March 7, 2008
Porno For Real Estate Investors
After working in the gay porn industry for over twelve years, my habits of viewing gay porn for pure pleasure have changed. Prior to working in the porn business (which was also before the internet caught on) I had a dozen or so dog-eared stroke magazines and a couple bootleg VHS tapes. That was it.
Today, I get a couple new gay porn movies in the mail almost every day and I am obligated to keep up with dozens of gay porn web sites that I promote. It's now my "job" to look at big cocks and gaping assholes. So unlike other guys who discretely pull up a naughty sex site in their cubicle during coffee break, or at home on their own time, for me, gay sex is the LAST thing I want to look at when I've punched out.
So what is the "forbidden fruit" that I look at when I want to get away from the daily grind of gay porn? I look at real estate listing. Sad, I know. But, to me, the fantasy of making "obscene" amounts of money buying and selling real estate is a much bigger turn-on than the fantasy of some porn star's dick up my ass.
My real estate fantasies are not that far from reality either. Until this recent mortgage mess, the equity generated from merely owning a home in the San Francisco Bay Area pretty much equaled what I was earning by "working" in the gay porn industry. If it weren't for this recent set back, I'd be getting closer to being out of porn altogether someday.
As much as I hate to do it, I'm going to be cashing out of my first investment property soon - at a net loss. The timing is not optimal, but it's the right thing to do right now for other reasons. If you're looking for a super cute little Victorian on quiet, tree lined street in Berkeley at a distress sale price, hit me up! (Photo is of the house in question. Click for slideshow. MLS listing coming soon!) By the way, it's within walking distance from the notorious Berkeley gay bath house, Steamworks! Just think of all the gay college jocks walking around in towels!
In my "Porno for Real Estate Investors" cruising time today, I did get some good news about my homestead property, though. Carol Lloyd's "Surreal Estate" column in the SF Chronicle is often the cerebral jerk off material for my
Real Estate Fetish. Today's column gave me new hope that I made the right decision in buying this single family home (that I can't afford) in the core of San Francisco's booming SOMA district.
In today's column, Lloyd interviewed Richard Florida, author of "Who's Your City," and "The Rise of the Creative Class". Florida laid the sociological foundation for an idea many of us in the Bay Area had already understood intuitively: that creative people like artists, scientists and entrepreneurs — not big corporations, government offices or generic infrastructure — fuel economic development.
Lloyd writes: The region scores high on his much derided and adored "gay index" — a measurement from his earlier work based on the association between high gay populations and high economic vitality. In his new book, Florida incorporates the "gay effect" in his best places rankings as well.
San Francisco made Florida's Top Five cities lists for all recent college grads, gay and lesbian mid-career professionals, all retirees and all empty nesters. San Jose ended up on the Top Five list for families with children. And in the small city categories, Santa Rosa (meaning the whole metropolitan area) ended up on best lists for gay retirees, singles and gay and lesbian singles, all empty nesters and families with children.
So what does this book tell us about our storied real estate market? "I recently spoke to Joe Gyourko (an economist at Wharton School of Business), probably the premier real estate economist in the country, for a couple of hours about this," said Florida. "It's not that superstar cities don't go up and down, it's that they are more resilient than other regions."
But here is the one quote from author Richard Florida that is going to fuel my kinky homo-homeowner fetish through the next few tough years, "If I had to give advice, I would say to buy single-family homes closer to the core, not in the outlying areas where the more affordable housing is.The really knowledge-driven people have to be more effective, so they have to use their time more efficiently, so center locations have become more valuable."
Okay, it's going to be tough, but the writing is on the wall. Dump the suburban rental house on some lefty granola yuppie breeders and focus on the downtown (wet) dream home. Wait out the downturn, accumulate some "gay effect" equity, and just as the market starts to pick up, I'll snatch some bargain basement suburban deals to flip.
Real estate fantasies give me a boner.
Posted by lavenderlounge at 9:05 AM
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