By no means am I rich. But the fixer-upper house we bought a couple of years after we were married was--due to its terrible condition--and the fact that we would be able to pay the equity already paid for by the then-owner (who had had the good fortune to get a special service-man's discount when he bought it), we became "owners" of this dilapidated home, with three bedrooms and 1 bath--which we later extended to two baths, plus an office--where I am now typing this post). (My husband did all this updating on his own, he being a very capable workman with tools.)

Also, our house is located in a now-know as 'living in a high rent district' place to live. We also have a large backyard for the kids to play (when they were young)--plus a "California" orange and lemon tree, both of which I planted, and which fruit I am now able to share with my neighbors. (The newer houses elsewhere have a back yard about 1/4 the size of mine). And oh yes, a two-car detached garage with a long drive way which is separate from the house.

With this background in mind, I just received a solicitation mail which shows the price of $1,260.000 for a similar home to mine, behind my own.

Good Grief!! How can anyone afford to pay such a price for homes constructed some time after WWII? For instance, my back yard still has cloths lines on which to hang cleaned cloths--which I did, myself, for a period of time.

My neighbors (most of them), have two newer cars in which to drive around town. Fortunately, I am able to walk to a variety of stores about 2-3 blocks from where I live--besides being able to pay a gardener to cut the grass for me.

I end this post somewhat ashamed of myself for bragging so much, but after-all, inflation can be blamed for this huge increase for being able to buy a home, not me.

Therefore, homes such as mine are seldom listed for sale--including my own, as my five children will inherit it.

That's why I call dollars "American pesos".

You and I live at opposite ends of the same valley, and like most valleyites, I have been intensely interested in this general question for many years.

The house I grew up in, in Woodland Hills, began as a vacant hilltop lot (at that time, our nearest neighbor on our hill lived a generous block downhill from us).

I was either three or four years old at that time, and my parents were able to purchase both the lot our house was built on, plus the construction materials for the house (my Dad did most of the construction work himself, with a whole LOT of work from my Mom!), using the GI Bill, for the sum of $6,000. (This is not a typo: the sum necessary to purchase both the lot and the building materials was six thousand dollars, and this was done in around 1946.)

I just Googled our address (no one in my family lives there anymore), and the estimated cost today of our house is $1,627,668 (they say three bedrooms; it was two bedrooms when I was growing up there, but I think the last owners constructed another bedroom in the space over the garage), for 2,501 square feet of housing (includes two floors plus a semi-underground basement).

Inflation is definitely a part of the value of Valley property rising so radically, but I also think two other factors are extremely important: the Valley used to be mostly agricultural land (orange groves, grazing land for cattle and horses, etc.), and today there is very little "empty space" left, PLUS: all those kids who were born right around the time I was born eventually married and had kids, who then married and had kids, and there is (often) a very strong preference among those particular kids and grandkids to live in the Valley. Forget the people moving in from wherever, just consider the numbers of Valley kids who have now grown up, and you've got very strongly rising costs in the local housing market.

I love this Valley. I am very deeply a Valley girl in every single atom in my body.

It just (now) costs a whole heck of a lot more than it used to to live here!

When I bought my little fixer, it was the third cheapest house in the city.

Now, with all my investment and sweat equity, I'm proud to report it's the Number #1 cheapest house in the city !!

:)

Kathleen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When I bought my little fixer, it was the third
> cheapest house in the city.
>
> Now, with all my investment and sweat equity, I'm
> proud to report it's the Number #1 cheapest house
> in the city !!
>
> :)


:D

Congrats for all your hard work!!

That happened to a friend of mine. She and her husband bought their older home for about $85K back in the 1980s, fixed it up, added a couple of bedrooms and a bath, and it's now worth about $1.2m. The area that they live in has always been nice, but it exploded with the arrival of tech jobs among other things. I couldn't afford to move back there if I wanted to.

I like my own area because it's very nice, but still relatively affordable. I have zero interest in bringing lots of high-tech jobs here. I like that people with average jobs can afford to buy locally.

We bought our San Diego home 25 years ago for $180K as a fixer, and recently sold it for $1.25 mil, just an average 40 year old tract home but extremely well maintained and updated. The neighborhood was becoming full of invisible tech workers who left early and returned late, never interacting at all with the neighbors. The taxes and cost of living there was unsustainable for my retirement, we sold two properties there and moved to the Boise area, one of the reasons I am reading here again, we have tons of LDS, they are everywhere! I wanted to be ready if approached by any of them. :-)

Even if I wanted to go back, which I don't, there is no way I could afford to live there and have a decent life.

On the plus side, California is returning to its Bohemian roots with all of the urban campers. Now if all the party poopers would stop clearing Venice Beach.