Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Inevitable



The owner in #1 told me last week that starting in August his house was being rented by FOUR TOWSON STUDENTS. Cha and I are officially the last owners living in their property on the entire row of 12 townhomes.

Fittingly, I saw the first rat I've seen in Towson today, in the front yard two houses north of us. None of those rental properties give a rat's ass (har-dee har har) about maintaining their yards; as a result, the nice brick wall along York Road has become overgrown with ivy and weeds and consequently garbage from #3 (whose yard I maintain since its abandonment) on up to the corner of Burke. I'd thought I'd seen a rat earlier this week but wasn't sure. Today there was no doubt. He was BIG.

The most surprising thing is that I'd never seen one before, given our location; across the street a University with 15,000 students and several dorms and foodservice dumpsters; Section 8 housing in an apartment building a block south of us; Starbucks across the street; numerous restaurants and college rentals to the north...

#5, formerly owned by the father of a TU football player and rented out to his son and three other TU students and their pitbulls, has just been purchased by another parent for his TU student son and friends who are beginning college this fall. The house, which I toured last week, is a disgraceful shambles.

It sold for a quarter of a million dollars. What, I wonder, could we get for ours?