Joan Didion has been one of my favorite writers since the early 1970s when I was in college and discovered her essays in magazines like Esquire and The New Yorker. Elegant, precise, intelligent writing. As hard and intense as a clear blue sky, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny too. Wonderful!
She died a couple of months ago at the age of 87, and since then I’ve been re-reading.
In one piece titled “On Keeping a Notebook” she ruminates about the value of her life-long habit of writing down snippets of things she hears and sees. This line jumped out at me when I (re)read it two weeks ago, and I marked the page:
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.
She was talking about the value of knowing oneself, but of course this reminded me of real estate. Doesn’t everything? And I have some thoughts. Don’t I always?
These days, in a super-intense sellers’ market, with prices pushing ever higher, it’s easy to assume that everything’s going to hell in a handbag and to long for the good old days. No question there are serious challenges these days – especially for buyers of modest means – but the old days weren’t always so good.
Which is where the Joan Didion quote comes in. Let’s try to remain on nodding terms with who and where we used to be.
Interest Rates While rates have recently drifted upward to above 4%, that is still a historical low. When I bought my first house in 1978, I got a “great deal” at almost 8%. Within a year, rates had risen to double digits, hitting a high of 16% in 1980. They didn’t come back to single digits until the late 1990s. Had I waited, I’d have been frozen out of the housing market for more than a decade. Do we want to go back to that?
Housing Discrimination I live in College Hill, a neighborhood where middle-class African Americans built houses in the 1950s and 60s, just before discriminatory lending was finally outlawed. I have a very nice house on a very nice street. But the people who built these houses built here because they had to. There was no other choice. Do we want to go back to that?
These days, in a super-intense sellers’ market, with prices pushing ever higher, it’s easy to assume that everything’s going to hell in a handbag and to long for the good old days. No question there are serious challenges these days – especially for buyers of modest means – but the old days weren’t always so good.
I know things are a little weird right now. A more balanced market and more (a lot more!) affordable housing would benefit us all. But taking the long view – both behind us and ahead –brings a little perspective. And that’s a good thing.