Redwood City house prices compared to Levittown - which is more expensive
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$698 per sqft house in Redwood City that you missed [Burbed.com]
> You don’t see these junks in southern Cal, or in other states as much
> 730 sq. ft.? What were they thinking when they built them?These sorts of houses were build just post-World War 2 when there was a housing shortage for returning vets, and there were US government controls on building materials. I think there were actually restrictions on the size of houses that could be built so there would be enough material to satisfy all the pent-up demand. (Fun fact: 30% of veterans in 1946 were living in trailers or in doubled-up households.) The outlying suburbs of the Bay Area are filled with these houses. They’re always small, on small lots, and with one car garages, and always date from around 1945-1950. They’re even smaller than pre-war houses (my grandfather built his modest house in 1940 with a two car garage, even though he only had one car). By the early ’50’s, the houses were much larger and often better made.
I’d guess that California and the Bay Area have more of these houses because more vets either moved to California, or decided to stay in California, and there wasn’t as much vacant housing as there might have been in other cities.
The houses do exist elsewhere, you just need to find a city where lots of WW II vets settled. Levittown’s houses (built 1947-1951) are the equivalent of these — same era, same small sizes. I’m sure there’s a bunch of these in the San Fernando Valley, Compton, and other suburbs of LA. I’ll bet if you looked around Houston, Denver, Minneapolis, St. Louis, etc, you’d find the same sorts of houses.
Of course, those houses won’t be worth $500K.
Hm… isn’t Levittown in New York? We must check that out… after all, New York is our top competitor for Most Expensive Housing.
Let’s take a look at what you can buy in Levittown for the price of the Redwood City house above:
Holy cow! More proof that houses in the NY metro area are cheaper than the Bay Area. If only we could get the Main Street Media (MSM) to recognize this fact!
Also, observe how expensive the property tax is there - just another classic example of how New York is a tax tax tax spend spend spend kind of place, unlike California. Who cares that Levittown has amazing public schools, whereas the Redwood City house above has scary schools - don’t we all make enough to send our kids to Harker?
Just for completeness sake, let’s look at the price of a 2br/1ba in Levittown:
$299k? Egad. No wonder everyone’s leaving New York metro and moving to the Bay Area. Sheesh!
February 7th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Oh, come on — for a fair comparison, we ought to use one of the cuter post-war houses of the same style in Belmont or San Carlos. Of course, they probably cost $800K at a minimum at this point, but housing prices only go up, right?
Note those taxes — taxes of $8200 and $10000/year? The Redwood City house’s taxes would only be 1% plus some, or under $6000/year. For the more expensive house, that means another $400 or so a month in taxes, which would mean the equivalent of affording another $80K on the mortgage if you got a 30 year mortgage, and another $100K of house if you got one of those nifty interest-only loans.
And thanks to the wonders of prop 13, when you buy that beautiful house in Redwood City, you know those taxes won’t go up. When the school board on Long Island decides they want another $2K/year for the schools, your taxes go up another $2k. Hope you can afford it. The retired couple who lived next door to us couldn’t. (From what I can remember of schools in New York, the extra money tended not to make the school district better. Just like the Bay Area and Cupertino, the best schools tended to correlate with the high income areas and involved parents, not with taxes. The Bedford school district and its Wall Street types always scored better than the Yorktown Heights schools, even though Yorktown charged a bunch more in taxes. I’d make jokes about hiring the mayor’s brother to drive the snowplow, but I’d prefer to forget winter.)
I love Prop 13. I hate Prop 13. I love Prop 13. I hate Prop 13.
February 7th, 2008 at 7:24 am
And for anyone considering leaving the Bay Area, moving to Long Island, and buying that second gem:
No garage, no basement, unfinished attic. (Mmm… chipping ice off the windshield before work!) The hosue is inexpensive for the town, though. Average price in 11756 zip code is a princely $411K. Do those realtors think we’re made of money?
February 7th, 2008 at 9:30 am
>>From what I can remember of schools in New York, the extra money tended not to make the school district better.
Hm, I’ll have to follow up on that.
You have an interesting point about the school districting hiking up taxes - but you do have to remember that those things are voted on in NY, just like they are here.
Also, as for your point about parental involvement - so true. But I’m pretty sure that in Long Island, parents aren’t requested to bring a mandatory voluntary cash donation of $2000 per student like at Palo Alto High. Though I suppose Libertarians and Retired people would prefer that system.
February 7th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Those Levittown houses sound overpriced to me. As always, a house should cost 3X the median income for the area. That means $150k for the BA, and maybe $90k for Levittown.
WTF is a “mandatory voluntary cash donation” - isn’t that a bribe and extremely illegal?
February 7th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Levittown is also in NJ and PA.
February 7th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
They’re mandatory voluntary in that they’re voluntary, but everyone will frown at you if you don’t do it. Peer pressure.
Finally, I still don’t understand where you come up with a median income of $30k for the NYC Metro area, or $50k for the The Real Bay Area. Those are just ridiculous.
February 8th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Wikipedia says San Jose has a median income of $83K. That means all the ticky-tacky-houses-that-all-look-the-same have got to be worth at least… um… $249K!