Buying Our House in La Puente, California

By kiki

 In April of 1967, a guy I was working with told me he was buying a house. He said if I was interested in buying one, he could introduce me to the realtor. He did.

At the time, we were living in a small apartment in East Los Angeles, too small for a family of 6 for sure. But I always thought that buying a house was out of our reach.

My friend gave my phone number to the realtor, Manuel, who called to make an appointment to meet. So one Sunday, he came over to pick Connie and me at our apartment to take us out to see some houses. The first house we got to see was in El Monte: price $14,650, the second house we saw was in Rowland Heights: cost $15,500, the third house was in La Puente price: $18,875. Connie fell in love with the La Puente house; she told me, "if you're going to buy me a house, buy me this one" The place is small by today's standards, but back then, it was a huge house, especially compared to our tiny apartment. Originally the house was a four-bedroom home, but the back bedroom was extended and made into a family room with a fireplace built out of used Simons bricks.

Manuel, the real estate guy, tried to talk us into buying one of the cheaper houses, but Connie said, "no way" okay, here is the deal. Manuel said, "your closing is going to be about $1,600, including down payment, insurance, and taxes; how much you got to start the ball rolling? He asked us. I handed him a $400.00 tax refund check, now we had to come up with $1,200 before closing, which was supposed to be, I believed, in sixty days.

The house was empty because the previous owner had been bought out by the company he worked for when transferred to Northern California. The sixty days came up, and the paperwork wasn't completed because of a mix-up between the previous owner and the company, a good thing because we still didn't have all the $1,200. One day in April of 1968, a year after starting the ball rolling on the house, Manuel called and said the house is yours, but we were still short $500.00; what to do? Well, I ran to the bank and borrowed the five bills. We moved in late April, with a house payment of $147.00 a month. We raised our kids here in La Puente; they all went to the local schools, Sparks, and L.P.H.S. They grew up, and except for our youngest, they all moved out and on.

Now, living in the house with us is our youngest son and his wife. So Connie and I are using the family room as our bedroom.