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I think my parents paid about $30K for our first home, in Silver Spring, MD. around 1974... it was pretty small, but in a decent neighborhood. Not sure how much they sold it for, but they bought a MUCH bigger place (6-bedroom) in Rockville, for around $100K in 1979. We then moved to San Mateo, CA., and they had to take out a personal loan from my dad's company, just to make the down payment! That was in 1983, and they paid around $450K for our 5-bedroom home... which sold for over three times that amount in 1998. I should ask my grandmother what she paid for her first home, in the early 1940s... I'd love to hear that price!
My parents bought our house for about 30k in 1983. It is about 1500sq foot. 3 bed 1.5 bath. Worlds Fair style home in Saint Louis. In the 'burbs...nice area. They totally lucked out. I keep trying to buy it from them. I even told them I would pay them 50k, thats like 20k more than what they bought it for!!!
They keep saying no.. I WONDER why haha
My parents bought their house in 1982 for $63,000 1700sf, 4bedroom, 2 bathroom, basement, 2 car garage. It sold last year for $210,000. But heck, they remortgaged like 3 times or something crazy like that. They ended up owing like $20,000!
Well cheap is relative but a single person could probably pay for the house with a weeks wages each month back when. Houses were just for living in.
I bought a 4 BR in the Boston area for $13.7K in 1971, sold it in 2005 for $305K. An engineer was making like $200-300 a week in them days. My highest house payment was under $150 a month. Paid off the house in 8 years with no real sweat.
It was not all joy. You had to endure the days of busing and all that social upheaval. I knew people that bought two families for ~$3400. There was zero assurance it was going to all work out.
The entire mindset of what a house is for has changed, including what type of house is desirable. Plus the idea of neighborhoods and how people existed with each other changed so dramatically. This idea of high house prices is a bit of a plague. A form of trap that enslaves the owners. It was not just the money, it was an entirely different way of living and how people managed their own lives in the Good Olde Dazes.
Elaborate a bit more about your ideas of the different way of living then. I'll then see if I share the same recollections of that time, as I was born in 1949.
It's not only that people are retiring to Florida and bringing their equity with them, it's that jobs have located there. That's been another factor in it's appreciation.
The first time I drove into LA, approx 1968, the roads were lined with orange groves. You'd be hard pressed to find any anywhere near there now. I don't think it's so much that places weren't cities before. It's that they have spread out and grown susbstantially in size, in some cases doubled, tripled and more. Phoenix, AZ comes to mind.
In 1967 when I first started selling real estate the banks wouldn't consider a woman's income (most didn't work at the time anyway). They also wanted to know about whether she was currently pregnant and how many children in the family. (In some cases even their form of birth control). - Hard to believe I know.
You couldn't get a mortgage without 20% down and it couldn't have been a loan from your parents either. Plus, you had to have closing costs. You should have been at your job for at least two years, preferabbly five, and they wouldn't finance you for more than 25% of your gross income. The bankers themselves went out to evaluate the property and if they thought it was overpriced, no deal.
I saw things change over the years so that, by law, they had in include a wife's income. (That was one benchmark for home prices going up.) And they were forbidden to ask about kids or personal family planning. The money to pay a mortgage was now greater as more women began working so that people were able to get into better homes (for the time being anyway till the real estate market escalated by reason of the same factors). Things then progressed so that women could no longer stay home with their kids if they didn't want a lesser house.
Now, we have the speculation period whereby everyone wants their house to appreciate by 50% a year, encouraged of course, by new types of bank financing (no money down, interest only mortgages, etc), those get rich quick real estate guru courses, and agents who get a bigger commission. How many real estate people do you know who have refused to list a house that was overpriced lately? It's almost like a pyramid scheme - no one can afford a house anymore.
My father was a General Contractor in the 1970s, building single family homes in South Florida. They were 1200 square feet, with a 2 car garage. They sold for $12,000.
Elaborate a bit more about your ideas of the different way of living then. I'll then see if I share the same recollections of that time, as I was born in 1949.
When I bought that house in Hyde Park (which is one of the neighborhoods of Boston), it was more like a small town with a population of about 32000. In fact it had been its own lil town back in like 1920-30's when it got swallowed up by metro-Boston.
People acted more like smaller town folks that big city folks. In fact they distrusted the city government in most things. They banned together to protect each other. Everybody knew each other, many were related, a lot had gone to school together as kids.
One story I can tell, is one day the next door neighbor came over and asked to borrow my front door key. We had the old skelton key locks. Turns out a bunch of houses all had the same key. People trusted each other. It was considered very, very bad form to call the cops, city, or whoever for anything dealing with how people dealt with each other, no matter what was happening.
Nobody got permits for nothing. People socialized a lot more. Played cards at each other houses, had dinners, parties, we actually had enough money to live a decent life, just paying the house mortgage was not the only reason for working. If somebody was having a real problem, the neighbors did what they could to make it go away.
Everything was worked out in a cooperative manner. Parking on the street was "Reserved" for only the people in a particular house. People had gardens and shared a lot of vegetables and the like. People did the yard chores for older people who were not able, same with shoveling snow. You asked before going on anyones property for any reason, like putting up ladders on your house. Most places had no fences. Everybody knew who owned what dog or cat. Dogs were let out in the morning and would go "Visit" other houses and many times would be let in or fed. Nobody kicked up a fuss about dogs coming over to their house.
I could go away for weeks on end. People would dog sit my dogs, pick up my mail, watch my house, even do some cleaning, I gave them the keys, even blank checks with the amounts not filled in, signed by me to various companies to pay my bills. I would always bring them gifts, get them some payment, etc. Same for everybody when they went on vacation. We would water the plants, take care of the pets, watch the house, be like family.
We gave each other Xmas presents, a lot of them I made in my shop. You could trust people with all aspects of your life. The close neighbors were more like family. In fact I went to many family parties, gatherings, weddings, etc. People could borrow each others cars or trucks if needed. We would gang together to fix cars for those that needed it.
In short the lil neighborhood acted to protect those inside from the outside World in all its forms. Kids were super safe, if they screwed up, you could tell their parents, some parents told you to kick them if they got out of line in future.
After all the original ones started to die off, things started to change. And the house prices started to rise after about 20 years of just about no changes. Hyde Park survived all the social changes brought about by busing pretty much intact, it was one of the safer neighborhoods in the city.
As the boom continued, houses changed hands, the old system of how people dealt with each other changed. Many of the Newbies, you either didn't want to know or refused to associate like before. It became a big city environment where people really didn't know each other at any level. All about how much their house was worth and they did strange things to "Protect" it. Lots of conflict from many sources and you really could not trust most neighbors. They wanted to be very One Way and only receive and never be on the giving side of the equation.
To me it was never about the money. The money and high house prices were part of the problem. The Newbies never had any money. They could not be social because they couldn't afford to buy nothing. No parties, no spending on anyone directly outside their own stupid lil household. Plus the idea of depending on and having others help you became very, very one way.
The old dazes were so much better when people considered the houses as places to just live in. It was a place you shared with neighbors / friends at many levels. Wasn't worth much and nobody got excited about sharing anything they had. A definite two way street where as a collective social system you got so much more than you ever gave.
All this talk about high priced houses totally misses what a house and the neighborhood it should exist in is really all about. Just a bunch of sticks and junk that has gotten twisted into some type of "Symbol" to make the people around you feel inferior, bad or as an outsider.
I'd have to agree with Cosmic on the perversions of what a home and neighborhood should constitute!
The aforementioned post is one of the many discords i feel in the suburbs in gereral! All about protecting that investment. (-house)
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I should ask my grandmother what she paid for her first home, in the early 1940s... I'd love to hear that price!
Used to be very very cheap
Elaborate a bit more please...
