The good old days, I think.

I already said it was 7 feet wide...
When you wrote 7.6 inches, I took that as 7.6 inches only, which would be about 7 and 5/8 inches. We don’t write it the same here as you do over there.
 

There's quite a mix , Pinks.. today with the young finding it difficult to get on the housing ladder, many more younger couples are choosing to live on them permanently.. whereas before they tended to be middle aged and older.. ( more money)... they're not cheap to buy and the morring charges can be quite steep, but it's still cheaper than a home in the more expensive areas like here in London for example.

Ours was my husbands' home for 10 years before we got married.. he had it built to his own specifications and lived on it with his dog , and the odd girlfriend or 2 ..

ETA..yes we do use the boat...we don't go out on it anywhere nearly as often as we used to, we tend to entertain friends to dinner on it more often than actually go up river on it.. in fact we were just saying today that we need to go down and get it ready for the winter and close it all up, and next spring we'll take it out up river for a week with a view then to selling afterwards..
I could see it as an attractive alternative to purchasing a house .. especially for young couples. Real estate here is sky-high - just under a million for a house in the city and outskirts.

It sounds a charming way to entertain friends. You've got the best of both worlds :)
 

I could see it as an attractive alternative to purchasing a house .. especially for young couples. Real estate here is sky-high - just under a million for a house in the city and outskirts.

It sounds a charming way to entertain friends. You've got the best of both worlds :)
yes it's those kind of prices here for a 1/2 decent home in the city... and here in the area where I live they range up to anything around £3 million... averaging around a million and a half..

We've also got our home abroad too... we're fortunate in that way.. but then we worked very hard for them all..
 
yes it's those kind of prices here for a 1/2 decent home in the city... and here in the area where I live they range up to anything around £3 million... averaging around a million and a half..

We've also got our home abroad too... we're fortunate in that way.. but then we worked very hard for them all..
In our day, the goal of owning a home wasn't that easy, yet reachable. It's becoming out of reach for many young couples now. Maybe that's why so many are not having children.
 
My wife had a cousin that lived in a mobile home. When we visited, I was almost claustrophobic. Those things are not made for big people and at 6 ft. 2 ins. it was tight for me to move around in. But, I thought it was pretty cool because your family isn’t spread out all over the house.

Boy, does that bring back memories when a huge trooper came to our trailer to collect license plates I forgot to turn in. I don’t think they do that anymore. Anyway, he could hardly fit though the door. He wasn’t fat, just big.
 
Boy, does that bring back memories when a huge trooper came to our trailer to collect license plates I forgot to turn in. I don’t think they do that anymore. Anyway, he could hardly fit though the door. He wasn’t fat, just big.
When I worked out of the Erie barracks, we had a Trooper that was 6’8”. He couldn’t sit in his vehicle with his hat on, but then again, not many of us wore our hats while driving.
 
My daughter is not having children, either. In fact, the only couple who have a big house, can't conceive, and are now beyond it age-wise. The others are all in condos.
My daughter had a 3 bed house before she moved to Spain..it was expensive at the time but she could afford it, she's been in Spain over 10 years now, and owns 2 houses , a business and 5 acres of land which costs a third of the price her old house here is valued at now. She wants to return to the UK if she can sell her business and home.. but she realises that she will have very little option but to have to settle for an apartment here and not be able to afford a house.. It's very sad..
 
In our day, the goal of owning a home wasn't that easy, yet reachable. It's becoming out of reach for many young couples now. Maybe that's why so many are not having children.
I think buying a home today is much easier than when we were buying our first home. Many banks offer a first-time buyer incentive with only 3% down. Interest rates right now are pretty low also, right around 2-3%. Of course, if anyone can afford it, it’s best to put 20% down to avoid paying the monthly PMI, which can add a considerable amount to the payment.
 
My daughter had a 3 bed house before she moved to Spain..it was expensive at the time but she could afford it, she's been in Spain over 10 years now, and owns 2 houses , a business and 5 acres of land which costs a third of the price her old house here is valued at now. She wants to return to the UK if she can sell her business and home.. but she realises that she will have very little option but to have to settle for an apartment here and not be able to afford a house.. It's very sad..
It is sad. People work so hard to save, and it isn't enough to put a decent roof over their heads. Even condos are a luxury to purchase.
 
My daughter had a 3 bed house before she moved to Spain..it was expensive at the time but she could afford it, she's been in Spain over 10 years now, and owns 2 houses , a business and 5 acres of land which costs a third of the price her old house here is valued at now. She wants to return to the UK if she can sell her business and home.. but she realises that she will have very little option but to have to settle for an apartment here and not be able to afford a house.. It's very sad..
How much is an average house like; 2800 square feet, 3/3/2?
 
I think buying a home today is much easier than when we were buying our first home. Many banks offer a first-time buyer incentive with only 3% down. Interest rates right now are pretty low also, right around 2-3%. Of course, if anyone can afford it, it’s best to put 20% down to avoid paying the monthly PMI, which can add a considerable amount to the payment.
That's how much (20%) we put down on our first house. We stuck to a tight budget back then.
 
We don't tend to sell housing based on square footage here.. but the housing here is quite small given that we're a vastly overcrowded Island, and also housing in built up areas tend to be terraced which are even smaller.. but looking at the sales for the ''average'' 3 bed 2 bath house which my daughter owned and in the town she was in ( around 10 miles from here) , which was quite spacious in British terms for that type of detached home in a small avenue.. I discover that it was 1800 square metres!!
 
Housing is still relatively inexpensive where I live but it varies wildly from zip code to zip code and school district to school district. According to Zillow, the median home value in my zip code is $99,968. Home values have gone up 8.1% over the past year and Zillow predicts they will fall -0.5% within the next year. The median list price per square foot is $73, which is higher than the area average of $56. The condition of the homes also varies wildly but it's still possible to find a snug little mid-century ranch or cape in that median price range.

https://www.zillow.com/home-values/

With some exceptions, I believe that if owning a home is a priority most young people can still stretch to buy a home and grow into it over time just like most of us did.

I live not far from a planned community that kicked off in 1956 with eight different models among its 1,200 homes, ranging in price from $11,000 to $25,000. The young families that stretched to buy them are now well into retirement and selling them as starter homes for young families at prices of around $175,000.00.
 
I remember buying our first house, a cute little cottage about 950 sq. ft. Two bedrooms, one bath. We thought we were in heaven. It cost $17,000 and we put $0 down because we had a GI mortgage. The total monthly mortgage payment was only $161 but that was still a strain because we had only been paying $140 a month rent for an apartment with all utilities paid.

I was the only wage earner as my husband was in school working on his doctorate. I don't know how we got a mortgage because back then they discounted the wife's salary (y'know......they were afraid we were going to slip on an icy sidewalk and get pregnant or something.....)
 
not to be nosy, but what do boat people do about bathing, washing up. Toilets etc?
We have a toilet and shower on the boat !!

This is typical of the longer boats like ours...

narrowboat-showers-02.jpg


smaller ones tend to have something more like this...
merlot-4.jpg


Everything is very compact! If you google toilet and shower systems on a narrowboat you'll get all you need to know :D
 
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It's true. The collective "we" of my generation usually started out in tiny two bedroom, one bath houses because that's all we could afford. It wasn't the end of the world if two (or even three) kids shared a bedroom (heck, there were seven females and one male sharing a single bathroom in the house I grew up in). We lived through it. We paid down the mortgages and then traded up to a three bedroom, two bath. Sometimes, we ended there or moved up to a larger house with a pool when we could afford it.

Most of the kids today wouldn't consider starting out in a "starter house". It has to have the four bedrooms, three baths, three-car garage and the pool right away.
You've summed it up so well, Jujube.

My parents first home purchased in the 60's, was a tiny single bedroom home, and even then, a stretch for my parents as far as affordability went, but we lived there for several years before moving across town and into a more average-sized home with three bedrooms (still only one bath), though still a small home by 1970's standards, but over the course of the next few years my folks had an addition put on, and they developed the basement, which was a blessing with all of us kids.

For years, bunk-beds and baby cribs were in completion with one another in my childhood home, and even with a single bathroom, somehow we all managed to make it, though not without it's challenges.

LOL! I remember how when we'd want to take a bath, we'd give a holler to everyone... "anyone need to use the bathroom, because I'm going to take a bath".
 
Close friends of mine sold their house and actually lived on their yacht on Rhode Island! It was a smaller one but it suited well. They would store it for the winter and drive down to their trailer home in Florida until spring.

I was surprised that the Yacht Club fees were cheaper than their mortgage! The restaurant, bar and laundromat were all really inexpensive for members and they had planned social events.

One weekend when I was there, they all had a party. The boats were all decorated in special ways with lights, props, you name it. People strolled the piers and ate snacks and appys set out on tables at each boat, cocktails or beers, too. Some of the really big boats were open to go onboard and take a look around. Yikes.
 


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