I have a piece in this week’s magazine (Obama on the cover). It starts:
Stuart Katz and Jeff Kovack met at Ohio State. They quickly hit it off. The pair joined the same fraternity, and after graduation, both moved to Baltimore, where they became roommates. Then a year ago in April, the 25-year-olds took the next step: they bought a house together.
But no, this isn’t that story. This is the story of friends—just friends—who buy houses together because they are young and don’t have a lot of money but smell opportunity in a soft real estate market and want to start building equity ASAP, even if it comes before the wife, kids and golden retriever. “On my own, I might have been able to buy a one-bedroom condo, but that would have been pushing it,” says Kovack. Instead, he and Katz live in a 2,300-sq.-ft. (about 215 sq m) three-bedroom row house with stainless-steel appliances and a deck out back. They split the mortgage, the tax break, the cost of upkeep—and the pride of being homeowners a few years out of college.
To find out the word I made up (okay, actually, I outsourced the word invention to a guy named Matt), you’ve got to go here and read the rest of the story.
Barbara!