If I had a million dollars. . .

Actually, if I had $1,449,000 this is what I'd buy. I'm really going to have to start playing the lottery.

Update: (5/22/05) It just ocurred to me that even if some fairy godmother were to bestow $1 mil. on me, I still could not afford this place, because there would still have to be a mortgage for $449,000. The Globe did a huge write-up of the property and the real estate situation in Eastie on the front page of this week's Sunday real estate section. Here's the gist of it:

On one side, 60 Marion is a stalwart row house, a fixer-upper with a small yard, oak kitchen cabinets, and a low price tag: $299,999. On the other, 64 Marion is a renovated firehouse; a loft-style ''smart home" where your digital music collection can be voice-activated from the steam shower. With an asking price of $1,449,000, the loft may well be among the most expensive residential properties in East Boston history. . .

In this tale of two houses, these side-by-side properties represent an even larger story within East Boston's turbulent real estate market. It's a neighborhood in the infancy of gentrification, where an immigrant, blue-collar community brushes shoulders with a trendy, more affluent crowd. It's luxury condominiums mingling with tumbledown three-deckers as merging communities carve out identities in a changing neighborhood. . .

Most of East Boston is still affordable right now, but the firehouse loft could prove to be its tipping point, as more upscale housing in the pipeline promises similar price tags. . .

''East Boston right now reminds me of Charlestown in the late 1980s," said Sherry A. Grancey, principal of Grancey & Company Real Estate in Charlestown. ''The same kind of people who left the Back Bay for Charlestown in the 1970s and 1980s are flocking to East Boston with that same pioneering spirit."

Lord, help us all. What I want to know is where are all the poor people supposed to live when Eastie becomes EaBo?