In Argentina, getting a mortgage to buy a house is difficult. For most years mortgages are not available at all. With the economic instability, mortgages are too risky for investors, so in the case they’re offered, they are with very high interest rates.
People usually end up living on their parents/family houses, or after many years of renting, they can buy or have one house built for them.
With my teacher’s salary and longer summer vacation periods, I decided to buy a lot in early 1990 and build my own house.
I signed up for a startup design provided by the local government for a 2-bedroom, one bath simple house and started building the house from the foundation up. I had to learn masonry, cement and concrete, water, gas, electric, gray water, walls, floors, roof structure and finishing, etc.
I never hired a single position and had to learn every single trade. Building this house became the making or our home, as I met my future wife while buying materials at a local home supplies store. She was an Architect working on selling materials and providing construction advice. I got questions, she got answers.
When I got to the point of selecting the roofing material, I wanted something different. There were only two options then: French ceramic tiles or tin roofing. She recommended a “new” system called shingles (one of the most common roofing finishings in the US, but no house in my city had it at the time). I went for it and once I completed covering the first section, she came to see what it looked like (that was our first date :-).
Once we migrated to the US, I left my construction days behind and limited to smaller projects like playhouses, greenhouses, and other home improvement projects.
