Here at Burbed.com, we want our readers to be educated. Thanks to Burbed reader Robert for sharing this information
$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!
3 Beds 1070 Sq.Ft. Aprx. 1 Car Garage MLS#: 768984
