Lincsong
I'll Lock Up
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jamespowers said:The problem is that you would then live in Stockton and be about 45 minutes away from where you could get a decent job. Maybe things have changed there but it was fairly bucolic last time I was there.
You are really not comparing apples with apples there. You couldn't get anything like that here for the money. [huh]
You can get it on 86th Avenue in Oakland!!! What don't you understand about that? It's not written in stone any where that a person is entitled to a brand new house. Anyway, it's not the cost versus the yearly wage it's whether or not the monthly payment is no more than 25% of a person's monthly salary. Anyway compare what a $4,000 house in 1946 would have entailed..
1. Two Bedrooms and one bathroom
2. Single Car Garage
3. No Insulation, double pane windows.
4. No appliances
5. No carpeting
6. No finished yard
7. No fencing around the yard
8.800 square feet
9.No more than two electrical sockets per room.
10.No 220 volt plugs in either the kitchen or garage.
11.No circuit breakers, probably six fuses in the box
13. No grounded plugs
For $4,000 in 1946 the purchaser of said "house" basically got a roof over his head with two doors. Mobile homes aren't even built that spartan today.
So for instance if you take a $143,000 mortgage, with 20% down ($28,000) at 4.3% fixed interest,and a 30 year loan the monthly payment would be $571. A payment someone making $2000 to $2500 per month can easily afford.
Now take a $5,600 house in 1946, with 20% down ($1,000), at 2% over 25 years the monthly payment comes out to around $26 per month. Making $1 an hour is $40 a week, $160 a month.
The post-war years were also highly inflationary;
http://people.wku.edu/brian.strow/inflation.html
1946; 8.37%
1947; 14.59%
1948; 7.87%
So your dollar didn't buy that much in that time frame.