The wife and I are going to see a house tonight (our first foray past open houses, though if this house had ever had one we'd have just done that), which makes this an opportune time to comment on a recent Forbes article which named Essex County, Massachusetts - which is where we live - as the most overpriced region in the country. Go us!

The primary reason for this is the gap between real estate prices and income, which they see as a legacy of the dot-com boom, which they say fueled building (and tearing down and rebuilding), which elevated property values just in time for the bubble to burst. Incomes fell faster than prices, resulting in a lot of houses for sale and/or empty with no one to buy... at least at prices that would allow current owners to break even.

I will say that the house we're seeing tonight doesn't appear to have gotten any dot-com money thrown at it. At least based on the exterior, which is all we've seen of it.

Of course, buying a place and continuing to commute is getting more tenuous, as the commuter rail system is proving incapable of keeping up with demand - and the heat. Equipment shortages - engines in for repairs and coaches lacking air conditioning - were blamed for widespread delays out of North Station yesterday, including the transit version of hitting for the cycle - trains on all four lines delayed at the same time.

Even better was the announcement asking that riders waiting on the platforms return to the concourse "for safety." Only problem being that had they crammed into the concourse area (which is tiny), we'd likely have broken some sort of fire code.

Delays have become endemic, and the Globe reported today that the consortium that runs the commuter rail system is over quotas for both tardy trains and equipment out of service (in some cases at double the maximum allowed by their contract).

Given the increased need for public transportation in the face of the Big Dig problem - which is a whole 'nother topic - it's an incredibly poor time to appear - or actually be - incompetent. Especially when there's a fare increase afoot. Those should be fun public hearings.