

But not here. It buys you a small parcel of bricks on which you can leave your car without getting towed or ticketed. I am not really sure why I bring this up, it is certainly not news to anyone.

Anyway, my point is that Real Estate costs gross amounts of money around here. The 250 grand for a parking space is not really representative, but don’t let that fool you…housing is expensive. I think the going rate around here for a condo is probably about $1,000 per square foot (so a 1,000 square foot apartment costs more than a million dollars.) That probably wouldn’t include parking, which we just learned is an entirely separate and expensive proposition.

Granted, this is pretty much the most expensive part of the city (as far as I know), and there are other parts that are less obscene. But it still probably costs $500 a square foot to find any place worth living…I am sort of guessing at that (anyone else in Boston, feel free to chime in).

And it doesn’t really get a whole lot better…all of the surrounding towns that would qualify as “nice” places are ridiculously expensive, too. Someone mentioned to me that Dedham is a town that is a little cheaper than some other towns in the area. The average single family property value in Dedham is $361,422. And that is the assessed value…the market value is probably $440K. And that counts as affordable around here.

Ok, I will confess. I was feeling kind of flush after my promotion and raise, and I thought “Gee, I wonder if I could buy a house somewhere.” Not that I don’t appreciate the enormous generosity of Smoking Hot Roommate, but, you know, I am kind of independent and stuff. Anyway, that idea got nixed pretty quickly.

But my question is, how do people do it? I probably make more money than a lot of single moms and dads...and that doesn’t even count the handouts from SHR, Big Sis and Papa Bear. So, how does a mother of two who makes $50,000 a year live around here? Surely there have to be some, right? Did she spend $250,000 or $300,000 on a little house far out from the city? Or does she spend $1,500 a month in rent somewhere?

The raw economics of it are horrifying. If you make $4,000 a month and immediately lose $1,500 of that to pay taxes, health insurance and the like, then you are left with $2,500 to raise a family with. Now, immediately throw out half of that for rent, or more for a mortgage and what are you left with? $1,000 a month to pay for food, clothes and entertainment for three people, plus a car, car insurance and everything else that goes into living?

I just don’t get it. How do people do it?