My neighbors are usually pretty insular, limiting their contact to polite waves, but the housing crisis is having a positive social affect. Thanks to the economic angst, after 10 years on the block, I now know people's names.

This morning a group of neighbors were huddled at the corner, gossiping over the sale of a house on the next street for $150,000, a price not seen in this neighborhood for at least 20 years.

The son of the owner who died last winter sold it -- probably sight unseen -- to an investor who, at least in the good old days, would have slapped on a little paint, mulched the flower beds and made a fortune.