This is the country we live in...and I am ashamed of a story like this.

[Alma]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/12parking.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

 

[Rosie]

A story like this makes me so glad I live out in the back woods.

 

[Angola!]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/12parking.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Apparently I have lived in the backwoods all of my life because I had never heard of this.

 

[Eagles1 in London]

i live in new york but i rely on my feet and the subway to get where i need to go...can't remember the last time i even drove a car.

 

[DisembodiedOwlHead]

The most sickening segment in that story ...

She and her three children, ages 7, 9 and 11, live on Long Island, but the children’s modeling schedules bring them into the city at least twice a week, and the apartment they bought in the building will be a pied-à-terre.

“If we’re coming in late from dinner or we have a lot of stuff in the car, do we really want to have to walk a few blocks to get home?” Ms. Habberstad said.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Welcome to my world. Renting a spot around here can be as much as $400 a month. It's probably not a bad investment if you have the money to buy one, even as a place for rental income. I have never heard of a spot on the market, though.

 

[Mystery_Meat]

Dumb inbred hillbilly question time: what in hell is a pie a terre or whatever that was?

 

[Mystery_Meat]

Welcome to my world. Renting a spot around here can be as much as $400 a month. It's probably not a bad investment if you have the money to buy one, even as a place for rental income. I have never heard of a spot on the market, though.

I'd be willing to be the condo won't let you sublet the parking space. And if you're spending a quarter-mil on it, you should probably be renting it for closer to $750/month.

 

[Write-brained]

Wow. $20,000 a month for a place to park your $20,000 car. Where do people get this kind of money?

 

[Songbird]

It's no different than investing in the market to make money. I don't have an issue with this.

 

[Clever username]

I was just reading that and making fun of those people myself. I feel especially terrible for the woman who failed to get in on the $160,000 spaces, because now her precious model children have to walk two blocks to get to their Manhattan apartment when they're not staying in their Long Island home.

Give the NY Times credit, though. It seems like every story they put in that particular space on their Web site, I invariably end up clicking on.

 

[Write-brained]

It's no different than investing in the market to make money. I don't have an issue with this.

You can't really fault the guys leasing/selling the spaces. It's the idiots paying for them that amaze me.

 

[Clever username]

Dumb inbred hillbilly question time: what in hell is a pie a terre or whatever that was?

Something none of us will ever be able to afford. Be grateful.

 

[Freelance Hack]

I just looked at a house earlier today. It had 2,100 square feet on the main level with a finished basement and two-car garage to boot.

Sale price of the house, which is at least 10 times as big as a parking space, was $179,000.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Why in blue hell is there a $50 per month maintenance fee for a parking spot? WTF do they spend $50 per month on? The paint for the stripes isn't that expensive.

 

[slappy4428]

Only in New York. Seriously.

 

[Mystery_Meat]

Quick Google search shows a spot in Knightsbridge, England going for around $150,000 and one in Tokyo renting for $400/month.

 

[The Big Ragu]

I was just reading that and making fun of those people myself. I feel especially terrible for the woman who failed to get in on the $160,000 spaces, because now her precious model children have to walk two blocks to get to their Manhattan apartment when they're not staying in their Long Island home.

Give the NY Times credit, though. It seems like every story they put in that particular space on their Web site, I invariably end up clicking on.

In all fairness... When I drive home and I have heavy things and more stuff than I can carry, I am screwed. Parking is really tight around here, so I can't just pull right in front of my building and unload. If I try to park, often I will end up having to walk a few blocks, which means carrying more weight than I can handle for several blocks or making 10 trips back and forth to the car That can mean spending an hour unloading and getting the stuff upstairs. It's the kind of annoying **** a lot of people who live in other places don't consider. For example, I like to do my grocery shopping at this large 40,000 square foot supermarket that is unlike any place in NYC. It is in an industrial, but gentrifying area on the Southern tip of Brooklyn in a converted pre-civil war warehouse that had been abandoned right on the water across from the Statue of Liberty. I have to drive there. It has the freshest produce you can get around here and every kind of specialty food you can imagine and great prices for NYC. I save a ton by going there once a week and eat really well. It means driving. When I get back home with bags and bags of heavy groceries, I can't just park the car in the driveway and bring the stuff in. I have to park illegally--and the closest place to do that without blocking traffic is a bit of a walk to my building. Then I have to make several trips back and forth, lugging the groceries. Then I have to get back in the car and park it legally. It's a pain.

 

[novelist_wannabe]

Alma, why are you ashamed?

 

[21]

It's an investment that almost certainly will not depreciate. You add the cost to your mortgage, pay it down the same way you pay for your home, with the same benefits and deductions. It's real estate, you buy it as such.

If they hadn't used the suburban mom with the modelling kids--wink wink, here's a stupid thing for shallow people--this would have been a better story.