I've seen this said before elsewhere like it's an own.
I've been in those houses. I like those houses. If you presented me with that house, with what it was paid for at the time of it's construction, my response would be 'Hell the fuck yeah, let's fucking go'. My goal is to build a house like that, actually - arguably smaller, likely.
Problem: You can't GET houses like this anymore. Trailer houses are a fucking scam, 'tiny homes' are even WORSE, and if you want anything 'cheap' you have to jump through so many goddamn hoops for a house that's actually WORSE than those houses, and they need to be built in areas with very lax zoning restrictions, meaning you're probably looking at an hour commute to any functioning job to pay for said house.
Boomers try to argue that 'Well, you're just lazy and not working hard enough', but anyone who starts digging into the issue to work out a solution quickly comes to the realization that, no, everything has gone to shit and things really were better back then.
My first house was one of those ~1200 sq. ft houses built in massive quantities in the 1960s as Boomer starter homes. It was barely affordable to me as a young engineer when I bought it in the late '00s after the bubble burst. Now it's worth about triple what I paid for it and would have been completely out of reach if I were starting all over today.
I think about that whenever someone tries to tell me "well houses are bigger now than they were in the 60s". That's true, but that doesn't explain why a house literally built in the 60s costs as much as it does.
New tract homes, built by a builder? No. Built yourself, semi-custom, on land you own? Yep. Bought from existing homes from the plentiful supply of such houses in the midwest?
Definitely.
If you can find work in such places (important caveat, I know), you should go there.
However, when you start digging down into what you have to do to get there, you start running into roadblocks. Put aside zoning restrictions and building requirements(again, dependent on where you're located at) - have you tried buying land as of late? Undeveloped land? With nothing on it?
That entire experience was eye-opening for me, and yet another example of 'Oh, THIS is why we're fucked.'
I've seen this said before elsewhere like it's an own.
I've been in those houses. I like those houses. If you presented me with that house, with what it was paid for at the time of it's construction, my response would be 'Hell the fuck yeah, let's fucking go'. My goal is to build a house like that, actually - arguably smaller, likely.
Problem: You can't GET houses like this anymore. Trailer houses are a fucking scam, 'tiny homes' are even WORSE, and if you want anything 'cheap' you have to jump through so many goddamn hoops for a house that's actually WORSE than those houses, and they need to be built in areas with very lax zoning restrictions, meaning you're probably looking at an hour commute to any functioning job to pay for said house.
Boomers try to argue that 'Well, you're just lazy and not working hard enough', but anyone who starts digging into the issue to work out a solution quickly comes to the realization that, no, everything has gone to shit and things really were better back then.
My first house was one of those ~1200 sq. ft houses built in massive quantities in the 1960s as Boomer starter homes. It was barely affordable to me as a young engineer when I bought it in the late '00s after the bubble burst. Now it's worth about triple what I paid for it and would have been completely out of reach if I were starting all over today.
I think about that whenever someone tries to tell me "well houses are bigger now than they were in the 60s". That's true, but that doesn't explain why a house literally built in the 60s costs as much as it does.
New tract homes, built by a builder? No. Built yourself, semi-custom, on land you own? Yep. Bought from existing homes from the plentiful supply of such houses in the midwest?
Definitely.
If you can find work in such places (important caveat, I know), you should go there.
Yup. That's the dream, right there.
However, when you start digging down into what you have to do to get there, you start running into roadblocks. Put aside zoning restrictions and building requirements(again, dependent on where you're located at) - have you tried buying land as of late? Undeveloped land? With nothing on it?
That entire experience was eye-opening for me, and yet another example of 'Oh, THIS is why we're fucked.'