I would like to take this moment to talk about real estate

Allright, wake up.. I know this is not the most fascinating of topics. But bear with me here. I have a little expertise in this.

Ya ready?

Back in the days of my youth, on the local main street, which housed a few bars - a few restaurants - a grocery store & department store which were started by the man who eventually sold the concept of a general large-scale department store to R.H. Macy. It's a fairly historic street in most regards. It was an utter business failure. No one went shopping on Main Street after the malls opened, after the mega-supermarkets opened. There was a theatre there, which for 26 of my 30 years on the planet - was closed. Well, closed to the public - if you werent afraid of heights and were a kid you could easily get in. They finally tore it down to put up a gazebo, about 20 sq. ft of grass, and a medical clinic.

Since I never remember it being open, I did not consider it a great loss. Interestingly though, as soon as the gazebo went up - the drug dealers showed up. No idea as to why though.

Anyway, above a good majority of the storefronts on the street were what we called Taxpayers. Being that property taxes were so high (currently, a 1,750 sq. ft. house on 40x100 lot roughly $7-8k) usually the rent from the apartments went to pay the taxes, utilities, and part of the cost of the store beneath. Not that the stores were getting off easy. Rent was well over 2k a month on a 1k sq. ft. space.

But what wound up happening, over time - the renters finally gave up on the street - refusing to pay rent that high for badly maintained, small apartments. Well, that killed off some of the storefronts. Fast forward to 2 years ago or so - they revamped a good number of the apartments. Re-landscaped the street. Yadda yadda... There were 850 sq. ft. apartments lining the street.

Heres a current example of the renters market in Valley Stream, NY. Where I grew up. These apartments are one block off the main street.

- Studio, 1 bath, 500-588 sq. ft., $1075-1095 a month. No pets, nothing included. $75 a month extra for parking.

-1 bed, 1 bath, 736-900 sq. ft., $1250-1475 a month. Parking still not included, still no pets, still no utilities.

Now I've got 990 sq. ft. here, and Im paying nearly 3/4ths less than that *thank heaven*.

And dont say, well you make more in NY. Rated to the market, you actually make less up there than you do here because the value of a dollar is higher down here.

Now, back to my original point. I like the idea of living downtown in a nice apartment, condo- Im not a fan of condo's but thats just me. But heres the kicker, apartment prices are so high on main st. that no one is renting, the storefronts cant afford to stay in business. So the main street area has not bounced back, its still in the state of disrepair it was 10 years ago. As a matter of fact, looking up the listings for Valley Stream, I found that the first restaurant I ever worked for is going to be torn down and a 3 story apartment complex put on its site. There is not room for that much parking there. But thats not Roanoke, so lets get back to the focus.

Playing rentals with downtown can be a wonderful thing. But the prices have to be scaled properly. You are still looking at an area with no grocery store, no department store, I dont believe I have seen a drug store - so your looking at having to travel for everything. Yes, you can walk to the market and do your grocery shopping for the most part, but not as a whole. And should you have a need for Nyquil at 3am, driving to Walmart or Kroger while sick can be quite a chore.

The prices Im seeing listed for rent on all these renovated spaces downtown, while still not the frightening NY prices, are still pretty bad. If you are looking for CEO's, executives, CFO's and the ilk to populate those buildings, then fine - keep them high. Just remember theres only so many people like that to go around. The majority of people who would like to live downtown, will not be able to afford it at those rates.

Keep downtown liveable, don't go crazy with the pricing. Remember these people still require parking in most cases, groceries, the simple things that make a location all the more convienient. Just watch the money.