—From “Trouble in the Suburbs” by Hal Burton, from the September 17, 1955, issue of The Saturday Evening Post
By 1955, ten million new postwar homes had been built outside major U.S. cities. Thanks to the GI Bill, home ownership among Americans had risen from 43 percent to 60 percent, and realtors were offering further inducements to buying a home.
“No Down Payment” means that the house itself can be bought by a veteran without putting down a red cent. The government guarantees a proportion of the mortgage. The purchaser, however, must be prepared to ante up about 2 percent of the cost of his home for fire insurance, a deposit on real-estate taxes, the cost of connecting utilities, and a title search.
A more diverting phrase, to be found in areas where the competition is stiffer, is “No—No Down Payment!”, now outlawed on GI homes. This meant what it said: the seller cheerfully absorbed all the costs listed above.
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of a seller in a Southern city who not only waived the down payment, moved the furniture, paid a bonus, and patted the baby on the head, but he also financed a new car. The happy purchaser could slip behind the wheel of a shiny new auto and roar off, sublime in the knowledge that “It’s all included in the monthly payment.”
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