"HOMES" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barry Dave)

1. Take your total annual family income, including coins that have fallen
behind the bureau and any projected future revenue you have been notified
about via personalized letters from Mr. Ed McMahon stating that you may
already have won fourteen million dollars.
2. Count up the number of children you have and note how many of them are
named Joshua or Ashley. That many? Really? Don't you feel this trend
toward giving children designer names has gone far enough? Don't you
think we should go back to the old system of naming children after
beloved uncles and aunts, even if we in fact hate our beloved uncles and
aunts and they have comical names such as Lester? Can you imagine having
an aunt named Lester? These questions are not directly related to your
Price Range. I'm just curious to know how you feel.
3. Now take these figures (No! I'm not going to tell you again which ones!
Pay attention!) and multiply them by six; which will tell you, in
thousands of yards, roughly how far away the lightning bolt was. No!
Wait! Sorry! Wrong formula! You want to take these figures and
multiply them by something other than six. This should give you a very
strong idea of what your Price Range is, although we shall soon see that
it doesn't matter because there are no homes in it anyway.

There! Now you're getting somewhere! But you're not done yet: you need
to decide what style of house you're looking for. The major styles of houses
in the United States are:

OLDER HOUSES with many quaint and charming architectural features such as that
during certain phases of the moon the toilets flush up.
NEWER HOUSES built by large developers using modern cost-cutting efficiency
measures such as hiring semiskilled derelict felon gypsy work-persons who
are prone to forgetting to install key architectural elements such as
windows and those large pieces of wood, "rafters" I believe they are
called, that hold up the roof
REALLY NICE WELL-BUILT, WELL-LOCATED, AFFORDABLE HOUSES that are not for sale.

Another very important factor is neighborhood. Ask any real estate
broker to name the three most important factors in buying a property, and
he'll say: "Location, location, location." Now ask him to name the chief
justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he'll say: "Location,
location, location." This tells us that we should not necessarily be paying a
whole lot of attention to real estate brokers.

If you have school-age children, by far the most important factor in
selecting a neighborhood is, of course, the proximity of the nearest Toys
Backwards "R" Us store. You will be spending a great deal of your time and
disposable income there, because from kindergarten through about sixth grade,
the average child attends approximately 36,500 birthday parties. Your child
will go through a period, usually around first grade, when his classmates will
have as many as six birthdays apiece per year, meaning you'll spend virtually
all of your Saturdays racing to Toys Backwards "R" Us, then racing off to the
party, leaving a trail of flattened pedestrians because you are wrapping the
present as you drive. But all the hassle is worth it when you see the look on