mr peters speaks about housing costs in a way that reminds me of when i wore polyester for corporations and couldn't even think about finding the money to buy a house in a major metro area;

This is another chapter in the Before Time series of articles (here’s the last one) written by those who experienced those times for the sake of the edification of those who are too young to have experienced them and so have no knowledge of how things were, once.

My parents bought their first house in 1969 – in Stamford, CT. It was a split level in a nice suburban neighborhood, sitting on about a half-acre of land. They paid about $33,000 for it, equivalent in today’s devalued currency to about $300,000. I decided to check what the old house would cost today.

First, though, how about what it costs to not be evicted from it, today.

According to the latest public records data I could find, the annual property tax on the old house is currently $10,530. In other words, three years of property taxes on the old house in our time amounts to as much as my parents paid for the house back in the Before Time of 1969. In inflated-equivalent currency, it would come to about $2k per year, if my parents had been obliged to pay this rent (on top of their mortgage) with 1969 money. In five years’ time, they’d have had to pay a third again in rent – which is what “property taxes’ amount to – than they paid for the house.

As in the whole thing.

But they didn’t have to pay that much because it was 1969 – the Before Time – and both the taxes on the house and the house were affordable in those times.

Neither are today..........more.....