Another real estate grump

[jim_p]

Why is it that in the day and age when people have been known to climb into their SUVs to take the kids to the end of the driveway for the school bus, a place can be pitched as "near public transit" when it's a mile walk to the nearest station?

Comments

[lothie.livejournal.com]

Do people really do that?

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

As an extreme case, I have a former coworker who lived behind an elementary school, the one his child attended. The kid could go out the back door of the school, cut through two backyards, and be in his *own* backyard. But no, Mom or Dad had to *drive* around the corner to the school to pick the kid up, because they wouldn't let the kid leave alone; he had to be discharged into the custody of a family member or other designated adult. I'm not sure exactly why the pair of them couldn't walk but it was due to some other stupid requirement of the school rather than laziness.

My understanding is that it's considered felony child endangerment in MA to leave a child under 12 unsupervised. I swear, if they're gonna make this a nanny-state, they could at least make sure everybody had a nanny....

[lothie.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize "leave a child unsupervised" included walking time to/from school. I mean, when my kids were under 12, I couldn't leave them alone in the house, but they could walk to and from school by themselves...

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I started walking to school unsupervised when I was 7. Usually in the company of other children, but still. Sheesh.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what the definition of "unsupervised" includes.

My elementary school in NJ in the 1970s was maybe 1/4 mile away...I was walking there unescorted in first grade. Ridiculous.

[ceo]

My first elementary school was just over half a mile away, on the other side of the main drag, and I walked it alone starting in first grade. (There was a crossing guard at the main drag.)

Yes, it's ridiculous. I don't know what the minimum age for walking alone to school is in Somerville; by observation it's probably 8 or 10, which isn't too bad.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Its' the same mentality that claims that anything west of Winter Hill is "near Davis Square." Or the ads for places in Lynn that say "near Saugus" or "near Swampscott" so you don't notice it's in, well, *Lynn*. Or the place in Philly near Eastern Penitentiary[1] that the real estate people claimed was "Art Museum Area".

[1]Trivia: Eastern Penitentiary was the location used for the mental hospital in the movie 12 Monkeys.

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

It's a different market. College students (of the starving variety) are willing to walk that far. Or at least they were 20 years ago. Or at least I was...

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

My favorite is when I see an MLS listing that says "Close to Harvard, Davis, Porter, and Kendall!"
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[(Anonymous)]

Oh, don't get me started there... the Green Line can't come to Somerville soon enough for me. You find the T at Porter Square and Davis Square, yet in my real-estate search everything seems to be near Union Square. That's an awfully long walk...

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you have the answer right there, and the author of the ad is an SUV idiot with only an abstract concept of what public transit is and how it's used?

[(Anonymous)]

Naah, I attribute it to the usual real-estate truth-stretching. The kind that boasts a "water view" (Yes, if you stand on tiptoe on the roof and peer between those two trees over there), "french doors" (okay, so it's a glass storm door...) or my favorite, "Needs TLC" (read: nuke it from orbit and start over).