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Since there are so many of them, and because I suffer
from a disorder known as compulsive reading,
I found
myself poring over the real-estate advertisements in a
recent newspaper.
It wasn't the Denver Post, which conveniently groups
these messages into special sections so that I can leap
right to them if so inclined. Instead it was the Wall
Street Journal, which humbly bills itself as the most
important newspaper in the world.
Next to a consumer review of mail-order running pants (I told you I was a compulsive reader), the Journal offered a page and more of Colorado real-estate advertising.
There was a time, when I was more actively involved with
mountain newspapers, that I could translate real-estate
prose into standard English. In fact, I once joined with a
colleague (B.J. Plasket, now of the Longmont Times-Call) to
produce The Buyer's Dictionary of Colorado Real-Estate
Terms.
For instance, ski out your door
meant the
county doesn't plow the road in the winter.
Easy monthly payments
was a short way of
explaining that the last four buyers failed to make
their balloon payment,
and lots of amenities
translated to in most of the world, running water and
electricity are amenities.
We had collaborated on it for some now-defunct magazine in Breckenridge. The editor glanced at it, suggested that we examine her most recent edition and count the number of large advertisers who would be offended by our prose, and told us not to let the door hit our rumps on the way out.
Our prose remained unpublished, and the manuscript has long since entered some landfill. The Summit County Board of Realtors may have celebrated a triumph over this pathetic effort at consumer journalism, but if so, I didn't hear about the party.
This time around, I found new and unfamiliar terms.
Some modest starter castles, offered for less than $2
million, still offered ski-in/ski-out,
which I
understood.
But there was a ski-in exclusive
whose
Interiors draw on the traditions of European
craftsmanship.
Note that the interiors are not
constructed by Old World artisans -- the cabinets and
closets just draw on that tradition, just as my columns,
whatever their quality, draw on the traditions of Montaigne
and Mencken.
One common phrase was walkout-site.
Since I've
never seen a homesite that someone couldn't walk out of, I
wondered why anyone would promote this as something
distinctive.
That means it's next to a golf course,
a
knowledgeable friend explained (while I'd like to thank him
publicly, he made it clear that while he enjoyed fame as
much as the next guy, his real priority was continued
employment at a local realty firm). Walk-out means you
can stroll right over to the 17th green.
But why would anybody want to live next to a golf
course?
I asked. Wouldn't errant balls fly into
your yard, where they could break things or hurt somebody?
What about the poisons they use to grow perfect grass in
this desert? And the noise from the maintenance equipment?
Isn't it bad enough to put up with arrogant yupscale swine
during the workday, without having them walk by your house
all the time?
If you want one of those houses, you won't mind being
around them,
he said. And being next to a golf
course is like being 'surrounded by public land,'
he
added. It's a guarantee that you'll always have that
open space instead of neighbors, who might be of the wrong
color or social class. Have you ever heard of a golf
course being subdivided? It doesn't happen.
I moved on. Why would a house have nine bedrooms and
13 baths? Is this being marketed to people who have a
medical condition that could be cured with
Kaopectate?
No, it's just a status thing,
he said. The
rule is that the modern mountain manor must have at least
as many baths as bedrooms, and more is better. I think
that regulation was adopted in 1993 -- it replaced the old
rule that the square footage of the exterior redwood decks
had to exceed the interior floor area.
He translated some other phrases. Nestléd in
the pines
means will have to be evacuated the next
time there's a forest fire anywhere in that county,
and
gourmet kitchen
means lots of high-tech stuff
that your live-in cook, a non-documented alien who doesn't
speak English, won't know how to use.
I asked if there was any difference in the quality of
the views, variously described as great, stunning, awesome,
dramatic or stunning. No, they're all pretty much the
same. Really, it's hard to have a bad view in Colorado --
even out on the plains, you can talk about vast vistas or
supernal horizons. We used to draw the words out of a hat,
but now we have a computer generate them. You left out
splendid, breath-taking and panoramic.
So all Colorado views are great?
Unless you can see one of those fabulous, charming
and exquisite houses that we sold to somebody else. For
some reason, that ruins the view.
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