Its been a long life, and you gotta live somewhere, so I have always tried to own my houses. My first house cost me about $79,000 USD and was located in Boca Raton Florida. I bought it around 1982 and it sold almost 20 years later for about $85,000, not much appreciation, but thats what happens when IBM moves out of your town. My next house was in Hollywood Florida, and the last house I owned was also in Hollywood Florida. The second one was less than 1 mile from the Atlantic ocean, and was located on a canal. Both of these houses have sold for less than $130,000 recently, just to show you how cheap it is to live in south Florida. I now own a house in Bellevue Washington, right across the street from Microsoft headquarters. This house is nice but it cost a quarter of a million dollars. Talk about being a slave to your possessions !
This is the living room of the house in Hollywood on Van Buren street, just inside from the pool. Note I still had my piano then.
This is the living room of my next house in Hollywood Florida right by the beach. The wood beams gave it a nice touch but it was tiny (about 1400 sq ft)
This is the backyard of the beach house. See how colorful it is in south Florida. I used to fish in my backyard next to the plantain tree.
Here is my current neighborhood (the hood) in Bellevue Washington. As you can see, it is always wet up here.
This is the front of my house. It is actually kind of ugly from the outside, but ...
Here is a shot of my deck out in the back yard. I have a great yard, very colorful, some 100 year old trees,
And whats really neat is the sky light (a roof window). This house is beautiful inside. Very comfortable. I will never sell this one.
This is a better view of some of my backyard. It is taken from the deck. Washington is such a colorful state (the emerald city).