It's always been my favorite argument that, unlike paying rent, your thirty year, fixed rate mortgage could never go up. Of course, your real estate taxes go up a little every year, and so will your insurance. Ever since my dad purchased our first home, a five room starter ranch in Brockton MA in 1959 for $12,500.00, which he thought was a little high, he would justify it by stating that they can never raise the mortgage by a penny. He'd tell anyone who would listen, " I made them put that in there, that's why I didn't mind paying a little more."
Once a year, when our tax bill came in the mail he would study it, then deem that all the politicians were crooks for personally raising our taxes. He was none too happy about it when the Insurance man came to the house to explain that annual rate increase. He would get over it soon enough, but he was a child of the Great Depression, and every penny mattered.
Were he alive today, however, he would be overwhelmed by the increases in property taxes, and stunned to here of the premiums his friends in coastal areas are getting on their insurance rates. It seems as though there is an all out assault on home ownership, or is it just me being a chip off the old block?
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