23 Very Honest Confessions From Boomers And Gen X’ers About How Much They Spent On Their First Home

8.

“We bought our first house in the 1980s in a safe but unfashionable area of San Francisco. It was built in 1941 and was a modest two-bedroom house, also a fixer by modern standards. It was mostly one story with an additional funky home-built room in the garage. It had all the original wiring, plumbing, and exterior paint. We immediately put at least $20k into upgrading the 1941 knob and tube wiring up to code, and other essential repairs. We also did a lot of work on it ourselves. The house itself cost $235,000, and we had an interest rate in the double digits.”

“When we sold the house in 2016, it *looked like* we made a huge profit. Actually, an inflation calculator revealed that most of that was just inflation. Most of the rest of it was fixing up the house for sale. We had a minor dry rot problem on a balcony in front of the house that was fixed under permit. Inspectors insisted we uncover more and more of the house. We ended up having to do an entire (expensive) restucco job in front. Most of the rest of the ‘profit’ went into capital gains tax, a local transfer tax, the real estate agent’s fee, and various other fees.

We lived there for 35 years. We spent about 20 of those years trying to move to a larger house, but every time, it turned out local price rises had outstripped our savings. We were able to upsize for retirement by moving to an area with a lower cost of housing.”

—FormerUsenetUser