My ode to the California housing market!

I have a message for anyone trying to sell his or her house right now in Southern California: Kiss my butt! Yeah, you heard me correctly: kiss it! Let me tell you why.

As many people know, Katie and I have been house shopping for some time. Now for those people who have been asleep for the past two or three years, or are just incredibly dumb, the California housing market is incredibly inflated. Unfortunately, we just happen to live in the middle of it all, because all these rich buttheads from Los Angeles and Orange counties are escaping their high living costs and settling in Riverside and San Bernardino counties where prices use to be cheaper. Riverside and San Bernardino counties are where we both grew up and where we ultimately want to settle and raise a family. Bad idea, especially right now.

Well, house shopping has been pretty frustrating. Some crudhole house on a tiny lot what use to sell for 50 or 60 thousand dollars is now selling for well above 200 thousand, even higher in some places. The scary part is not that people are listing them for so much, but that they are ALL selling for that much.

Well, last night was just about it for the both of us. We went to see this little 1200 sq. ft, 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house in Calimesa that we had heard a little about. Believe me, this house was a huge fixer-upper, nothing to write home about. We get there, and in my opinion, it was even worse than the pictures. It was old, tiny, had a mysterious second chimney sticking out of the middle of it, it had two odd additions added to it, and to top it off, a huge garage (bigger than the house) that should have been condemned and would have to be torn down before anything else. Imagine our shock when this piece of junk was selling for almost 300 hundred thousand dollars. That, coupled with the fact that it was in Calimesa, a place I swore I would never live in growing up, just about made me sick to my stomach.

It was after visiting this house when I pretty much said to myself, “Forget it”. This piece of junk, and dozens others like it, will probably sell for 300 thousand dollars, but it won’t be my money. If someone really thinks that load of crap is worth all that money, then they can have it, and I will happily sit in my cheap apartment paying one tenth what they will pay in interest payments alone.

So again, I repeat myself: Kiss my butt California housing market! I will not be your sucker. You will not fool me. I know how much you are REALLY worth and I will go ahead and wait until other people realize it too, or if worse comes to worse, move to a place where the nice fresh air of sanity abounds.