patrick.net

These are the places she suggested instead. I looked at the filter she had set on the listings and she had eliminated any property that was built before 1990. That guaranteed the homes on offer would all be out on the suburban fringe along the highways instead of in town. When I asked her about this she was confused and set about educating me on the property market in Appleton.

She explained that you don’t want an older home because they have too much deferred maintenance. Bringing them up to a modern standard is too expensive relative to their resale value. Taxes are too high in old neighborhoods so you want to buy across municipal lines outside the older city limits. You get more house for less money with lower taxes in the newer developments. The schools are much better in the newer areas, and people shop for school districts more than they shop for a house itself. While Appleton is a very safe little city, crime is always a bigger problem at the core compared to the edges. You have to think of the children. And a newer home on a larger lot is a better investment because that’s what quality buyers want. Older homes don’t appreciate, they decline.

What she was telling me was no doubt true from her perspective. She reflected the values not just of Appleton, but most of America and the people who choose to live in these places. She wasn’t wrong. But aside from the fact that I didn’t care for any of these homes and was never going to buy in these locations, I realized the truth of the Appleton model. Thirty years from now all the new homes she’s selling will slip into the “old” category and will gradually fester as taxes rise and the middle class migrates to new greenfield developments. These older places (the homes being built today) will then be populated by lower class people with fewer resources and less status thereby reinforcing the perception that it’s best to move on if at all possible. These are fungible, forgettable, disposable places that rapidly age and are then left to quietly decay. ...

Within the continuous greater Appleton region for ten miles in any direction are dozens of smaller municipalities that have been engulfed by suburban development for most of a century. Little vestiges of once prosperous towns linger in diminished form embedded in the sprawl. These towns were built along barge canals, small hydroelectric dams, and productive mills. Many of the surviving buildings have been partially occupied or completely vacant for decades. Half the original structures were so devalued that they were torn down and replaced with surface parking lots. A number of them are used as low grade storage facilities or budget consignment shops. ...

So here’s the big picture. All of America’s institutions are focused exclusively on churn. Crank out new stuff, sell it fast, cash out, and move on to the next project. Blighted neighborhoods aren’t an accident. They’re baked in to every facet of how we do everything. Successful individuals and savvy investors know this instinctively and keep moving every five or ten years to the next new better place. This is also true of municipal officials and private consultants who continually hopscotch from job to job leaving behind districts that have peaked in favor of ones that are still growing.

I’d love for people to stop pretending otherwise and just be honest about the situation. You get a really good run for a few decades. Then things slowly turn to crap as the vinyl siding and synthetic stucco start to peel off. We’re going to continue to do this until we simply can’t anymore for one reason or another. Then we’ll have no choice but to start re-inhabiting the dregs that were left behind. Some places will be more worthy of salvation than others. Shrug.