OpalCat, just give up on that crappy city life and move out to West Virginia. I live in Harpers Ferry and commute the 45 miles into McLean. Takes me an hour. My nice little 3br/2bath house sits on a tiny half acre lot and costs me all of 104k.
As an added bonus, WV has no sodomy laws. (Yeah!). Then again, I think sex with animals my be legal (is this a plus or a minus?)
I’m not kidding. It was 92, and just across the street from UA and it had this big sign in front saying blah blah bloah for sale blah blah blah $15,000. I was absolutely astounded! Presumably there was either something VERY wrong with the house or somebody had to sell in a hurry. Or maybe it was just a gimmick to get people to call up about it, but it was there.
Right in front of the U of A. There’s your answer. Crappy neighborhood. To the south it’s drugs and gangs, to the west mostly the same, to the north it’s frat houses and stuff, to the east it’s ok, but pretty run down. The whole area is run down though… We rented a place about a block from campus for several years… 2 bedroom house for $375/month. Of course it had termites and was falling apart…
I’m experiencing “issues” with house hunting in Orlando. It’s not money, though – it’s location. The cost of living in Central Florida is quite reasonable, one reason for moving here from Denver (where I made a killing by selling my house, located in a neighborhood that went from “ecch” to “hot” in a matter of months).
The bulk of development in orlando tends to be oriented north and south, along the I-4 corridor. I work west. Far west – out towards Clermont, about 20 miles from downtown Orlando.
I’m looking for a three bedroom, two bathroom house, preferably with a pool, in a stable community that doesn’t have a dysfunctional HOA, in the $150,000 range. Those houses can be found in great abundance in the I-4 corridor, but there’s almost nothing within commuting distance of work, or at least in an area where I would like to live.
Closer to Orlando, but still in “West Orange,” as the area is called, housing seems to come in four forms –
Very high end subdivisions in Windermere, MetroWest, Dr. Philips and thereabouts – mostly $250,000 and up. Gauard houses, golf courses, big water fountains and ponds in front, that sort of thing. Such developments make up about half the housing stock in West Orange.
'Da hood. Considering that all the pirate radio stations in Orlando broadcast from Pine Hills, and their playlists are dominated by tunes that have a central theme of offing those who are melanin challenged, I don’t exactly think that investing in 'da hood is a good idea.
Starter-to-middle end single family houses in Winter Garden, a city whose population seems dominated by mullet haired “old school Floridians.” The horifically ugly, billboard-cluttered main retail strip through town is lined almost exclusively with gas stations, auto body shops, and businesses that sell portable buildings, used cars, heavy equipment, auto parts, concrete mixers, and so on. (The town is supposedly trying to change its image, but last week, when I looked at some pretty darn nice model homes in a subdivision there, every man wandering through had a t-shirt reading something like “Procraft Drywall,” “Bilevel Roofing”, “T&A Well Drilling” or “Thanks For The Memories, Dale.” I wouldn’t fit in.)
“Seen better days” middle class subdivisions in Ocoee, where the houses were once nice, but now every fourth lawn is burnt out or overgrown – definitely evidence of a downward trend. In stable Ocoee subdivisions, houses seem to be quite a bit more expensive than in similar developments along the I-4 corridor.
There’s no shortage of cheap, 1,800 square foot, three bedroom, two bathroom houses further west in Clermont. As a young single professional, though, it’s too far away from urban amenities, and my address would make me “GU” – geographically undesirable – to all those women living in the I-4 corridor.
So, Orlando residents – where do I live?
I think we lucked out.
We have a single-family house in Baltimore, just outside of the city.
Four bedrooms, 2 full baths, all brick, detached garage, full basement, on just about a third of an acre, for which we paid $90,000 seven years ago. The house was structurally sound, but needed tons of cosmetic work. You may be better off looking for a “handyman’s special.”
We have since installed central AC, a new furnace, refinished both bathrooms and added a half-bath, and finished the basement as a family room/play room.
The housing here runs the full spectrum, from $40,000 rundown POS’s in the city to $500,000 McMansions (on a quarter-acre) to $2 million dollar real mansions on several hundred acres.
There’s affordable housing, you just have to look for it. A good real estate agent should be able to help. Just make sure he or she knows your price range and stays in it.
That $15,000 house brother rat mantioned could have been a bank repo. A house in my neighborhood recently sold for seomthing like $50,000, but had been repo’d by the bank.