I bought a three bedroom two bath home with a two car garage & covered patio for$13,500 USD. I was able to get a 3.5% California Veteran loan with a payment of $76.00 USD monthly. I sold the house 10 years later for $32,000USD. I did a Zillow check on that first house and see that it recently sold for $606,094 USD
@Lon Tanner Aren't these facts incredible? Is it indicative of how old we've become? We bought the house I was born in when I was 24, for $15,000, from my parents. With a few thou' down, our payment was $88 a month. The teller at the mortgage window of the bank, a wizened, grumpy old lady, used a hand-cranked adding and calculating machine to calculate the interest due up to the day of payment! I checked at home: always right to the penny. Digital calculators for everyday use were not yet around, but I had programmed a new, desk-top computer at work, an Olivetti Programma, to print out the entire payment schedule. Frank
My first house, I don't remember what the full price was but I was still paying on it when I sold it to someone for nothing, just taking over the payments. I was no longer working in the area and needed to get out from under it. The house I am in now, we bought for $14,500 in 2000, which we paid in full.
We paid 19,900 for our first house and sold it for 82,000. As of right now Zillow says it's worth over 498,900.
Talking of house prices rising fast... 20 years ago when my daughter was 23 she bought her first property , a new build second floor apartment in a nearby village. 1 bed, 1 bath, tiny living room, and kitchen cost £190 K ...12 months later she sold it for £245K... she bought another apartment second floor again ( on a 2 floor 10 year old private apartment block) about 20 miles further north ( north is almost always cheaper) and paid £180 for it... she ripped out the kitchen & bathroom, replaced them with the latest models, installed underfloor heating, and sold it 18 months later for £265 k ... her 3rd property was a larger detached home in a quiet cul-de-sac , cost £280k... she added a large conservatory, and sold again 2 years later for a profit of £90K ... she was still only 28 years old by then... She continued in this manner until she moved to the continent in her early 30's and bought the property she's still in now...
Paid cash for a 120K house in Atlanta but since my business landed me in more motel and hotel rooms than I spent at home, I sold it a couple of years later for the same price as I bought it.
$17,500 and the mortgage payment was $141. VA mortgage, $0 down. It was the sweetest little Dutch Colonial. Unfortunately, when we sold it four years later to move to Florida, we could only sell it for $19,500. The city had announced it was going to use eminent domain and condemn three houses for a parking lot and our house was one of them. Problem is, the city couldn't say exactly WHEN this was going to happen, so anyone buying to live in it wouldn't want to have to move and anyone buying it to hold the city up for more money wouldn't know how long it was going to take to get their loot. We finally sold it to a realtor who was going to rent it out for immediate profit and wait for the city to pounce. 41 years later, the house is still there and is valued at over $350,000.
My first, and only, house was $69,500. It was 1982. Interest rates for mortgages were 16.0% The monthly payment was approx $850, which after inflation would be about $2300 today. The house was easily converted to a duplex, so I rented half out and lived in the other half for the first 4 years, in order to afford it. Refinanced to 12%, then paid it off ASAP, approx 10 years later.
I've only had two. My first was about $150,000 in 1986, and I don't remember what the payments were, but they were in the neighborhood of $300/month. It was owner-financed. I ended up letting someone tak over the payments on it. My second house, the one I am living in now, we bought outright for $14,500 in 2000. It was a 3-unit apartment building at the time so I sunk a lot of money and time into converting it into a single-family home. If you want to count our camp, we paid $37,000 for a hundred wooded acres and about $4,000 for the shell of a camp, built by the Amish.
My first house cost me 18900 in 1964. I put $1000 down and payment was less than $100. It's value now is about $530,000. The last house that built in MA cost 73,000 in 1973 and current value is about $630,000.
The Monthly Cost of Living In A 3,000 sq. ft. Mortgage Free Home Valued @$250,000 Yard Care/Maintainence,Utilities,Phone,Food,Housekeeping,Property Taxes $1,550 Loss of Interest On Mortgage Free Home (4% $ 10,000 TOTAL $ 11,500
Loss of interest?? And kind of weird to add "food" in there; you have to eat whether you have a mortgage or not.