Because all your neighbors will be moving into smaller spaces, and will have lots of extra furniture and stuff, try converting all your extra bedrooms and great rooms into self-storage rental space.

Talk to the FAA about turning your roof into a community helipad.

Leave all the windows open and go for the Guinness World Record for the world's largest birdhouse.

Open a museum devoted to shallow excessiveness.

Turn it into a shelter for out-of-work real estate agents.

Cover all the windows and charge people to play laser tag.

To speed things along, paint "Foreclose Me, Please!" on the wall facing the street.

Charge local skateboarders by the hour to come in and thrash around – an especially good plan if you have a pool.

Try to sell it to art collectors as a site specific installation called "Equity Gone."

Turn it into a bed and breakfast, or if that fails, ask your gardener if he or anyone in his family would be interested in renting rooms.

Open your own elite private high school.

Carpet the entire interior with Astroturf and turn it into a kennel for all of the vanity dogs that your neighbors can no longer afford to own.

Knock out those interior walls, install floor to ceiling windows and turn it into a dealership for all those slightly used luxury SUVs that soon will be flooding the market.

(July 11, 2005)

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