According to my banker, Iowa is one of the few states to require that every house have what they call an, “abstract”, or a record of all hands it has been through, mortgage activity, etc. So, when we bought our current house, we got a very neat little folder with pages describing every transaction on our house since 1940 which is rather neat. I thought I would share the first page of our house’s abstract, detailing the first recorded transfer in 1940.

Note the mortgage for $1,200 — I guarantee you we didn’t pay that in 2005! (more like 40+ times that amount)