When Housing Was For Everyone: How Owning Went From a Rite of Passage to a Right of the Rich

In 1955, a homebuilder called Foster Associates took out an ad in the Tampa Tribune for a new development called Manhattan Manor. Three bedroom homes starting at $10,250, with veterans able to move in for $150 down and monthly payments as low as $60. Adjusted for inflation, that is about $120,000 in today’s dollars.

Tampa was exploding with growth during that time. New neighborhoods were springing up outside the original downtown core, with part of that expansion being in South Tampa between the central business district and the bustling MacDill Air Force Base. Ten years after the end of the Second World War, many veterans who had spent time in Tampa during their service were moving back and looking to buy a home. In 1940, just 43% of Americans were homeowners. 

By 1960, over 60% of families lived in a home they owned, often funded by affordable mortgages guaranteed by the Veterans Administration. Manhattan Manor was built squarely for that moment. With MacDill two miles down the road, the $150 down payment and $60 monthly terms were aimed directly at veterans who could walk into a loan office and qualify.

My family has lived in Tampa for generations and South Tampa has always been considered one of the most desirable parts of town to live in. Bayshore Boulevard curves along Hillsborough Bay with exclusive gated communities hugging Tampa Bay. Low-income housing sits at the very edge of the airbase, an area currently under siege by the forces of gentrification. 

I once owned a home less than a mile from Manhattan Manor so when I came across the Foster Associates ad, I knew exactly what I was looking at and how impossible that price would be today. I wanted to do more than marvel at how cheap everything used to be. I wanted to put real numbers to it and understand why, even after adjusting for nearly 70 years of inflation, today’s homes cost so much more. 

The picture below is of one of Manhattan Manor’s first classified ads that was published in the Tampa Tribune: 

It includes an aerial photograph of the development with numbered markers pointing to nearby schools, churches, shopping centers and MacDill Air Force Base.

The photo below shows what a Manhattan Manor home looked like the day a buyer picked up the keys. It sat on a one-story lot and had an attached garage, curved driveway and a freshly planted yard. 

These homes were the epitome of midcentury Florida construction with their block walls, stucco and terrazzo floors. The ad boasted all-electric kitchens with every modern appliance imaginable at the time. Some of the ads listed every contractor who worked on the homes, along with their office addresses and phone numbers. Most homeowners today have no idea who laid their foundation. These buyers did.

Adjusted for inflation, a Manhattan Manor home cost about $120,000 in today’s dollars. That same house is now listed on Zillow for around $500,000. The price has more than quadrupled in real terms before factoring in homeowners insurance, which in this part of Florida has become a cost that rivals the mortgage itself.

Foster Associates documented their work thoroughly. Company photos from the era show leadership on freshly cleared lots, with newly constructed homes rising in the background. Promotional shots captured men in suits shaking hands on sandy Florida ground. All of it tells you something about who was building these homes and who was buying them. What is especially telling is who was intentionally left out of this idyllic picture. 

Given that this was 1955 in the segregated South, the VA loan program and the neighborhoods it built were, in practice, reserved for White families. The dream of homeownership at a reasonable rate was sadly not available to all Americans. That is a history worth its own examination. However, this article is concerned with exploring what that affordability looked like and what happened to it since that time. Homeownership was within reach even for those earning half of the national median income during that time. Unfortunately, only those that were White and male could probably qualify to buy one of these homes. 

The Manhattan Manor advertisement was originally aimed at veterans, which made sense with MacDill Air Force Base being two miles down the road. But, the affordability of these homes was not unique to those with access to VA loans. In 1955, a family in Tampa earning the median income had more than enough of what was needed to buy a brand-new home in a desirable neighborhood. 

A single earner with a high school diploma could qualify for a home loan and still have money left over at the end of the month. That was not some rare stroke of luck. The government set the interest rates, guaranteed the loans and backed the whole system with public money. Housing was treated as a public good, not a financial instrument to be packaged and traded for profit. That was how the housing market was designed to work.

In 2024, the median home in Tampa sold for $425,000. However, prices have not just kept pace with inflation over the past seven decades. They have nearly quadrupled in real terms. Interest rates are somewhat higher than they were in 1955, when VA-backed loans carried rates around 4.5%. In 2024, the average rate on a Tampa purchase loan was roughly 6.5%, a two percentage point increase.

While this does add to the lifetime costs of a loan, it is not the main number that broke the affordability equation. The real driver is the price of the home itself. A two percentage point rate increase on a $120,000 home is manageable. A two percentage point rate increase on a $425,000 home is a different problem entirely.

The median family income in Tampa today is about $92,000. According to the US Census’ 2023 5-Year Estimate American Community Survey, that is not enough to qualify for the current median home price of $375,300. In 1955, the median family had income to spare. In 2024, the median family comes up short.

The chart below shows home prices and incomes side by side for 1955 and 2024, adjusted to today’s dollars:

In 1955, the income needed to buy a home was well below what a typical family earned. A household sitting at the median could afford a new home in a desirable neighborhood and still have room in their budget. Even families earning well below the median had a realistic path to ownership.

In 2024, the picture has been flipped. No longer are the homes here affordable to working class families. Instead these homes, and most of the other new construction we see today, is reserved for those families that are already wealthy. According to mortgage data from the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), the median income among Tampa home purchase loan borrowers in 2024 was $122,000, more than 30% above the area median. Homeownership used to be something you could reach from the middle of the income ladder, or even below it. Now the middle is not enough. The families buying homes today are not typical Tampa households. They are the upper tier of earners and, increasingly, that is what the market requires.

The chart below breaks down the total cost of buying a home and paying off the loan over a 30 year period in today’s dollars:

The 1955 column is barely visible next to 2024. What stands out most is the explosive growth in interest, which is due in part to interest rates. Once limited by law, the mortgage rate today is predicated on a number of factors largely outside the control of any government, company or person. On a 2024 Tampa purchase loan, the interest paid over the life of the mortgage loan actually exceeds the principal amount. The loan is larger, the rate is higher and, over a period of 30 years, that combination produces a total cost that would have been unimaginable to the families who first moved into Manhattan Manor.

Then there is the issue of the down payment. The average down payment on a Tampa home purchase today is nearly as much as the entire inflation-adjusted price of a Manhattan Manor home in 1955. What once bought you the whole house barely gets you to the closing process today.

These Foster Associates homes still stand. They have been renovated and expanded over the decades, with recent home sales in the neighborhood range from the low $400,000s to over $800,000. 

A middle-class family used to be able to buy a home. Now, a family earning the median income in Tampa cannot qualify for the median home. Although costs for land, material and labor have outpaced inflation, we need to do better as a society when it comes to producing housing more efficiently. The solution is not nostalgia. It is structural reform.

We built a housing market that worked for middle-class families once. The question is whether we are willing to do it again.

Jason Richardson is the Senior Director of Research with NCRC’s Research team.

Bruce C. Mitchell is the Principal Researcher with NCRC’s Research team.

Photo credit: Thomas Haney via Pexels.