Here’s an ad from 1961 for the Clayton Valley Highlands (State Streets) in Concord.
Back then, you could get a brand new home with a 7,000-square-foot lot for as low as $14,250.
When selling your house, here’s what you need to know: just for kicks—homes that were once sold for $14,250 in 1961, adjusted for inflation, would be valued at $133,320 in 2022. Yet, thanks to market appreciation, these 60-year-old homes are now fetching prices between $800,000 and $1.1M. This incredible value increase highlights the importance of understanding current market trends, making informed updates, and staging your home to appeal to today’s buyers.
ABOUT THE CLAYCORD ONLINE MUSEUM: The Claycord Online Museum is made up of historical photos, documents & anything else that has to do with the history of our area.
If you have any old photos or items that you’d like to place in the Claycord Online Museum, just scan or take a photo of them, and send them to the following address: news@claycord.com. It doesn’t matter what it is, even if it’s just an old photo of your house, a scan of an old advertisement or an artifact that you’d like us to see, send it in and we’ll put it online!
Click on the tag below titled “Claycord Online Museum” to view other items.
People are nuts, paying that much for state streets houses
Then again house near us, three bedroom built late 1950s sold for $1.1 million not long ago, then they spent another $100,000 bringing up to current code.
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Can see why people move out of state.
Son moved to Texas roughly 15 years ago.
Sold his three bedroom house in antioch and paid cash for a new five bedroom house 25 minutes outside Houston and had large chunk of change left over. Recently he and new wife bought 4 bedroom house on just over two acres again in Texas for under $400,000.
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HINT,
Buy less house than you can afford, after building up savings and maxing retirement contributions then put extra towards house loan principle each month. You’ll save yourself many thousands of dollars over life of loan. We did it and are mortgage free. Find a mortgage calculator, plug in loan info then plug in $100 extra principle payment and note number of payments vs without extra principle payment. Then for fun plug in $300 and look again at number of payments as well as total loan cost.
Tellingly, Contra Costa’s resident population has more than doubled since 1970 (~550k to 1.15M people). Yet we built around 175,000 housing units in that period. Some places like Moraga have built an appalling 8 or 9 units per year for the past 20 years. It seems we are chronically unprepared and/or unwilling to deal with the magnitude of the problem, and lack awareness of how it is a huge drag on our economy.
It’s done on purpose, property owners sit on political seats, they decide what gets built. If they allow thousands of houses, their property value goes down. It’s in owners best interest to limit housing which then artificially increases cost as supply is low and demand is high.
“Medium priced subdivision, just minutes to the Bay Area.” I guess Concord wasn’t considered to be in the Bay Area back then.
I will be selling my house in the states next year and paying cash for a home in the foothills. Can’t wait for retirement.
I hear the complaints… I agree that life in CA is too expensive. However, the sell my home here and move to Houston, TX… THEN YOU LIVE IN HOUSTON. Suffocating humidity and you spend your life exhausted by the heat or freezing inside with your your air conditioner set at 60 degrees…. There is a reason why houses in CA cost a lot.. it’s overall great to live here!
I made the move to Texas 7 years ago and you get used to the heat and humidity and live your live as you would in California, but the big plus to it is you can actually afford to live your life. Also, you do not have dictators trying to ruin your life.
It’s a shame for life-long bay area residents like my husband and I are who are ready to buy a house and have non-transferrable jobs. We’re stuck here paying monstrous home prices or take the huge risk of starting over from scratch somewhere affordable. Our parents generation bought their homes for peanuts, with peanut jobs. It’s disheartening.
I live there in the Highlands. In 3 years I punch that ticket out of Commiefornia to God’s Country in the Rocky Mountains. Leave Calif for the trust fund babies, illegals and homeless.
Bought my first home in 1977. Paid 38 thousand for a home in Pittsburg.