From Fort Wayne to Rochester to Salt Lake City, the prices of typical homes across most of the country's vast middle have risen just ahead of inflation - and more slowly than incomes. The increases have created nest eggs for longtime owners and allowed them to borrow billions of dollars against their equity, financing new kitchens and college educations and keeping the current economic malaise from being far worse than it might have been.īut while the boom has become the subject of daily conversations among the middle class and affluent in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, people in much of the country have little housing bounty to tap for home improvements, retirement or other needs. Homes in the areas that were already the most expensive - California and the Boston-to-Washington corridor - have often doubled or tripled in value, even after adjusting for inflation. Over the last 20 years, however, the nation's housing market has been cleaved in two, and the break has helped create two very different economies in one country. At the time, some homes in the nation's most desirable suburbs, like Brookline, Mass. On a tree-filled boulevard known as Doctors' Row, the four- and five-bedroom brick Tudor homes that are the jewels of this city's housing stock were selling for about $150,000 two decades ago.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |