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In the post The tomato that paid the mortgage, we read about M.C. Byles, a 1930’s mechanic who bred a 2.5 pound tomato. It was in demand, and he was selling the plants for $1 each.

With his income, he was able to pay off his $6000 home mortgage in six years. For that reason, you can still order these tomato plants by their name, Mortgage Lifter. I think you could get a Coke in the ’30s for a nickel or so, and now you can still buy them in some markets for fifty cents. Using this 10-to-1 inflation factor, these tomatoes would sell for about $10 each today, or $4 per pound.

However, if you have a very normal and average mortgage of $250,000 today, we are looking at a LOT of tomatoes. Actually, we might have to move up to 40 pound pumpkins. At $160 each, we could pay off the mortgage with 1563 pumpkins if we sold them all in one day. However, if it took six years, as it did Mr. Byles, we have the interest to figure in. At 7%, we’d have to sell approximately 630 more pumpkins to get the entire mortgage paid off in six years.

So, it’s 2193 very large pumpkins, or more than 35,000 of those tomatoes! Isn’t it amazing how we can take almost anything and get a real estate story? I’m going to eat a beefsteak tomato and think about my mortgage.