House for rent - the one that's not renting

Mine.

That is house for rent.

I mean the house that I don't live in is for rent. Fully furnished.

It's a very nice house. Northwest Contemporary, Post & Beam style, with huge windows in a great part of town.

But I can't rent it. That is cannot find a tenant. With the housing slump the rental market's taking a beating too.

So I can't sell the house because the market is slow and getting a home loan isn't what it used to be (snap, and it was done) and can't rent it because no one (at least not my neighborhood) is renting $4,000 homes.

It's a bitch - this situation, and I am wondering if I could install a home based business in the house to generate some cash.

Any Ayurvedic or Naturopaths looking to set up a practice in Seattle?

These economic shifts in the US economy are getting too repetitive. There's always some speculative bubble bubbling to burst. And like this time too the well to do are fine the little guys are hurting, so when you look at NASDAQ or Wall Street do not assume that all's well in the great American suburbia - it ain't.

This Christmas on Christmas eve and the day before the stores were quite empty. And the general mood was melancholy, except for the Sports Stars and the Technology millionaires - they seem to do fine almost always.

It's this pressure to somehow get ahead, make more have more, so everyone got burned who came as the last man (at the end of the sort of pyramid) over paying for eToys. The preferred guys in front of the stock issue line got out okay selling very expensive stock soon to become junk to the average guy with stars in his eyes.

The same average guy hocked his house because it was so easy to borrow against the house - more than the house was worth. So guys making the loans made loads and loads of money. Then reality check happened and the average Joe found he had borrowed more than he should've or more than he could have - and now sits on a house with a loan of 500k when the value is 400k or something like that. And the guys who made the money kept their money. Merrill Lynch or Citi or others banks posting billions in losses aren't asking that commissions they paid be refunded - which they should.

So someone made money and now I can't rent my house - I need someway out!

On the subject of moneyed people Mukesh Ambani is quite obnoxious! $600m house is outrageous. He has money, granted, but there's a regular, flourishing slum, right outside the gates and against the walls of the old Ambani building in South Bombay. I've seen, and smelled it - last May - so it is there, and those who do not believe go see.

Social responsibility should be the flip side of extreme wealth - like Bill Gates and Tatas.

Messers Gates and Tata will you please rent my house?

And Messers Bankers will you reduce interest rates on credit cards (of course by freezing spending limits) so Americans can pay off credit card debts or you'd rather have them go bankrupt as that might mean write off instead of lowered income?