The value of my house has tripled in the past few years.
I’m not happy about it.
I have a daughter who is building a new house. I have another daughter looking forward to buying her first house.
Our first house was $40,000. It was 1990. The house was in Spanish Fork, Utah. It was 1100 square feet. Since it was just my lively wife, me and our young daughter, that was plenty of room. I remember thinking as we signed page after page after page of documents that buying a $50,000 car would have taken less paperwork. And it’s not like they had to worry about someone driving off with the house.
When we left Utah and moved to Washington we bought a slightly bigger house. We had two kids and my brother-in-law and his family were staying with us. Not the first time we had family using our spare rooms.
Our house in Maple Valley, Washington cost $119,000. We, as we always do, made some improvements. We sold the house a few years later for $129,000.
We back to Utah after that. On a visit to Washington a few years later, we noticed our old house was again for sale. The price? $300,000.
We bought our current house in 2012. It was a different real estate market back then. Our house had an unfinished basement. As an incentive to purchase, the seller offered us $10,000 cash at closing to finish the basement. It’s how we ended up with 9 bedrooms in our 3800 square foot house.
My daughter who is building a house has been looking for a lot for some time. When they made an offer on the first lot, they offered $50,000 over the asking price. They barely beat out another couple who had offered tens of thousands over asking. The cost to bring utilities to the lot was $250,000, so they passed.
The second lot they again offered above asking price.
As they put their house on the market one offer came as as “$10,000 above the appraisal amount.” The current market is crazy.
Last year, developers built new houses one block from my house. The new ones were all custom homes that sold for $600,000 to $800,000. That’s three times what I paid for my house. This is great news for me, right?
Not really. My property taxes will go up. But, I could sell my house and triple my investment. That’s a good thing.
Well, not really. First off, I’d have to go buy a new house, like the one I own now.
Second, and most importantly, rising house values are only good if I want to sell. And I don’t ever intend to move.
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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