Summer of 2001 me and my grandparents visited relatives in the US. Our stay first took us to Virginia for a week, before we were driven half way across the continent to the bustling small town of Newton, IA.
Over the years ive thought about going back, but not got around to it. But i figured id look the place up recently. Googling Newton, IA i got a rundown on the place. The Maytag factory, lifeblood of the community, shut down in the 00s as they moved to mexico or some other shithole. This left the people of Newton to face the recession already reeling. According to a reddit post Newton is known for being a place with nothing to do, except smoke weed and/or cook meth.
So how is the place doing now, must be a good place to score a cheap home being both a small town and not in the best economy
Looking up the house i stayed at in 01 on Zillow, its not currently on the market. Last listed in 2012 at 139k. It has over the last 5 years gone from a estimated 150k to now pushing 240k.
And its the same for every current listing in Newton, IA in the same price range.
This one was estimated at 100k five years ago, just sold for 239k https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/407-W-8th-St-S-Newton-IA-50208/86981175_zpid/
Estimated at115k in 2020, sold for 215k https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1015-W-3rd-St-S-Newton-IA-50208/86982395_zpid/
Sold for 75k in 2022, then 250k in 2024. Hell of a house flip it looks like. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/706-1st-Ave-W-Newton-IA-50208/86981045_zpid/
Im glad im not looking for a house in Newton, Iowa.
It isn't as bad as you say it is.
I see plenty of sold houses at less than $200k, and when I flip zillow to "for sale" I see smaller 2 bd 1 bath homes for sale at less than $150k. This is affordable on a $4k a month job.
This is not expensive. Look up my zip code, 98337, and take a gander at what expensive looks like.
Many of us say we wish for the single income factory worker to afford a home with a stay at home mom with the kids, like it is 1950 again, but you need to sit down and actually think about what that looked like, back then. Small 3 bd 1 bath house of about 1200 square feet, 1 car, 1 TV, no cell phone, cable, or internet, 1 landline telephone, kids got around on foot or on a bike. Parents didn't drive the kids to school, they walked, biked, or took a bus. AC in the house was a luxury. No one flew anywhere, it was the bus or the train. Eating out was a once a week treat, not an every day thing.
The middle class then lived a modest life, without many of the luxuries we take for granted now. Because of that, they lived a cheaper life, with far fewer bills.
Counterpoint, technological advances have made pricing almost negligible for most of those amenities. Internet is the same thing as TV now and you get it for less than a cable package. Cell phones? Bums have cell phones. TVs are cheap enough to give away. Meanwhile, in the 50s, people were shelling out $$$ for giant stereo cabinets.
Airlines are cheap enough to compare to busing, especially considering the opportunity cost of time. Speaking of busing, most kids still ride the bus where I live.
The modern budget killer is definitely eating out. It's an insane amount of money that the vast majority of people have no real need to spend. $5 a meal plus a few hours of time a week vs. $20-25 a meal.
I've seen people try to argue this, but I remember the house my Grandma/Grandpa had, and the houses my Great-Aunt/Uncles had back in the Appalachian hollas.
I'd take one of those houses in a goddamn heartbeat. But they don't make them anymore. I know. I've checked. If I could grab one of those, I'd either have to get stupidly lucky and move it to where I want, or build one myself.
I guess I'm going to have to build one myself.
Those kind of homes won't meet code in any urban area, or are grandfathered in, which his why you don't see their like in any urban area anywhere. You see them out in the sticks pretty much everywhere across the country, though, for the same reason: lack of building codes.
I tend to agree. I found a mortgage calculator online that seems to have a good estimate and it's looking like 150k with an 8,000 down-payment, 6.5% APY, will come to under $1,400 a month: https://www.mortgagecalculator.org/?q=Ap4SZ-3KX
(Also, the middle class then still got to have the benefit that the mean house was between 1-3 years of the mean income, it's much worse now).
I've often tried thinking about how to help people into homes, even with crummy jobs and incomes like, 35k a year.
It's doable, but it's only do-able through using homes as an investment, very careful spending habits, great saving habits, and swapping out a large cash savings with the use of a debt vehicle itself.
See, lenders care about using mortgages to create passive income. They want to keep you paying, and no one expects you to stay in the same home for 30 years. If you not only take care of your starter home, but take efforts to improve it, sell it, then add that cash to your loan product; the lender will refinance the mortgage you have on that starter home into a new one. You can keep this process going so that you can reliably live in a much more expensive house than you would think your 35k a year could afford, but you have to be very diligent.
Looking at people's credit scores... most are never that diligent.