upgrade to 3.0

content/blog/2004-06-23-where-ive-been.md

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+---
+title: "Where I've Been"
+date: '2004-06-23T09:49:09-04:00'
+permalink: /where-ive-been/
+tags:
+    - condo
+---
+
+It’s been an eventful couple of weeks around here; I’ve gotten settled into my new office, I’ve been hard at work on projects both new and old, and, in my spare time, I’ve begun the process of buying a condo.[^1]
+
+Probably needless to say, the last item on that list is absorbing the vast majority of my time of late. This is my first foray into home-ownership, and I’m finding every aspect of it alarming. For instance, did you know that:
+
+1. With a 30-year mortgage, it is entirely possible that I will still be paying off the condo when I retire? (This first is purely hypothetical, of course; given the typically delayed entry of a Ph.D. into the job market, the less-than-embarrassing salary drawn by an academic, the state of the economy, and the projected future of Social Security, I expect to work until I die. In fact, I kind of imagine that last event occuring during some protracted committee meeting, but that’s another story.)
+
+2. In the Southern California real estate market, it is possible to buy a condo with perhaps 25% of the square footage of my parents’ home for something on the order of 125% of said home’s current appraised value, even despite said home’s coveted address and non-backwater locale?
+
+3. When purchasing a new condo, everything you might actually want in it decor-wise constitutes an “upgrade,” despite the already exorbitant cost of the shell?
+
+There are more things I’ve learned over the last few days, but my head is still too spinny to remember them. I’ll post more as things clarify, which I hope will be soon.
+
+[^1]: I was going to link to the developer’s site here, but have thought the better of it; I’ll wait until after the closing before I start naming names. Regardless of my freaked-out state, I still want this place, and don’t want to screw it up.
+