Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ... CITY RESIDENCE PROPERTY. Residence property is naturally divided into fancy residence, home residence, and income residence property. Fancy residence is that selected for beauty of location and desirability of neighborhood, and is expensively and generally extravagantly improved. The improvements are such that they cannot be considered as income or investment property. The builder of a fine house knows that it will never bring himself nor anyone else any other income than heavy annual expense bills and perhaps, but not always, the great satisfaction of living in a beautiful and perfectly appointed home. Such property does not only not bring the builder money-return in annual income, but, if circumstances lead the owner to sell, it rarely realizes over half its original cost. In fact, when any man in the smaller cities builds a fine residence costing $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, or $75,000, he does not fully comprehend what he is doing unless he realizes that he is absolutely throwing away from forty to sixty per cent of its cost if he is looking upon it as a convertible asset. The loss, too, in an expensive residence is not only the original cost, but in the maintenance of such fine properties, which not only demand great outlay in repairs, renewals, heating, and taxes, but necessarily increase the number of servants and consequent destruction and waste. So it is very often the case that these magnificent family monuments, instead of proving a domestic heaven, are such financial or housekeeping burdens as to make them eyesores to their proprietors. Besides the fact that these fine homes are money-sinks to the builders, there is a great inconvertibility about them, as a class, which makes them difficult to sell even at fifty per cent of...