Bought my first house in Austin, in 1978, for $45K. I sold it, after one year, for $55K. It's now listed at $385K.
Over here you usually build and/or buy ONE house only in your lifetime. I'm one of the exceptions having a house built in 1998 for $224,000 which I sold at no profit but for way less 18 years later. I didn't want to haggle over the price and was glad someone was willing to buy it. The condo plus garden overlooking a lake I bought in the meantime and in which I live now is in high demand and keeps rising in value and is worth more than many houses elsewhere. (Location, location, location, as real estate brokers say.) Indicative of that is the letters we find regularly in our postbox from people asking nicely if we'd be thinking of selling it. That never happened in my first home.
My first house in Massachusetts in 1964 cost $18,000 today it's listed at $556,261 My last house in Massachusetts in 1974 cost $72,000 today it's listed at $706,000
Our first was in Babylon NY. It was waterfront on a canal. Our next door neighbor used to go out fishing in the Atlantic. I cost us $14,000
The land cost me $10k and the log cabin $2500 since I fell all the trees and sawed all the lumber. I had about $15K total (plus a worn beyond my year's body) in it when I sold it 30 years ago for $55K. It sold three more times with a price increase each time. It sold for $350K a few years ago and the people that bought it burned it down and buried the rubble and built a $650K house on the land. Made me sick as it was built to last 100 years. The beams in it were worth $250 or more each but the wealthy Californians had no time for someone to tear it down and salvage anything. It survived 6 forest fires even when other houses burned.
It's disgusting, isn't it? I had a lower-scale experience in the early 70s when my father bought some land in what was then a sparsely populated area outside of the capital of Virginia. Our address was an RFD Box number. We felled the trees, bought a 1933 International tractor (hand-crank start) to pull up the stumps, built the foundation for his mobile home, built the pump house, installed the plumbing down the well to the pump house, etc. He died of cancer before we finished, and it was sold shortly after completion. I can only imagine sawing the lumber and building a cabin like that. The house I bought outside of DC was built in the 1940s and was still in great shape when I sold it in 2010. But 600 ft² was hardly sufficient as a Great Room to those folks. It was not gonna do as an entire house. So down it came, and up went a $1M McMansion.
My first house was $120,000, I think, but I let someone take over the payments on it when I found another job that came with housing. My second - and current - house I bought for $14,500.
The first house we bought, in 1973, was a cute little Dutch Colonial and cost $17,500. Luckily, we got it with a GI mortgage and there was no money down. It was in pretty good shape, but we had to do some interior painting, because the living room, dining room and bathroom looked straight out of a French whorehouse. Red and gold flocked wallpaper (yes, even in the bathroom). We peeled and peeled and peeled. Being new at homeownership, we used cheap paint and some kind of pattern left by the wallpaper adhesive came right through the paint. We had to then paint all over again with the right paint. Last time I checked, it was listed at $254,000.
I did a search on the home I sold when I retired. I sold it for $195,000 in 1993. I paid $ 60,000 for it in 1970. It is presently for sale at $ 674,500. WOW!!
I know homes and acreages in rural areas have skyrocketed due to people fleeing cities. Investors are buying real estate as they don't trust the stability of the stock and bond markets.
We paid $ 40 000 for our house when it was new in 1978. We still live here and today the value is $ 450 000.