Ugh, housing...

[Marilyn]

Originally Posted by Janet

I am so thankful that we build our house 31 years ago. I honestly don't know if we could afford the newer homes. Prices have gone through the roof, I think. To give you all a better idea...when we married in 1974 we bought a two bedroom house trailer on an acre of land with a two car garage for $8500. Yes...you read that right....$8500.

In 1977 we moved our trailer to the side yard and built our 2 bedroom house. We have a mudroom, two bedrooms, kitchen, living room and family room and built it all for $23,000. About 10 years ago, we built on another bedroom and bathroom. Guess we were very lucky, compared to what newlyweds are up against now...huh?

Janet, your story sounds a bit like ours. We lived in apartments when we first married then bought a brand new 2 bedroom trailer for just over $5,000 and parked it in the middle of my parents pasture. That would have been around 1975. We had an old calf pen for a back yard, and the water supply to a cattle trough was diverted for our water supply. We had a simple septic tank and a propane tank, and we lived very economically. We ate from my parent's garden and they would butcher a calf and split it with us. Our trailer payment was $58 per month. We lived there for about three years. Hubby worked construction as a cement finisher while I went to college and we used all our money extra money to build a house. It took us almost three years to build our first home. We bought 3 acres for $7,000, and paid as we went, didn't borrow a penny. $45,000 and three years we had a three bedroom 1-1/2 bath home that we sold a few years later for $95,000. Oh and when we sold the trailer, they had gone up in price, so we sold it for just about what we had paid for it.

Those were the days....

We skrimped, but honestly it was the best thing we ever did to get us started.

[Janet]

Same here Marilyn...money was tight, but we skrimped and saved. My husband, myself and my husbands uncle built our house. It took the three of us a little over 7 weeks to get it done. I think our first payment was $110 a month and I think together we made around $10,000 that year. Can you imagine living on $10,000 a year?...LOL ...thank goodness we both kept getting better, higher paying jobs.

[DianaB]

Both of you sound a lot like us when we first got married. First we rented a small 2 bedroom house from my parents but decided that the $60 rent could go towards something of our own. We bought a trailer house for $6,000 (we sold it for $5,700!!!)and set it on some land that my husband's parents owned (we started buying it from them sometime around this same time). After 3 1/2 years we rented some ground that had a house that came with it. It wasn't much but over the years we fixed it up and it wasn't too bad. We planned on living there for a few years and then building but we had a really bad year that set us back financially for a long time. We ended up living there for 19 years before we finally built our home in 1999 which was a really good thing. The flood last year would have ruined everything! It was over my head in the old house (we were able to buy the old house and ground a few years after we had moved out of it.) We had a couple of guys come and build our house. My husband doesn't like working with wood. It's not the fanciest but it's mine!!!!