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>From the Los Angeles Times
The Area-Code Plot to Kill L.A.'s Housing Market
The Fed's interest-rate hikes couldn't do it, but three little digits
might. Would you pay L.A. prices to live in the 424?
By Chris Ayres
CHRIS AYRES is Los Angeles correspondent for the Times of London and
the author of "War Reporting for Cowards." Website: www.chrisayres.net.
July 21, 2006
AT LAST, someone has stepped in to end the foaming-at-the-mouth
insanity of Southern California's real estate boom. Fed chief Ben
Bernanke and his Amazing Jumping Interest Rates (watch them leap!)
couldn't do it. The "America's Most Overvalued Real Estate" blog
couldn't do it (as of Wednesday, it had disappeared entirely). But make
way for the state Public Utilities Commission, an organization whose
name practically guarantees a bad time. Its scheme to make sure no one
moves for the next five years? A new area code for West L.A. - a code
so undesirable it will turn a 310 number into a bragging right.
They're sneaky, these commissioners. They know how Angelenos think.
This is a town more concerned than most with status. Higher interest
rates simply make homes more expensive, and therefore more desirable.
Conventional economic thinking doesn't work here. But what if trading
up to a bigger, more generously screening-roomed house involved some of
kind of status penalty - negative egomortization, if you will? What
if - hear me out - they forced you to take, say, an 818 area code
with that new mansion in Beverly Hills?
Yes, I know what you're thinking: instant crash. Brokers on the
streets, begging for iced lattes. Makers of branded "Open House"
signage filing for Chapter 11. And conversations echoing through the
Hollywood Hills: "But honey, we cannot flip the house now ... people
will think we've moved to the Valley!" And yet this is exactly what
those bad-boy commissioners are going to do come Aug. 26 - only much,
much worse.
Using the ingenious cover of a telephone number shortage (there are
"only" 1.9 million 310 numbers still unused, so clearly this is an
emergency situation), they have come up with an entirely new code, one
so traumatically unfamiliar you might as well live in Blue Springs, Mo.
If you're covered by the three digits in question - 424 - you'll
even have to dial 1 and the area code before every phone number you
call, adding to the illusion that you're stuck on a potato farm in
Idaho.
In one sense, of course, area code snobbery makes no sense. In almost
every other field of communications technology, the newer the better.
But big-city digits are like brands - residents want to be associated
with them because it gives them insider status. And there is no hipper
code than 310. The only consolation for those cursed with a 424 code is
that everyone in the 310 area will also have to dial 1 and the area
code to place calls: even 310ers calling other 310ers.
The downside, however, is this: Angelenos with caller ID will not only
refuse to take your calls, they will secretly blame you for their
having to spend the entire Labor Day weekend adding an area code to
each of the 8,231 numbers in their cellphone's memory. PDA owners will
have to do this twice, meaning they probably won't be done until
Christmas, when they won't be sending you any gifts.
I should point out that it is technically possible to keep your 310
number when you move - in the same way that it is technically
possible to copy your SIM card onto your hard drive, upload it online,
then beam it to your toaster via Bluetooth. The truth is that when you
buy another house, you will more than likely end up on the wrong side
of Southern California's telephonic Berlin Wall.
As for those outsiders moving into the city for the first time ... they
do not stand a chance. Being fobbed off with a 424 number will become a
kind of Angeleno rite of passage, like paying $150 for a cab from LAX
to Culver City. I suffered a similar fate when I moved from London to
Manhattan in late 2000. I was stuck with a 646 code, which meant I
might as well have saved on the West Village rent and settled in New
Jersey. Unlike Los Angeles, New York had no collective guilt about this
because the 212 owners could still dial each other with seven digits.
But in two years, I do not think I got a single incoming call, except
from telemarketers, who thought I was in Oklahoma. It just felt so
wrong. A brand-name telephone number should be part of the consolation
for the parking restrictions and unaffordable housing that come with
big-city living.
And yet, with L.A. housing becoming even more unaffordable (in spite of
slowing demand), we should applaud the genius of the PUC. We'll soon
get used to dialing 11 digits, after all. We'll soon forget about the
time we wasted updating our cellphones and PDAs. But we'll always
remember that magical day in August when Southern California's housing
market finally cooled. Yes, those commissioners are clever folks
indeed.
Perhaps they can fix the deficit next.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-ayres21jul21,0,3507074.story
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LAT: The Area-Code Plot to Kill L.A.'s Housing Market
