Time Machine

[clamboy]

Originally Posted by NY62

Its nice everyone is saying buy but the truth is we all thought it was to expensive back then, and the interest rates were high also. I could not afford to buy one house 20 years ago. My parents thought us kids were going to have to move because it was to expensive. sound familiar?

I dont remember that.

You could buy a house in Stony Brook for 160k then and Salaries were around 60k

I do remember high interest rates though.

[NY62]

Originally Posted by clamboy

I dont remember that.

You could buy a house in Stony Brook for 160k then and Salaries were around 60k

I do remember high interest rates though.

160k was alot 20 years ago for me. at 25 painting cars I was bringing home 30k and that was decent money. add in the crazy double digit interest rates and that would equall just about what you are paying now for a 350k at 6%. and I figured it out on my mortgage calc. and I only used 15% I remember it at 18%. then it would be more than 350 at 6%. Also my parents bought there home for 12k in south sayville by the water. So you can see why they thought 120 to 180 was insane. If we look at the whole thing in perspective the prices are higher but the payments are the same , crazy huh. the taxes are higher now though. can anyone buy tons of houses now? because in 20 years you can bet someone will be saying I should have bought a ton of houses 20 years ago. LOL .you see when my parents bought they struggled to pay that mortgage, dad worked nights and saturdays for the night dif and overtime. we were not poor just middle class but dad worked hard for it. [blue collar job by the way. We all can say now they should have bought back then, but people could not afford even one 12000 dollar mortgage. Hey clam I still think you are way off thinking 20 years ago that the avg salary was 60 k . even at that you could not afford to buy more then one home at 160k .with those interest rates. I dont even think at todays rates you could afford more then one.LOL

[NY62]

The advice I would give would be rent and invest all the money I was putting down on my house into a little silly company called microsoft.LOL

[mikenbacismama]

My husband and I weren't in a position to buy 20 yrs ago (we hadn't even met yet), but we probably should have bought a fixer-upper in NY rather than move to Vegas when we left in '98.

Now we're thinking of coming back, and we can't TOUCH the real estate there.

Oh well, hindsight is 20/20

[TrudiRose]

For me, it wouldn't make a difference unless I was able to bring MONEY back with me. I got married 14 years ago, and my husband and I bought what we could afford, which was a co-op apartment in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn (the neighborhood next to Park Slope). My advice to myself would have been to buy a house there (they were $250,000 then and are $1 million now), but the thing is, if I'd had the money then, I WOULD have bought a house. So yeah, hindsight isn't useful without the money to back it up.

[mikenbacismama]

Originally Posted by TrudiRose

So yeah, hindsight isn't useful without the money to back it up.

We COULD have purchased a modest home on LI that needed a LOT of work, but at that time we were mesmerized by what you could get a brand new home for in Vegas. Don't get me wrong, we did well there, but decided we didn't want to raise our son there.

In the end, we didn't want to be married to a house that needed constant updating and repairs to make it liveable like some of our friends' homes, but now they (the smart ones) are mostly done renovating their homes, whereas we (the dummies) are on the outside looking in, wishing we could find a feasible way to come back.

[clamboy]

Originally Posted by NY62

160k was alot 20 years ago for me. at 25 painting cars I was bringing home 30k and that was decent money. add in the crazy double digit interest rates and that would equall just about what you are paying now for a 350k at 6%. and I figured it out on my mortgage calc. and I only used 15% I remember it at 18%. then it would be more than 350 at 6%. Also my parents bought there home for 12k in south sayville by the water. So you can see why they thought 120 to 180 was insane. If we look at the whole thing in perspective the prices are higher but the payments are the same , crazy huh. the taxes are higher now though. can anyone buy tons of houses now? because in 20 years you can bet someone will be saying I should have bought a ton of houses 20 years ago. LOL .you see when my parents bought they struggled to pay that mortgage, dad worked nights and saturdays for the night dif and overtime. we were not poor just middle class but dad worked hard for it. [blue collar job by the way. We all can say now they should have bought back then, but people could not afford even one 12000 dollar mortgage. Hey clam I still think you are way off thinking 20 years ago that the avg salary was 60 k . even at that you could not afford to buy more then one home at 160k .with those interest rates. I dont even think at todays rates you could afford more then one.LOL

Not too far off...not for Stony Brook.
100k meant you were upper middle to wealthy then.
The Mortgage was 1500 with taxes on 160k home.

My father made 75k as a Union Electrician in the 80s too.

C

[NY62]

Originally Posted by clamboy

Not too far off...not for Stony Brook.
100k meant you were upper middle to wealthy then.
The Mortgage was 1500 with taxes on 160k home.

My father made 75k as a Union Electrician in the 80s too.

C

How much were the taxes? and how much was the mortgage amount? and interest rate? just wondering not questioning you. Because when I bought my home at 125k in 92 at 8or 9% with taxes and hI it was about 1250 to 1300.