Rotary hears a brief history of real estate in America.
The right to own land was one of the aims of our founding fathers. "There was this dream, this goal, of not just religious freedom, not freedom of expression, but being able to get to the new world and being able to own land," Tim Stanford told us. He explained that the Northwest Territory was land ceded to the United States by England after the Revolutionary War. The Northwest Territory was the land northwest of the Ohio River, east of the Mississippi River and below the Great Lakes. Tim told us that the Land Ordinance of 1785 established a standardized system of surveying the land into saleable lots and stipulated that the land would eventually form three to five states. In 1788, the Ohio Company established Marietta, Ohio, as the first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory. "From the time of the Revolutionary War up to the Civil War, it was kind of a wild west. there were a lot of people trying to get involved in real estate." Tim told us that led to the establishment of the first real estate association in 1890s, which eventually became the National Association of Real Estate Exchanges in 1908 and the coining of the term Realtor in 1916, signifying dedication to upholding ethical standards and providing exceptional service. Tim told us that until the early 1900s, those wishing to purchase a home were required to make a 50% down payment and pay off the loan in 5 to 6 years. That began to change in the 1920s with the availability of more affordable mortgages, and in 1934, the Federal Housing Administration was created to improve housing standards and provide access to affordable financing.
Tim told us that two thirds of Ohio's housing was built before 1980 and many of them are not being well maintained. Ohio's Realtors are actively studying the problem and looking for ways to develop infill housing on existing vacant lots instead of building on rapidly-disappearing agricultural land. They have developed blueprints for new homes which can be shared, to help promote redevelopment.