Wherever you live, housing prices pretty much always going up

Location, location, location.

That's the mantra of successful real estate agents, that property in good locations is desirable and appreciates more than other properties. Apartment rents are an outstanding example of that.

It's hardly stunning to know that apartments in the Washington, D.C., suburbs cost a lot, but the rents have appreciated far more than the Consumer Price Index over the last 30-40 years.

When my first wife and I moved into our first apartment in Herndon, Va., in 1975, Stuart Woods was a brand-new development. Our one-bedroom apartment with a built-in washer-dryer rented for $230. That same apartment today, according to the Stuart Woods Website, goes for $1,409.

Dolley Madison Apartments

Three years later, we rented a two-bedroom apartment in the Tysons Corner area. The Dolley Madison apartments were older and not as nice as Stuart Woods, but the location was much more impressive. Our two-bedroom apartment in the summer of 1978 rented for $300. That same apartment now rents for $1,695.

On the other hand, when I was living in Gastonia ("Armpit of the Carolinas"), N.C., in 1983, I rented a very nice and modern garden apartment in the Quail Woods Apartments. My one-bedroom apartment was $260 a month. It's 31 years later and that same apartment now goes for $555 a month.

The last apartment I ever rented was in Southern California in 1991. The Beachwood Apartments were in west Anaheim, a neighborhood that turned out to be a little more marginal than I thought. I was driving an old Datsun 280ZX that year, and I had the T-tops stolen twice and the battery stolen once.

The apartment itself was nice. My one-bedroom unit was $590 a month, not bad for a place where a 15-minute drive down Beach Blvd. to the ocean at Huntington Beach.

That same unit now goes for about $1,300 a month, not too much of an increase for 23 years, but there are a lot of apartments in Southern California and maybe it's all the market will bear.

When I remarried in 1992 and moved into the lovely house my wife owned, I didn't really expect that I would ever live in an apartment again.

But when the housing market started slipping in 2008, we decided that since we were only a couple of years from our planned retirement, we would sell while we could still get a good price.

The Falls at Montrose

We were fortunate. We sold our house to a family who rented it for one year and then closed the sale in August 2009. We did very well, but we wound up living in a lovely apartment complex for our last two years in California. We paid $1,800 a month for a two-bedroom unit in The Falls at Montrose and lived there until we left for Georgia in November 2010.

And then, for only the second time in my adult life, I learned how wonderful it is to live without paying rent or making a mortgage payment. The first time was 1976-78, when my first wife and I were in Vienna for two years and had our housing paid by the government.

This time we used the equity from selling our house in California to buy our retirement home in Georgia for cash. If all goes according to plan, we'll never have to pay for housing ever again.

Looks like we found a good location.