Can't speak for the veracity, but I've got two magnets with the following:
1934
Average income = $1,601.00
Loaf of bread = $.08
Gallon of gas = $.10
Gallon of milk = $.45
New car = $625.00
New house = $5,972.00
1958
Average income = $4,650.00
Loaf of bread = $.19
Gallon of gas = $.24
Gallon of milk = $1.01
New car = $2,155.00
New house = $11,975.00
Interesting that pay tripled, staples like food and gas doubled, and the price of a car quadrupled in that time. Houses also dropped from 4x pay to 2.5x pay
Well the first one was in the depths of the Great Depression and the second one is the beginning of the post war boom. I would hope it looks better.
Home loans at that time were 10 year mortgages. Homes were so cheap that you could pay them off quickly. Of course homes now are much better made. Back then you might build it yourself or with some friends. A lot of homes from that time suck.
Not really arguing against cuz I've just got this one subjective experience, but my aunt used to live in a Sears house (bought from the catalogue) and that mf was solid as hell.
You are only seeing the one that survived. That's the definition of survivor bias.
Also, the electric system, pipes, roof, foundation, etc. wouldn't be up to code today. And "code" is the minimum level of quality that's legal. Every house built back then would be uninhabitable today, either because of safety issues or because of comfort issues.
I grew up in a decent-sized house built in the 1920s. It was two stories plus a basement and an attic in the middle of a college town, in walking distance to campus, so you can imagine it was made with quality at the time.
It had to be renovated completely before my parents bought it in the mid-70s to take out things like the coal cellar full of coal dust. When they bought it, one wall was completely off the side of the house because it had to be replaced. By the mid-80s, they had to add aluminum siding on the house because that had never been added and finally build a garage rather than park on the street. We also By the time my mother sold it in the 2000s, it had to be renovated again to get things like asbestos insulation out (hooray, I grew up with that!) and then we heard that after they sold it, the main sewage pipe, which had never been replaced, burst and flooded the entire finished basement (finished during the first refurb, but it still flooded when it rained).
I loved that house, but it was full of stuff that was not up to code, was expensive to keep up, was a pain in the ass when it came to new technology (all the phone jacks were the old four-prong kind, for example) and they just fall apart eventually.
It sucks that wooden houses aren't built to last, but they just aren't.
Can't speak for the veracity, but I've got two magnets with the following:
1934
Average income = $1,601.00
Loaf of bread = $.08
Gallon of gas = $.10
Gallon of milk = $.45
New car = $625.00
New house = $5,972.00
1958
Average income = $4,650.00
Loaf of bread = $.19
Gallon of gas = $.24
Gallon of milk = $1.01
New car = $2,155.00
New house = $11,975.00
Interesting that pay tripled, staples like food and gas doubled, and the price of a car quadrupled in that time. Houses also dropped from 4x pay to 2.5x pay
Well the first one was in the depths of the Great Depression and the second one is the beginning of the post war boom. I would hope it looks better.
Home loans at that time were 10 year mortgages. Homes were so cheap that you could pay them off quickly. Of course homes now are much better made. Back then you might build it yourself or with some friends. A lot of homes from that time suck.
Not really arguing against cuz I've just got this one subjective experience, but my aunt used to live in a Sears house (bought from the catalogue) and that mf was solid as hell.
You are only seeing the one that survived. That's the definition of survivor bias.
Also, the electric system, pipes, roof, foundation, etc. wouldn't be up to code today. And "code" is the minimum level of quality that's legal. Every house built back then would be uninhabitable today, either because of safety issues or because of comfort issues.
I grew up in a decent-sized house built in the 1920s. It was two stories plus a basement and an attic in the middle of a college town, in walking distance to campus, so you can imagine it was made with quality at the time.
It had to be renovated completely before my parents bought it in the mid-70s to take out things like the coal cellar full of coal dust. When they bought it, one wall was completely off the side of the house because it had to be replaced. By the mid-80s, they had to add aluminum siding on the house because that had never been added and finally build a garage rather than park on the street. We also By the time my mother sold it in the 2000s, it had to be renovated again to get things like asbestos insulation out (hooray, I grew up with that!) and then we heard that after they sold it, the main sewage pipe, which had never been replaced, burst and flooded the entire finished basement (finished during the first refurb, but it still flooded when it rained).
I loved that house, but it was full of stuff that was not up to code, was expensive to keep up, was a pain in the ass when it came to new technology (all the phone jacks were the old four-prong kind, for example) and they just fall apart eventually.
It sucks that wooden houses aren't built to last, but they just aren't.