Reader's question:  

Those in the upper reaches of the Atlanta homebuying market can even purchase the home of the former first lady of Atlanta.

Could you explain "upper reaches"?

My comments:

"Reach" refers to a straight stretch of a river, you know, any straight part between two bends. Upper reaches, plural, hence refer to the area where small rivers and brooks begin to merge into a big river. The big river, for instance the Yangtze, then rolls downward before drifting into the sea. The areas closer to the sea, Jiangsu Province for example, are therefore known as the lower reaches of the river Yangtze.

By analogy, the upper reaches of the Atlanta homebuying market refer to the upscale (more expensive) part of the market. The sentence from the top means this: If you are one of the richer people in Atlanta, you can even afford to buy the home of former first lady of Atlanta.

That home is not as expensive as it used to be.

That type of home used to be beyond the reach, to use that word again, of most except the extreme rich. Now, because of the recession, house prices have fallen so steeply that any rich people of the community may find that particular house fall into their laps, so to speak.

Which is to say, an opportunity like that is hard to come by – go grab it while it's there.

Related stories:

Off the shoulders

Off and running

Gold dust

Frugality fatigue

Red flag

Foregone conclusion

Call balls and strikes

Stare in the face

Cyber Monday

With a grain of salt

Drive home

Out of nowhere

Shove it under the carpet

the sky is the limit

hit it off

get my rib in my heart

With bells on

No harm, no foul

Pick up the slack

length and breadth of

get up to speed on something

Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

Zhang Xin（张欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.