May 15, 2008
Moving Chronicles (08v4)-- Mtn. View
(c) copyright, View from Silicon Valley, 2008.
All rights reserved.
Now
tell the truth. You thought we were kidding about Mountain View.
Or
maybe our rag about contamination by Google stock option money sounded like sour grapes? Are we were just
another one of those "bitter renters" on the craigslist housing forum?
To
be fair, we admit that if our Google IPO stock options had generated $900K to $1.2M per year for the past four
years, we might have done much the same thing --spend big hunks of newly-minted option money on a house --maybe
even two or three. Since Mountain View public schools are lousy, setting up a trust fund to pay for our future
childrens' private school tuition would just be the cost of doing business.
Real
estate lust explains some Craigslist listings, but not all of them.
This
Moutain View listing is just over-priced. (Emphasis and comments
added.)
* * * * * *
$4200 / 4br - 4 br + 2.5 ba House in Los Altos School District (Mountain View)
Reply to: xxxx
4rent_lasd@yahoo.comDate: 2008-05-12, 6:24PM PDT
A 12-YEAR-NEW SINGLE FAMILY HOUSE AVAILABLE IN JUNE 2008.
Four bedrooms and
2.5 bathrooms. Absolutely Beautiful, Bright, Spacious (almost 1,600 square feet). Easily maintained yard with patio.
(How do you even get four bedrooms and 2.5 baths
in 1,600 square feet?) ...
.
* * * * * *
This
may be a failed flipper. Or maybe a tax write off?
OK,
price is one issue. Somehow folks are paying these prices. It must be that we just don't "get it" about
Mountain View. (At least not without a Google stock option subsidy.)
To
really "get it" about Mountain View all we needed to do was read the following:
*
* * * * *
$2950 / 4br
- House 4/2/2 bordering Palo Alto in Mtn. View ready 4 tenants
Reply to:
hous-676970490@craigslist.orgDate: 2008-05-11, 6:55PM PDT
Renter vacant, of ready dwelling lease 1 year, written standard California form.
In
City Mountain View. City Plan, circa 1960s.
(OK, so far. It's cheap because it's a 60's house...)Not
the lousy Eichler type old house, circa 1954. This rental has hardwood oak floor, forced air heating, role-out windows and
folding-up garage door, not Eichler sliding windows and sliding garage doors, concrete slab floor heating, faulty rollers
bearings traping you in garage on work days and time lost.
(The initial read of this awkwardly-constructed
and poorly-punctuated sentence seemed to find the house had the famous Eihler heated floors AND forced air
heat. We'll settle instead for pointing out this sentence as a list of reasons you don't want to rent an Eichler.)
A
clean, ready to rent 4 bedroom, 2 full bath, 2 car garage house with plenty of fruit trees and small garden area in backyard
ground dirt planting. Veggy lovers can spoil themselves having a planting earth to enjoy, apartments don't give. In a house
Not bothered with noisy confined neighbors, screaming load drunks yelling through thin walls in apartments. A house provides
a luxury few realise until you rent or own one? Hardly, NO weeds or little yard work, no bothersome weeds pulling here, common
in most rental houses. Water savings!
You REALLY found a "Jack Pot" in time savings here. Many thousands were spent
land-scaping this one.
Garage is not a bedroom, a place for storage and cars. Can handle 2 cars and many tools,
as a work bench, currently is installed for "DIY" projects. Change your own oil before it hits $5? Again, not a common personal
task found in most apartments without a renter's fine to pay?
One gasoline leaf blower, NOT legal in funny and corrupted
Palo Alto along with gas generators, tillers, chainsaws or anything using gasoline, fining you $350 calling it "noise
polution" and they have a airport there and lots of housing along a famous rail road line. Part of first hygrogen bomb 1953,
was built at Stanford's Hover Tower.
You get in this rental, a garage chest freezer, 2 refrigerators, electric washer/drier,
electric stove & oven, sink disposal,
real wood cabnets, not laminated fake cabnets, re-model new bathroom, both
with shower stalls, one with 50 galloon tub bath,
used patio furniture with new umbrella, private lockable shed, yard
fense with new paint, cable multiplex connection, phone line and
piece of mind, renting a private house. However, you
are the renter!
(And don't you forget it, you dirty scum!)NO PETS
Never
has a pet lived here, since ownership. You want pets? Buy your own house a pay $950,000. Then you can mingle in nasty smells
and germs. * * * * *
What more do we have to say about Mountain View? 