“The American Dream is a concept that has been around since the founding of our nation, and at the center of it has always been the idea of homeownership. The American Dream represents a set of ideals or aspirations for success and a prosperous life that is thought to be an ethos shared by all Americans (The Credit People).”
For my husband and me, owning our own home was the achievement of a certain level of permanence and a sense of financial security and stability. It was a status symbol of entering the “middle class.” Ownership represented control over the ability to make a home what you wanted it to be, what you always dreamed it would be.
When you are renting a home, there are often limitations to the changes that you can make in a place someone else owns. Sometimes there are even restrictions on paint colors or even wallpaper, keeping you from feeling that your home is truly yours, a reflection of you and your family.
Not to mention that most people are not going to make a financial investment in major changes to a home that will only benefit the owner. If you are the owner, any investments that you make can likely be recouped when the home is sold.
Growing up in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, and in our particular families, there was a formula for success, passed down from our parents: You, grow up, get a job, get married, save your money, buy a home and have a family; in that order! If you accomplished those things, you were a success. Well, we accomplished those things, perhaps not in that exact order, but I think our families were proud of us and what we accomplished in our lives.
Personally, while I was growing up, I lived in six different houses, and they were all rental homes. My husband also lived in a rental home for most of his life, but he did live in a home owned by his mother for a few years after he was discharged from the Army and before we were married. After we were married, we lived in six rental homes in approximately nine years.
We were so tired of renting and throwing our money away every month and putting up with limitations on where and how our children could play, or how much noise they could make. We were so tired of feeling like second class citizens. Like many renters at that time and many renters since then, owning a home of our own was a dream that just seemed to be a little beyond our reach. It was frustrating, but we continued to work hard to try and save enough money to make that dream come true.
We had four children and were living in a three-bedroom two-story rental home when we finally decided we were ready to build a new home. My husband was a self-employed welder at the time and was able to gain two lucrative (by our standards) contracts that allowed us to pay cash for a piece of property and add to the down payment on a construction loan.
With a family of six to support, cost was the major factor in choosing the house that we wanted to build. We knew what we could afford each month for a mortgage payment, so we had to choose wisely. We researched and investigated several home builders, and we could not find anything within our budget.
We were just about ready to give up and purchase a mobile home to put on our property until we could save more money when we came across information on prefabricated housing that was becoming quite popular at the time. “Prefabricated houses are constructed indoors and away from the weather, which also reduces delays and subsequent costs. Prefabricated houses, like stick-built homes, do not have fixed prices so that buyers can negotiate. In general, they can expect to pay 10 to 25 percent less for prefabricated houses over stick-built construction (retro renovation).”
We were able to negotiate a house through LINCOLN HOMES, a company originally based in Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania, and sold into Pennsylvania, Ohio, and a bit of West Virginia. We were able to reduce our overall costs by sub-contracting some parts of the construction and doing some work ourselves. Our total cost for our home was $31,000 in or around 1975.
The outer walls of the home were built at the factory, delivered to our home site, and erected by a subcontractor with a crane and a small carpentry crew. We were thrilled watching our dream coming true little by little. We could hardly wait to get to our property each day to see what progress was made. We had to pinch ourselves to make sure that it was really happening. Our own home – finally! No more hearing what color we could or could not paint the walls, where our kids could or could not play or how much noise they could make. It was exhilarating!
When we moved in, the house was completed except for some interior finish work — things like window trim, baseboards, interior doors, etc. We were out of money and did not want to increase our construction loan, so we decided to do the work ourselves after we moved in. Every payday, we purchased some trim work or a door, and every weekend for about a year, we were installing something.
I laugh when I remember how after each new piece of trim work or a door was installed, we sat there and stared at it, or walked by and looked at it from every angle just thrilled to pieces each step along the way. It was like a Christmas present every weekend. Throughout the years, we continued to make improvements to our home and loved every minute of it.
My husband and I worked hard and made many sacrifices to realize the “American Dream of Home Ownership,” but it was worth it a hundred times over. We lived in that house for 25 years, and it served us well. It housed family and friends and was filled with many memories of love, laughter, happiness and good times. Little did we know at the time that we were building more than a house; we were building a lifetime of love and happiness.
References
The Credit People: https://www.thecreditpeople.com
Retro renovation: https://retrorenovation.com/2013/01/21/factory-built-houses-28-pages-of-lincoln-homes-from-1955/
