September is an amazing month on Island. Weather is gorgeous, you can get into any restaurant, find a parking space, catch fish and waves, and the list goes on. Also, it is a great selling/buying month – sellers make sure the house is in tiptop showing condition and buyers are focused on buying rather than being on vacation. So, I’ve been showing a lot of real estate recently. One contrast between older (let’s say pre-2000) and newer houses that keeps being apparent is the older houses, for the most part, have shallower basements. For whatever reason, basements constructed pre-2000ish have 8′ or less walls and few, if any windows, and post-2000ish houses have at least 9′, and many times 10′, walls and many windows. I remember growing up on Island going into basements and you’d have to push the cobwebs out of the way, be careful about inhaling too much mold and on top of that, there was very little natural light – dungeon central. Now, the lower level (no longer called “basement”) is as nice as the rest of the house.
$629mm on the books and $208mm in the pipe.