Today in smoking piles of rubble...

'Are you for goddamn kidding me?' is what you'll likely say when you see this. What's this? you say, conveniently forgetting how to click on links. Don't worry, I'll explain. Here. maybe this will help:

Ta-da!

Here's a better shot...well, better isn't
the word...less unobstructed shot?

Ok, sorry, that helped not at all. Thanks street view...I think what we want to look at is behind the van. According to this listing on a real estate site, it's a one bedroom, 600 square foot apartment in San Francisco listed, without irony, for $799,000. Of money. Can you believe it? Oh, you can? But that's not that unreasonable for San Francisco... you might point out. Ok, and you'd be correct. After all, 600 square feet is actually a decent size for the city, and you know, just living in San Francisco does make one objectively more attractive.

Oh, and did I mention that you also get to
haul away the charred remnants of the last
occupant's possessions? No?  Because you do.

The preposterous thing-and I should clarify that that I mean preposterous even by the standards of Bay Area housing-anyway, the preposterous thing about this listing is that this house was recently on fire. As in, on fire. Yeah, like, gutted back in 2016. The listing is calling this a fixer-upper which usually means a place needs some paint or a new roof, but in this case it's referring to the uninhabitable, burnt out shell of a house that the current owner is sick of paying property taxes on. I suppose you have to admire the sheer, unapologetic cheek of asking eight hundred grand for a rubble-filled husk.

Holy shit, give it a rest...

I mean look, I'm not like a real-estate agent or anything, but I do know how to look things up on the internet so, well, I guess I am basically a real-estate agent, huh...anyway, similarly sized but not-burnt houses are listed for around the same price, so this listing is kind of the seller's way of saying 'fuck you, this is San Francisco.' And the depressing part is they're not wrong. It really is a great city if you can get past the lack of parking, rapidly spiraling out of control housing costs and, you know, hipsters.

Ok, so you're sold. Great. Sure, it's a pile of burnt garbage, but location right? The question then is how do you afford this unique fixer-upper/abandoned shell? Well, I don't live in the city, but from talking to people who do, you need to get into something called 'start-ups.' No one can actually explain to me what one is or what they actually do but it usually involves an app and makes a shit ton of money.

"Well, whatever it is we do is apparently very lucrative."

-Start-up people, leveraging

their brand or whatever...