I’ ve been at peace knowing that I’ll never own a piece of Bay Area property, at least any time in my 30s or 40s, for quite some time. My 50s, as well, are already looking like another decade spent renting, barring any given family inheritance I’ve yet to grow aware of.

I’m, nonetheless, clinging on to my five-year plan like a raccoon grasping onto a stale Oreo cookie still wet after a heavy rainstorm: to split my time between my 160-square-foot SRO in the Tendernob and somewhere in Delta Bay, where I’ll be parking either my tiny house or all-electric camper van come 2027.

That somewhat unorthodox future affords me a sense of composure; it’s a tangible goal I can, realistically, work toward and save for. When I see listings like this $661,500 ad on the real estate listing website Redfin for a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home that isn’t even remotely habitable, it further cements my premeditated goal into my working-class subconscious.

L ocated at 911 Mclaughlin Street in Richmond, California, the single-story domiciles look like absolute shit from the outside.

The roof is caving in. More paint has flaked off the front facade than remains attached to it. The grass is as emaciated as my crypto earnings currently stand. There’s a line of overgrown bushes shading a short sidewalk that leads up to a porch a person may or may not fall into if they had too heavy of a lunch.

The backyard is much the same level of dilapidated: swaths of dead grass, questionable paint jobs, and off-pink concrete slabs contrasted by traditional gray ones. But there is, however, a great collection of flora; a quasi-healthy flower bed is pictured in the listing, as well as a gloriously large palm tree.

But inside the house built in 1942 exists the most perplexing, mind-boggling dichotomous.

Literal holes an adult man could fall through hangover various places of the house, including the modest kitchen and front living room lined with somewhat decent hardwood flooring. There are marble tiles in the bathroom… above a stained bathtub pulled straight from Saw. The majority of the windows are either partially or fully obscured by plywood. A smattering of mirror tiles can be seen in one of the rooms where you can check your hair and wipe away your tears, backdropped by the present detritus.

Also: an attached one-car garage has been converted — but it’s not written in the listing what it’s been changed into, which reads a bit strange.

So if you have this kind of money just burning a hole in your designer jeans, feel free to book a tour with the appropriate Compass real estate again and “bring your contractors and landscapers” to make this “home your own!”

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Get it while you can… because, yes: This is the cheapest real estate unit of its size at 1,300 anywhere in Richmond, at the moment.

Celebrating the free-wheeling spirit of the Bay Area — one sentence at a time.

SF transplant, coffee shop frequent; tiny living enthusiast. iPhone hasn’t been off silent mode in nine or so years. Editor of The Bold Italic.