Problem with places like that is they get discovered eventually ask the people who used to think washington state and seattle was a cheap place to live
Oh johnny btw the movie that was filmed in lancaster was lethal weapon 3 they totally torched the half built houses
Get this Were big enough fo have 2 wal-marts just in lancaster alone and the littke 45 minute drive ya used to have between lancaster and palmdale ? takes 15 minutes now with out using our new over pass and free additions
the city council has finally realized that ya cant live and die by the bases and areospace so the’re appealing to the people who want to work in la but not live there
About 15 ago, my mom bought a very nice small house out in small-town New Mexico for 22,000. We now live in a bigger town and have a diffficult time accepting that we would have to pay 75,000-90,000 for the same quality house. Maybe I am a hick, or have modests tastes, but to me 170,000 should buy something bordering on a ‘mansion’.
I live in Richardson, TX, which is a suburb just north of Dallas. There are plenty of 3 bedroom houses available for around $100,000 and it’s a pretty nice neighborhood to live in.
I don’t know how much my house cost since I’m renting it. It’s a 2100 square foot 4 bedroom 3 bath single-story in a nice neighborhood - big back yard, two-car garage. Our landlady gets $1500 a month from us for it. Comparable houses I just looked up at ebbyhalliday.com cost around $140,000 to $180,000.
www.ebbyhalliday.com is a fun site to play around with, you can search by neighborhood, number of rooms, cost, or whatever.
Depends on where you live. As Biggirl and Cheesesteak noted, anything in the tri-state metro NYC area is gonna be beaucoup bucks.
I live in Rockland County, just across the Hudson from Westchester. Bedroom community, absolutely.
When we told the mortgage agent we wanted to stay in Pearl River, and were looking for something in the 200k range, he said, “Are there even any houses in Pearl River for $200,000?” And he wasn’t being sarcastic, he was being realistic.
The home we eventually bought was a touch over 200k, and it’s considered “modest” for this area. The lot is smaller than average, which is what kept the price down.
In other words, had I been able to find a house for $170,000 in this town, it either would have been little more than a shack, or else in need of such repair that, just to make it suitable for living, I would have had to spend upwards of $30,000 for renovations.
45 minutes to Palmdale? I lived at Ave. L and 22nd St. W. Palmdale was only – what? – seven miles away? It only took about 15 minutes. I lieved in Lancaster from 1976-1987.
I used to go up there when dad was alive. One thing they finally got around to doing was to put an overpass over the railroad tracks. I wonder if somebody finally died in an ambulance while waiting for a train to pass. The curve from Ave. L to Sierra Hwy. was fun to take at high speed on the Yamaha or in the Porsche.
Until shortly before I moved “Down Below”, you could dail five numbers to connect on the phone because they system “knew” everything was 94-something. When I first moved there Palmdale was a long-distance call. But then I was in school, so there wasn’t anyone I wanted to talk to in Palmdale anyway.
You sound like you live there. Does the water still flow out of the storm drain at Ave. I and 10 St. W.?
my wife and I just brought our first house in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. We were only able to do it because we had essentially no debt, no kids, and we both worked. Most friends my age around here, a few years out of college, can’t hope to own a house anytime soon, even without kids and with a relatively high income; I can’t imagine how an average family of four could manage $170k.
I read a statistic somewhere that the Twin Cities has a relatively high percentage of homes owned by single people, which might help drive prices higher and contribute to a skewed sense of affordability. Of course, living in Minnesota is worth any price!
I’d like a $170,000 house - but in metro Denver that wouldn’t get too much right now. We bought our first house here in Denver back in October for close to $225,000. It’s 2200 sq ft, 4 bedroom, 4 bath with two-car garage. The lot is the largest on the block at just over 9000 sq ft. The sales price was a bit difficult for me to swallow having just moved from Alabama where $110K can get you a decent little 3-bedroom house.
170k will get you a modest townhome, 5-7 years old, in South Jersey.
Maybe an older 2 bedroom rancher in need of a good handy man for 170k.
205k is “real cheap” for 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. It’ll be about 1600 sq ft and not new.
250k is the average new home with 3-4 BRs, 2.5 baths ad average lot…no upgrades. House w/ a/c and baement about 275k for average lot and 2400-2800 sq ft living space.
Taxes around 5,000.
300k for slightly upgraded home with modest lot. Taxes around 5,800 bucks.
Around here, $170K would get you an approximately 3000 sq. ft. brand new house. Mine cost half that much for 1848 sq. ft. It’s 33 years old and has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a formal living room and den. Quite a large backyard, too.
Wonderfully, a WalMart Supercenter opened up just a couple of miles away. Shops and restaurants are opening up all around that area. My house should be worth double what we paid for it before too long.
My fiance and I have been looking for a 3-bedroom, 1-bath (although 4 beds and 1 1/2-2 baths would be preferable) for about 9 months now. Best we have been able to find all run about $180K up (taxes $2800/year), all of which are an hours commute away from where we work. In South Plainfield, the same house will run about $250K+ (taxes $4000+)
Makes me wish we were back in South Dakota; a 6-bedroom, 3-bath house in Sturgis was going for $85K just 3 months ago. Nice one, too. Of course, you have to think: Sturgis…South Dakota
I agree with Dangerosa. Calling a $170,000 house “affordable” is ridiculous, even if it is a fairly normal house price around here. That article essentially says that two incomes are required to own that home. Frankly, I don’t think that families with two incomes are the ones who are suffering from a lack of affordable housing, at least in the Twin Cities. I think that the Metropolitan Council’s been watching a few too many “Kate and Allie” reruns on Nick at Nite.
You may remember, Dangerosa, Orono’s proposed solution a few years ago when criticized for a lack of affordable housing–annex the city of Long Lake! (Orono is a third (fourth?) tier suburb consisting mainly of McMansions on two-acre lots, while Long Lake is a small town enveloped by suburbanization that now falls completely within Orono’s borders.) Voila! Instant affordable housing in Orono! People already live there? Good–no new riff-raff moving in.
I’d expect more weirdness over this subject in the future.
Hmm, my house is worth about $700k. 4/4 3000sf on 2 1/2 acres. We afforded it by playing the real estate pyramid game over 8 years: keep trading up while paying just a little more each time, using the profit from the last house to get the next one plus adding a little cash. The first house was $225 ($35k down), the next was $380 ($70k down), then this one ($140k down). This only works in a rising market, of course.
What I can’t figure out is how anyone can pay the taxes on some of the houses I see. In CA, which is where I live, you can figure its a monthly of 1/1000th of the buying price per month. So, one of the $1.1m ‘stater home’ in Palo Alto pays $1100 per month in taxes. Forever. And most places in the country have almost double this real estate tax rate, btw.
Gosh, I don’t think anyone has mentioned the North of Boston area yet. Not the most pricey real estate in the country, but it’s probably in the top 10. There’s a sort of “ring” effect whereby real estate prices are lower for the scary/industrial towns just north of the city, then rise when you get to some very tony suburbs, then start dropping off very slightly as you head further north into long commute territory.
I’ll limit my discussion to the towns I’m familiar with which is Salem and points north.
170K gets you a "realtor drives you up to the house and you say ‘keep on driving’ " sort of house. Although there really aren’t any of those. $250K and up might get you a smallish, 1950’ish house that hasn’t been extensively renovated since the sixties and wasn’t very pretentious to start with on a tiny lot. Basically a tract house. Because this is Old New England, you can also get a 200 year old fixer-upper with creaky floors, low ceilings, and cracked plaster.
$350K+ will either get you a very small house in one of the “prestigious” towns or, farther north, newish construction on an acre of land, or a somewhat nicely restored older house on a fair bit of land.
$450K+ will get you a McMansion on two acres of land in some of the most boringly isolated suburbs in existence.
Note that this is a shore area, so I’m not even bothering to discuss places with shore views or beach access.
However people living in this area can instantly cheer themselves up by driving to Wellesley, Newton, or Cambridge and looking at the house prices there.
Now explain to them how you get about $500K for a nearly 100 year old, 1 or 2 bedroom, 1 bath, former tent cabin on a 30 by 60 foot lot and $250K for a mobile home in PG.
Not the case in PG. You can’t tear down the house. You can’t add additional bathrooms. You pretty much have to stick with the original structure.
And 1800 sq. feet is not that much land.
What I mean by, “you’re paying for the land” isn’t that you’re buying it so you can do whatever you want with it. What I mean is that that trailer in, say, Sunol (with no ocean view) is just worth a heckuva lot less.
In other words, the cost isn’t in the dwelling, its in the location.
Example: my first house in Santa Clara cost $245k. The insured value for the house and contents was IIRC $90k. All the rest of the value ($155k) was the 5000sf lot.
The house next to me is for sale as we speak. It’s 810 sq feet for $590,000 US. That’s over $5 per square INCH. The most expensive one on the market is $18,000,000 but, to be fair, it does have a built in microwave.
