It’s a merry little housing market

Ah, the holiday party season, during which we revisit the splendid spiritual truisms of human nature: Though guests insist you provide it, no one really drinks the eggnog; for some reason, people don’t seem to make out on top of the coat pile as much as they used to; and the only thing anyone in Los Angeles really wants to talk about is real estate.

Vacation plans, family health status, “Cold Mountain,” whatever -- Did you know that that house you guys looked at three years ago, the one where the dining room had been turned into a bedroom and half the kitchen was on the back porch? It just sold for 950, can you believe it? Clustering around the punchbowl like lovelorn barflies, every Angeleno has a story of “the one that got away,” the house you should have bought just two years ago, if only you had known.

See that guy over there leaning against the wall? His wife wanted to bid on a three bedroom in the Hollywood Hills for under five three years ago, but he talked her out of it. Been in therapy ever since.

Just like the conversations ‘round the tree chez George Bailey. Although, come to think of it, real estate had its place in that Wonderful Life -- those Bailey Park bungalows are probably going for eight, nine hundred grand these days. Big yards, built-ins, make it a mil.

Like movies and workout regimens, real estate is an evergreen party topic in Los Angeles. But never have the conversations been so obsessive, with such a spillover into daily life. The numbers are so big, so outrageous, so sexy.

One woman I know finds herself spending hours on the phone with her girlfriends, talking about houses on the market with a giddy cycle of whispers and shrieks she once used when discussing boys. “Omigod, the one with the cracked pool and no yard? It went for how much? No way.”

Another finds herself, months after she moved into her new house, still drawn to the multiple listing service website, cruising the pages as if they were soft porn. “One minute, I’m ordering tights from Gymboree,” she says. “The next I’m filling in 4 bdrm 2 baths just to see what’s out there. It’s weird.”

Not really. Combining as it does voyeurism, aesthetics and large amounts of cash, the L.A. Housing Market has become the new Rock Star, Stock Market and Drug of Choice all rolled into one. Magazines devoted to celebrities now look like the real estate section -- Jen’s former Hollywood Hills bungalow goes for $3 mil! -- while local newspaper real estate sections have replaced sports as the first grab of those looking for really juicy numbers to memorize.

Of course, the tone of your conversation depends on whether you are a have or a have-not -- for a first-time home buyer, there is nothing thrilling in the ever-increasing median home price.

And if for one moment we consider Los Angeles in the communal sense, it is not a good thing for anyone that bona fide members of the middle class, those whose parents cannot pick up the down payment, cannot afford to own their own home.

But for those sitting on their own bit of the hottest market in town, there is a stomach-tightening thrill-ride aspect to the whole thing. Suddenly that home you bought 10 years ago is not just a California bungalow in need of a new roof and some re-wiring, it’s a pile of treasure. It’s your retirement fund, your kids’ tuition; it’s that trip to Spain you’ve always wanted to take.

That is, if you’re willing to sell it and really downsize and/or move out of Los Angeles. If you plan to stay here, the skyrocketing market value is basically Monopoly money.

But no one wants to think of it that way, certainly not at the holidays. In the glitter of the trees and the glow of the candles, we’d rather contemplate the big, bright and shiny, the bubble that seems like it will never burst. A house you bought a year ago is now worth $70,000 more.

If you were willing to up and move to Billings, Mont., which you aren’t, but still. The walls around you are whispering “more money, more money” -- only this time in a good way.

What is that if not magic?