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I haven't done
many real estate posts lately, although, as an update
to this one (in which an empty dirt lot was being
offered for $10
million) I'll mention that although the For Sale sign seemed
to linger longer than usual, it was supplemented with a SOLD sign
yesterday. So I guess the Chinese are still buying.
I've become quite
inured to the lunacy of Silicon Valley real estate, so not much surprises me
anymore, but I saw a
full page color ad this morning in Gentry magazine
(which is a free magazine they distribute around here, packed with a
combination of real estate ads, for the tech zillionaires, and plastic
surgery ads, for their vain spouses) that demands a post. So I'm writing it,
you lucky so-and-so.
The color
photographs featured the most blase, ordinary, McMansion style place you
could imagine, but the headline was.......
 
Luxury. Compound.
Now, when I think of a luxury
compound, I think of a multi-acre property of a rich family
with a number of fine-looking houses. It's probably relatively remote, and
who knows, it might even have some private security guards on the premises.
Think of the Corleone residence on Lake Tahoe in Godfather II, and that's a
family compound.
What does not spring
to mind when I think of family compound is what is being sold here, which
is.......
(Side note: I urge
you to buy this house if you really, really like lots of paver
stones on top of your now-inaccessible soil).
Now, I don't
smoke, but if I did, I might ponder the term "luxury compound",
look at the above picture, light my pipe, lean back in my leather arm chair,
and ask: "Are you fucking kidding me?"
I've lived in Palo
Alto since 1984, and I know the town very, very well. The location is on a
very noisy, rather ugly street called Middlefield, and the house is
constructed right next to a church that was built (cheaply) probably in 1940
or so..........
The neighborhood
is the kind you'd expect, with houses built in the 1950s that are small and
were probably at the time very affordable for working class and/or middle
class families. Here is the view directly across
the street from the, umm, family compound.
So, look, I don't
expect the good people of the real estate industry to be models of probity,
but exactly how dumb do
they think we are?
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