The average age of an owner-occupied house in California is 45 years, which is a reminder that your home was probably built relatively recently. I was an adult when my "historic" midcentury ranch was first sold (for around $50,000 including the lot). It was part of a futuristic neighborhood of 200-plus properties plopped in a farm field. Everything around me—including our city's Gold Rush-era downtown—was once a fallow field.
Sorry for being Captain Obvious, but many people seem to have forgotten that our cities, suburbs and small towns were the product of ingenuity, investment, creativity and construction. It's not a coincidence the American Dream of homeownership has slipped away—with home prices in California now topping $900,000—after years of no-growth rules, urban-growth boundaries and other limitations on development.
