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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>First, let's use the facts. Real estate "values" is not useful. Real  
estate sales prices are much more accurate and useful. I taught all my  
real estate appraisal students that the "value" of any piece of  
property is what a buyer and seller agreed upon, neither being under  
any undue stress.


I too dislike the term 'value' applied to real estate.  It is a term 
misapplied to a lot of things.  Listen to our parlance.  It is the "price" of 
corn and 
the "value" of a dollar.  The dollar has no "value", it is the corn that has 
value, that and wheat, potatoes, cloth, oil etc.  The value of potatoes is 
constant, it never changes.  If you have some, you can eat them and stay 
filled 
and healthy ... now, later, 100 years ago, 100 years from now.  The dollar 
has 
no value.  What, says I, would be a clearer picture would be to think of the 
value of poatatoes and the price of a dollar.  Sometimes a 'mess' (as we say 
here in the South) of potatoes will buy a dollar and sometimes it will buy 
several dollars.   The value of the potatoes stays the same, but the price of 
a 
dollar in potatoes fluctuates.

Like that a piece of truck has a value .... how much food you can grow on it, 
get fuel from it, sleep in the house on it, and have good times with your 
friends and family thereupon.  Like the potatoes, when you think of the real 
estate in terms of dollars, it is the dollars that change in worth, not the 
property, it's value always stays the same.

> 
> >> Having a garden is ALWAYS a good idea.
> 
> >I can think of instances where this would not be true, for instance,  
> where the minimally available space might better serve for sleeping  
> room or for making a living sufficient to buy clothing, etc.

If someone were so infirmed that they could not grow a garden, that would be 
lamentable, but it wouldn't mean that lack of garden is a good thing.  
Likewise if one had so small a space at their disposal that it was a choice 
between 
sleeping there or growing vegetables there, that's very bad, very much a 
pity.  
But finding oneself in those circumstances is the bad thing, a garden isn't.

> 
> >I disagree sharply with this notion. Used prudently, debt to buy real  
> property or to pay for a good education is very worthwhile.
> >


And my view would again be, but what a pity!  Debt is thus viewed as a normal 
course of human events, inevitable if you are ever going to have anything.  
But this is a lamentable view.  For example, I bought this present farmstead 
when I was 36, and then built a house on it (along with road, septic, etc) 
and 
it never carried a mortgage.  I borrowed no money.  Neither did the pieces of 
real estate whose sale helped buy it and build it.  I bought those without 
mortgages too, the first one when I was 25.  It can be done if one does not 
buy 
into the paradigm that debt is either good or inevitable.

As far as education goes, the type of 'education' that is for sale is rapidly 
fading in worth in the modern world.
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