What size house (or apartment) did you grow up in?

[True Dough]

This duplex was considered a "huge" home in the late 1960s:




Back then, a new single-family home was a modest 1,600 square feet and cost just $31,500 (or $223,000 adjusted for inflation). In 2018, the average new construction single-family home spanned more than 2,600 square feet and sold for nearly $378,000.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/home-and-garden/this-was-considered-a-%E2%80%9Chuge-house%E2%80%9D-50-years-ago/ss-BBUxZVA?li=BBnbcA0



Of course many of us moved around. My dad was in the air force so we lived in military quarters (duplexes) and in a mobile home.

[Agschmid]

1. $139 vs $145 per Sq. Ft with the inflation adjustment.

[TexasBushwhacker]

2. Until I was 8, we lived in a 2/1 house around 900 sf

then we moved into a new 4/2 roughly double in size. 1/4 acre lot. 1965. Cost my folks $25K with a 20 year VA loan. My mother lived in it until she died 40 years later.

[Basic LA]

3. Tiny 1-bedrooms where my brother & I had the sofa bed.

But it's all relative. My new next-door neighbor is having trouble "down-sizing" to his 3300 sq.ft. house. My house, where I raised a family, is 865 sq. ft.

[AJT]

4. We lived in the suburbs of Illinois(Naperville and Barrington)

then in Edina Minnesota. My dad was the CFO of a large bank so we had large houses.

[dameatball]

5. 3 br, 1 & 1/2 bath; single car garage. Parents had it built about 1957 for approximately $15-16,000.

That was considered a moderate to large home back then for a Florida suburb.

[Demovictory9]

18. same except two car garage. 2 cars had become the norm by mid sixties

[Laffy Kat]

6. Two story, four bedroom, two and a half bath.

On three-quarters of an acre. I would describe us as a middle-to-upper-middle class. This was the suburbs of Memphis. My parents had it built for, I think, $35K.

[Shrike47]

7. 1300 square feet, 3 bed, 1 1/2 bath, tiny kitchen. My uncle built it for my parents.

[emmaverybo]

8. Small and then they did a really smart thing

We rented a long time until borrowed to get the first house, cozy, small. After I moved away, they spent dad’s retirement to get a house in the 70’s, larger with two yards, and now inflated in price beyond belief. Such a smart investment for two people never wealthy in their working lives. My mom kept the house up over the years, even when elderly. It is now my investment, which I will probably have to cash in on in my lifetime. Frankly, I would thousand times rather see them walk in the door than have this house. I’d give all they left to me to sit in the patio with them once more.

[rzemanfl]

26. Gotta wash socks. BBL. n/t

[llmart]

9. About 600-800 square feet.

I grew up in the 50's and 60's. There were nine people in my family. I don't know if I should count the unheated areas, which we used as bedrooms. My parents never owned a home. They were always renters. I lived in that house for the first 12 years of my life and then we rented a "real" house - a newer ranch with three bedrooms, one bathroom on half an acre. The rent in the first house was $60 a month and the rent in the second house, which I lived in from 13-18 was $100.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

17. Sounds cool in retrospect, huh. Miss life back then.

[happybird]

10. My father and I had a discussion about houses last year

along the lines of: "Why haven't you bought a house? When I was your age ..."

So I asked how much his first house cost (the one they lived in when I was born). $40,000, and he was only 24/25 when he bought it. It was a typical early 70's US Steel home, around 1700 sq. ft.

The current Redfin estimate on that house is $418,000- $430,000 and it looks exactly the same. Yeah, *that's* why, Dad.

I don't know how much he sold it for back in '79 or '80. I was very fortunate growing up. From age 6 onwards, we lived in 2 much larger custom homes on acreage. He bought land and built in the right area.

[MaryMagdaline]

11. 1278 square feet plus unfurnished basement

8 children 2 parents.
Newly gentrified neighborhood in hyattsville, Maryland, 7 miles from White House. Today: basement is furnished with bedrooms and bathroom.

Georgia house: 4 bedrooms, one full and 2half baths. 1760 square feet.

[Skittles]

12. LOL, I moved a dozen times growing up

but everywhere we lived was VERY SMALL.....so strange how houses got SO BIG

[csziggy]

13. The house I grew up in was about 1600 sq ft

The my parents added a Florida room that was about 300 sq ft.

They bought the house when the company town Agricola was being sold off and moved it to a lot in Bartow, Florida. Originally the plan was to live in it a couple of years and then divide it into a duplex, rent those units out and move to a newer house. That never happened, so the second kitchen was never completed and became a junk room.

Our house was the biggest in the neighborhood. Most of the other houses were tract homes, with the original farm house next to ours even smaller than the rest.

Funny thing, after all four of us daughters left home and married, my parents bought a house more than twice as large as the house we grew up in. They lived in it until they died. Now we're trying to get it emptied so we can sell it.

[Ron Obvious]

14. Just two up, two down

In a mean street in the back of town.

[Aristus]

15. I grew up in military quarters, too.

My Dad was an Army officer.

Early in his career, we lived in apartment-style dwellings. After he was promoted to Captain, we moved to single-family houses. Our house on Fort Huachuca, in Arizona, was a bare-bones shack made of cinderblocks and cooled with an ancient swamp-cooler. Its one concession to design aesthetics was a coat of pastel paint in one of three colors, pink, mint-green, and blue. Ours was pink.

On Fort Knox, we lived in a ranch-style house in the officer's housing area, Van Voorhis.

On my father's final duty station of Fort Lewis, Washington, we lived in a handsome, two-storey brick duplex. Our neighbors in the duplex became our life-long friends with whom we still stay in touch. The father of their family was a chief interrogator for the Army's Criminal Investigations Division. A half-hour chat with him would reveal the lie that torture is the only reliable way to get information from a criminal suspect. Criminals don't respond to threats of violence, or actual violence, either. This guy was the sweetest, nicest man in the world, wouldn't hurt a fly, and could get you to confess to things you'd never even done.

[Cold War Spook]

16. I was born in 1943.

Until after the war, we lived in a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment. There were my maternal grandmother, mother, father, sister, myself, 2 maternal aunts and 2 maternal uncles when they were home on leave. Later, my grandmother died and the rest of us minus our uncles moved into a 3 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment. In 1955, my parents bought a house for mother, father, sister and me. we moved into a 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom house. The rest of our family wondered why we needed 1 1/2 bathrooms when there were only 4 of us.

[sinkingfeeling]

19. House was around 2000 sq.ft. but it was on 150 acre farm.

[smirkymonkey]

20. Two-story, four-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath. About 2200 sq. feet.

Built in the 1830's. A nice, older home in an historic town. Quite a bit of land w/ a large old horse barn that was converted to a garage with tons of storage.

I prefer older homes aesthetically, but being a city person in adulthood, I have gotten used to the convenience of modern, well-managed, concierge buildings. They lack charm, but they make up for it in ease of living.

[hunter]

21. I lived in seven homes.

My parents are artists who had many children.

Our smallest home was a single wide trailer that didn't have a bathroom. You had to walk to the bathroom outside, which was no fun in the snow at night. There was hardly any room for everyone to sleep horizontally. We rotated who slept on the floor. Thankfully that didn't last long.

The biggest house we lived in had four bedrooms. We still had to share bedrooms and bathrooms and the hot water heater was too small.

The last house I lived in with my parents had three bedrooms and two baths. My grandma, my mom's mom, and her mean cat had the "master" suite and its bathroom. You didn't want to go in there. My dad's dad had the previous "boys" room. My parents slept in the previous "girls" room. Anyone else slept wherever. That could be anybody. The water heater was beyond too small, and worse, it was electric and took hours to reheat.

Two of my siblings flat out ran away from home at fifteen and sixteen. The rest of us bounced in and out. It wasn't because we weren't welcome, we were always welcome, it was just too crowded unless you wanted to camp outside.

Funny thing is my parents moved away when they retired, after my remaining grandparents had passed away, leaving my youngest sibling and his soon-to-be-wife to live there, so long as they paid the mortgage. They did that by renting out rooms, sofas, places to park trailers, whatever... and remarkably it was little changed from when my parents were living there.

It's funny to think about, but my parents never really lived "on their own" until they retired and moved away from their kids.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

22. Most of my childhood we lived in a smallish postwar-era bungalow.

It had three bedrooms (my brothers shared one of them) and a single bathroom, a living room, a dining room, a small kitchen and a one-car garage. The basement was partly finished, and we used it as a playroom. Five people shared the bathroom, which got kind of crazy in the morning with three kids trying to get ready for school and dad getting ready for work. After some years my parents added a family room and a half-bath on the first floor. It was a pretty typical middle-class house in the '50s.

I looked it up on a real estate site recently, and it's been added onto so much that it's almost unrecognizable - it must be twice its original size.

[benld74]

23. Small town upbringing, small house

kitchen, living room, 2 bedrooms, basement. Parents bought for 10K. Before that they & my older sister lived in a rented home, on a family farm around 1 mile away. I came along and additional rooms were needed. Grew up there. Dad and friends built garage next to the house. Things were pieced together over time. Garage had tar paper wall for a long time before it and the house were sided.
Dad was refinery worker. Mom school cafeteria cook. Never wanted growing up. Remember it well

[femmocrat]

24. A small Sears pre-fab bungalow (post WW2).

My dad and his brothers hand-dug the foundation and built the house from a kit. It originally had a small living room, galley kitchen, one bath and one bedroom.
My dad added on a dinette and then built a three-bedroom addition as we kids outgrew our bunkbeds in their bedroom. My dad was self-taught, but he could build anything. He was amazing.

[MuseRider]

28. Wonderful.

Thankfully it has not been bulldozed like so many for one more acre of land for the corporate farms. Those places are becoming rare and unique when they used to be commonplace. I wish they still were.

[MuseRider]

27. My parents brought me home from the hospital

to a 1500 SQ ft home in 1953. I left that home in 1971. There were 5 of us living in it. Although I live in a much larger home now and have for quite some time I do not think that house would feel cramped. More comfy actually and less work.

[Glorfindel]

30. My maternal grandfather's old farmhouse, built in 1898 (his father's house is also still standing

about a half-mile up the road). Four bedrooms, but only one bath until many years later, but there were only four of us (my parents, my grandfather, and me) so it worked out pretty well. Two story, chimney in the middle of the house, back to back fireplaces, large front porch, large back porch, several outbuildings including a big barn, garage, smokehouse, and an unused chicken house. It was a wonderful place to grow up. I live here alone now, with occasional overnight visits from relatives. Everyone who can comes here for Thanksgiving, and sometimes there are more than a hundred people.

[redstatebluegirl]

31. I grew up in the 50's and 60's in a German four square farm house my grandfather built.

My understanding is that it was built from some kind of "kit" but I don't know that for sure. There were three of these houses built on the family farm, one for us, one for my uncle and his family and a larger one for my grandparents.