Florida housing

(Note: S = Standard cost; M = More) 

My wife and I bought our house here in Florida for $S, plus M because we have the best-looking lot in the neighborhood, with a two-acre retention pond and a 200-yard by 100-yard wooded area of old oak trees and native undergrowth and a wide concrete path winding through. behind the pond. We also paid M for a swimming pool and tiled hot tub, M for additional paving stones around the pool and another M for a lanai screen. The total, then, would be S+M+M+M+M. We will say S+4M for ease of typing.

My wife keeps track of real estate prices in our area. After a couple of years here, she one day said a national company had our property at S+4M+$50,000. That was a goodly figure. We had no intention at selling, because if you sell for an additional $50,000, that means for your profit you can buy a house just like the one you are living in, or a smaller house for your initial purchase price.

A couple of days ago, my wife said another house in the neighborhood, with the same floor plan as ours, was on the market for S+4M+$150,000. Wow. That is a lot more money.

Yesterday, my wife said the house sold for S+4M+$170,000. Double Wow. Then my wife said the owners had been offered S+4M+$230,000, but had declined the higher offer because it was a VA loan and would have taken longer to process. Triple Wow.

We saw the same sort of thing happen Texas in the 1970s, when Rust Belt immigrants flooded in. Because of higher prices Up North, the new invaders got more cash for comparable houses. They were quite willing to pay S+3 or 4 or more Ms for Texas houses. Texas has been undergoing another Up North influx for a few years now, plus a California influx. Cities and towns around all major Texas cities have seen growth of 25,000 or 30,000 or more each decade between census years 2000 and 2020.

I remember a time when a man was truly successful (in a monetary sense) if people said, “Yeah, he’s got himself a $10,000 brick home.”

Dang, I must be getting old.