[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Can you share the history of your house?
Rick Rosner: Sure. Earlier, off tape, you asked about the room I’m in, probably noticing the different acoustics. I’m in the dining room of our house, built in 1966 when homes still had traditional layouts like a living room, dining room, dinette, den, etc. Since it was constructed for larger families, it has many small bedrooms, which worked in our favor. We were searching for a house in a good school district when the earthquake happened. Our condo sale fell through, and the earthquake only complicated things, so we spent years house hunting. We found this house and got a good deal on it, partly because it was sold by elderly people. Older sellers sometimes offer better deals as they’ve paid off their mortgages and the current housing prices can seem excessive to them.
However, I doubt such bargains are common now, given the severe housing shortage in America, especially in LA. We were lucky with this house. It was on the market for a while in ’98, mainly because it had tiny bedrooms and bathrooms, including a master bath only four feet wide. People spending significant money generally want grander spaces. This house even came with suggested remodel plans to transform the small rooms into larger ones, a sign of its perceived inadequacy. We did remodel, moving walls to expand the bathroom and making other changes. We kept the downstairs mostly traditional, opened up spaces a bit, but didn’t remove load-bearing walls.
Looking ahead, we plan to move, possibly to Britain, but that’s contingent on our responsibilities towards our mothers. We hope to sell the house before any potential decline in LA’s real estate market, which I believe is at least 15 years away. LA experiences cycles of housing booms and busts, currently in a seller’s market with high property prices. However, various events like the 2008 recession, the Rodney King riots, and the ’94 earthquake have caused dips in the market. I foresee a major, permanent dip when LA becomes increasingly unlivable due to global warming and other factors.
Speaking of LA, the city’s future seems uncertain. The entertainment industry, currently a major component of LA, might eventually move out, much like it shifted from New York to LA in the early ’70s. The decentralization of production processes, cheaper costs elsewhere, and LA’s worsening traffic and living conditions might prompt this shift. I think LA will become too burdensome, leading to an eventual decline in real estate and other sectors.
Jacobsen: Is this a new topic, or are we still on houses?
Rosner: It kind of segued into the fall of LA. The city’s increasing challenges might lead to a collapse in the real estate market and other areas. Over the next 100 years, there could be a global shift with more people living virtually, less pressure to reproduce due to longer lifespans and advanced technology. This might lead to a general deflation of assets like real estate, traditionally thought to be inflation-proof due to limited land availability.
[Recording End]
Authors
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
In-Sight Publishing
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.rickrosner.org.
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Rick Rosner 