CTLAWYER,
“Don’t throw at me the lifetime of a typical mortgage loan nonsense. I was clear the homes were paid off in 5-7 years.”
What I said is absolutely relevant. Around here, a “starter” property such as a 1 bed, 1 bath apartment in a suburban-located high rise, sells for around $150,000. If your kids paid you back in ~6 years, that means theoretically they managed to shell out around $25,000 per year to you. That amount is more than half of my gross income when I started my career out of grad school, and had I been paying that, I would not have been able to afford food, utilities, gas, etc. for my family. Hence I said the CTL firm must pay well, and how nice for the kids to have a job lined up for them post graduation. It’s more likely, however, that they repaid the loan to you in ~6 years by selling the house you bought for them and using the proceeds to pay you back – but you wrote that they upsized, which means they had to have considerable equity in the house in order to scrounge the down payment on the 4 bed 2.5 bath single family home. Some of this equity probably came from increased home value, but a big part of it came from the fact that you bought the property for them outright, so 100% of what they paid back to you became their equity. The reason I brought in the bank loan “nonsense” is that for us poor pitiable peons, we can’t build equity that fast because we had to get a big mortgage (and sometimes pay PMI) because daddy can’t just spring for a whole house.
“What is typical? When I bought my first house 50 years ago”
Don’t throw at me the 50 years ago nonsense. My home was built in 1959, and it’s value increased more than 16-fold between the time it was built and when I bought it from the bank as a run-down foreclosure “as is” in the nadir of the late 2000s financial crisis. Property is vastly more expensive now than it was 50 years ago even accounting for changes in dollar value and incomes, and housing costs are a significantly bigger fraction of a household budget than it used to be.
“They are not supporting their children when they have their hands out asking OTHERS to support their children.”
Remind me to use this line the next time a co-worker comes in toting girl scout cookies.
“but if he shows up in my small town shul and has a 30 minute drive to the next minyan, he isn’t using his time wisely and the cost with $4.50 gallon gas is prohibitive.”
How many “schnorrers” are you really getting prowling around your isolated CT shul interrupting your davening? And in my experience, it’s not usually the parents coming collecting for their kids’ weddings, the collectors are trying to help a yesoma, or another type of unfortunate situation.
“It is one one Mrs. CTL’s greatest joys to host a wedding”
I’m very happy to hear that she is B”H well enough to help host weddings! May both you and she have continued strength and good health.