After being denied tenure, Professor Small has one more year to teach at Fred’s University, and he has posted a Freshman Seminar entitled “A Zillow History of the Northeast Coastline.” The course will teach cyber sleuthing, real estate lingo, and envy. In the first term, students will each be assigned a stretch of local coastline and be asked to do an analysis of real estate values in Professor Small’s neighborhood. Using public records, students will identify the homes of highly-paid administrators and poorly-paid maintenance workers, dining room staff and faculty, and map their geographic distribution. Students will find there are many more middle-class and working-class houses along the northeast coastline than there are luxury properties, but because lower-class housing is extremely dense, a few expensive houses often take up more coastline than an entire poorer community. An in-depth study of the outsized home of the Dean of Faculty at Fred’s University will focus on bathroom decor and the trophy room shown in the most recent Zillow interior photos.
Professor Small’s course will then take up the question of the impact of rising property values along the shoreline, and its relationship to rising sea levels. He will examine the paradox that properties that are soon to be wiped off the face of the earth are soaring in value. Students will create a model to predict exactly when the cost of maintaining coastal properties in the face of climate change will mean that no poorer people will be able to hold on to their shoreline homes. For the mid-term, the class will research the cost to taxpayers of FEMA insurance for coastal homes of millionaires over the last twenty years and the impact of new FEMA policies on ordinary homeowners.
In the second half of the course, students will use their newfound knowledge for hands-on learning with real-life situations. Using Professor Small’s house as a test case, students will examine how older properties threatened by both erosion and sea wall collapse fare in the current real estate market. For the final assignment, students will present favorable “comps” for Professor Small’s house, stage real estate photos, and do the paperwork to place the house on the market. For extra credit, students can investigate local developers who might have an interest in a property such as Professor Small’s that provides crucial “cut through” access to a key road. Due to University regulations, no students can receive a commission for their work.
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