We must be. I still can’t help thinking that a house should cost somewhere in the neighborhood of the $86K my parents paid for a 1300 square foot tract home 20 miles east of San Diego in 1980. Or at most the quarter-million my movie-director brother paid for his Hollywood Hills pad in 1985.
So when I bought my 1680-square-foot 1909 Craftsman 3-bedroom in early 2006, right around the top of the market, I really felt like Mister Big-Shot. The damn thing cost $680K, fully $140K more than the previous owners had paid for it a year and a half previously. Oof.
So these pictures kinda hurt. I live fairly modestly; our cars are 9, 12, and 46 years old, all our kitchen appliances need to be replaced, and the kids go to public school. But if we sold our current house and bought something of similar size and condition in, say, Laredo TX, I could get this joint right here and have well over a cool half-million ca$h money left over to spend on Twinkies and root beer, or I could just buy what appears to be the governor’s mansion and still have money left over for a used Honda.
