According to Zillow, the average home in the United States is valued at $359k as of November 2025. Just five years ago, in December 2020, the average home value was $268k. Seeing how much home prices can change in just a few years is stunning, and it’s even wilder looking back a decade or more.
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Recently, older adults on Reddit revealed how much they paid for their first homes, and I found it too fascinating not to share. Here are some of the most eye-opening responses:
1. “We paid $77k in 1980 in NYC. We are blessed and privileged.”
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2. “We paid $465k back in 2002. Put a fuck ton of money into it over the years and sold it for $450K in 2015.”
3. “I paid $85,000 in 1997 for a house with six bedrooms, four bathrooms, and 4,240 square feet. These days, it’s valued at more than $400,000. I’d have kept it, but it was in a shitty neighborhood, and it’s still in a shitty neighborhood. It wasn’t uncommon to hear gunshots at any hour, and I’m certain that sad reality hasn’t changed.”
“It was a good deal at the time, because the house also had three apartments. If I kept them all leased (easy to do), the combined rent would pay my monthly mortgage. Still, those gunshots, and some of the creepy people who had to be thrown out a time or two, made it just not worth the hassle of living there. Where? San Antonio. You couldn’t pay me enough to live in Texas again, or even visit that state.”
4. “I paid $14,500 in 1969, shortly after graduating from college.”
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5. “I paid $17,500 in 1980, owner-financed with $1,500 down. Payment was $137 per month. It was barely habitable when we closed, but charming after hundreds of manhours of work.”
6. “I paid $50,000 for my house in 1985. My dad had to invest some money he got when selling the house I grew up in. I stupidly sold it after my parents died for $157,000, and now it’s worth about $450,000. Lived there for 30 years. I miss it so much.”
7. “I paid $122k in 1983 in a very high-cost-of-living area. It was a former rental and a fixer-upper. Sold it in 1997 for $340k. According to Zillow, it’s been expanded from 1,000 square feet to 1,300 square feet and is now valued at $2.1M.”
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8. “We bought our first house in the 1980s in a safe but unfashionable area of San Francisco. It was built in 1941 and was a modest two-bedroom house, also a fixer by modern standards. It was mostly one story with an additional funky home-built room in the garage. It had all the original wiring, plumbing, and exterior paint. We immediately put at least $20k into upgrading the 1941 knob and tube wiring up to code, and other essential repairs. We also did a lot of work on it ourselves. The house itself cost $235,000, and we had an interest rate in the double digits.”
“When we sold the house in 2016, it *looked like* we made a huge profit. Actually, an inflation calculator revealed that most of that was just inflation. Most of the rest of it was fixing up the house for sale. We had a minor dry rot problem on a balcony in front of the house that was fixed under permit. Inspectors insisted we uncover more and more of the house. We ended up having to do an entire (expensive) restucco job in front. Most of the rest of the ‘profit’ went into capital gains tax, a local transfer tax, the real estate agent’s fee, and various other fees.
We lived there for 35 years. We spent about 20 of those years trying to move to a larger house, but every time, it turned out local price rises had outstripped our savings. We were able to upsize for retirement by moving to an area with a lower cost of housing.”
9. “I paid $70k in 1990 for a roomy, well-built one-bedroom condo. Still there, still love it.”
10. “I paid $80,000 in 2022. It’s a mobile home in a 55+ park. I rented for 30 years, and I ended up having two weeks to move out of my last rental due to major water damage and mold. I decided I never wanted to have to move again. Was it my dream to live in a mobile home? No. But it’s what I could afford, and it’s not that bad at all.”
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11. “In 1979, I bought an old mansion that had a renter upstairs. Paid $32k and 11% mortgage. I was making $15k. Sold my 1974 Toyota Celica for part of the down payment. The day after closing, I walked into a Chevy dealer and bought a used Chevelle for $2,800 on the money my father-in-law lent me for the down payment.”
12. “$100k in 1982. It was a total dump of a little fixer-upper, and I never really fixed it up very much despite it being something of a money pit. I lived in it happily for 30 years, and it had appreciated by the time I sold it, but it was not a great investment financially. I would have been better off in the stock market.”
“It had its good points, and I did enjoy being able to put down roots, but it wasn’t anything anybody should feel envious about. If you want to live in a rundown 1,000 square foot 80-year-old house with no parking and one original bathroom and decades of shoddy DIY to undo, you can probably find one.”
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13. “I paid $89,000 in 1993, but I was only making $28,000 a year. It was a 1-bed 1-bath condo.”
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14. “I paid $335k in 2009, just north of Los Angeles, with downpayment assistance from my wife’s parents (we put down 20% and her parents covered 2/3 of it. Yes, we know how incredibly fortunate we were and are).”
15. “I paid $105,000 in 2003 for a 1400 square foot bungalow in an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland. As a point of reference, that same house is ‘worth’ $154k on Zillow right now. I took a significant loss when I sold it for $71K roughly seven years later, when home values were down after the mortgage crisis. (Zillow value was $78K). My then-fiance sold her $80K condo around the time, and pretty much broke even.”
“It was a tough pill to swallow, but it worked out in the end because we bought a 3,300 square foot house in an outer-ring suburb in 2010 for $320k (they were asking $340k), and it is worth double that now.
I’m 51, and my wife is 48 now, and we have two teenagers.”
16. “I paid $27k in 1977. My parents paid $11k for their first home, and that was high for 1949.”
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17. “In 1981, I bought a brand new two-bedroom, 1.5-bathroom, 850-square-foot condo for $39,900 in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. I sold it in 1995 for $49,000. According to Zillow, it is worth about $200k today.”
18. “I paid $12,500 in 1974. That was about the cost of four Toyota Corollas.”
19. “I paid $26,000 in 1978 for a house with three bedrooms and one bath, 1,000 square feet in a not great neighborhood. Sold it for $45,000 in 1982.”
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20. “I paid $142k for a new 1,600 square foot, three-bedroom, two-bath house in Suisun, California (an hour northeast of San Francisco) in 1991. I was 38 years old, and the price was about three times my annual salary at the time.
21. “I paid $185k in 2000. Put a lot of money and work into it. Sold for $520k in 2016. This was in Portland, Oregon.”
22. “I paid $140k in 1996. Just put it on the market for $400k. My parents bought their home in 1958 for $9,000 and had a mortgage for $87.50/ month. It would probably sell for $500k today.”
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