There are really too many variables where I live, but I can tell you that prime building land is selling for about $5,000 an acre. In most cases you must buy at least 40 acres unless you apply for and receive a variance, but those are easy to get.
Well, Baltimore is really a city of neighbourhoods, and rich areas and poor areas are often not far away from one another. I rent a one-bedroom apartment right near Johns Hopkins University (where i’m a grad student), and the housing prices around here vary quite dramatically.
Five or ten minutes’ walk to the north is the Roland Park area, with big colonial-style houses, many with three through to six or seven bedrooms, that go for anywhere from about $250,000 to over $1,000,000, depending on the size of the house, the size of the lot, and its location (busy street vs. quiet cul-de-sac, etc.).
To the west of the university campus is Hampden, a working-class white area where most houses are two-storey row-houses. Some can be had for as little as $75,000, but prices in Hampden are generally over the $100,000 mark now.
A bit south of Hampden is Remington, a largely African-American working-class neighbourhood. Friends of mine recently bought a fairly nice two-storey rowhouse there for about $65,000.
There are other relatively poor African-American areas to the east - Waverly and Greenmount areas - and prices there are generally also pretty low, often well under $100,000.
Charles Village, where i live, is a mainly white neighbourhood, with lots of college students renting and quite a few middle-class professional families. Prices for a row-house range from sub-$100,000 to over $250,000, depending on the actual size of the house (two-level vs. three), condition, location, etc.
My girlfriend lives a few blocks from me in an apartment on the top floor of a three-storey row-house. The house has three apartments in total - one on each floor - and was recently sold as an investment property for around $175,000, i think.
This information is based on anecdotal information and fairly cursory research. If there are any other Baltimorons (:)) here who have a better knowledge of the city’s real estate market, i’d be happy to defer to their expertise.
Just to give a general indication of how reasonable housing prices are in some areas: My girlfriend and i are going to move in together in a few months, and we are still contemplating buying a place so that we aren’t spending money on rent for the next three or four years that we’ll be in Baltimore. We’re still not sure whether we want the potential hassles of home ownership, but the fact that we can even consider this option on grad student incomes is testament to the city’s low real estate prices. It wouldn’t even be an option in NY, SF, DC, Chicago, or even in plenty of college towns.
Of course, a city with between ten and fifteen thousand (yes, 10,000 to 15,000) empty houses is bound to have a relatively soft real estate market.
Somewhere between US$300 to US$1200 (and above) per square feet.
Here in Saint Paul, houses on my block are in the $200K range. A couple blocks north (by the freeway), it’s about $100K. Across the freeway (in the Midway, with all them disreputable types), it’s about $50K.
Four blocks south of here, the mansions on Snelling go for $500K and up. Way up (hint: one of them is the governor’s mansion…).
Houses in my street in Dublin are selling for €260,000 (that’s $260,000 of your Earth Dollars). They’re tiny, 2/3 bedroom, terraced, and in a pretty bad area of the city, too. But I’m happy as I only paid €200,000.
A three bedroom townhouse, new, like the one we live in would go for about 275,000 Euros in our development. If you move to a swankier neighborhood, you can pay up to 350,000.
A detached house? Not for less than 350,000Euros.
Houses in my neighborhood go fro $90k to $150k…just down the street are homes in the $250k range…
I’m in the process of building a 2200 s.f., 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath transitional home on 5.5 acres just outside fo Richmond, VA. The cost is $210,000. I’ll call you when the pool’s in.
That’s it, Anahita, I’m taking out a restraining order.
I live in Northern Virginia just outside of DC. We paid $150K for our 4-bedroom, 4 bathroom, 3-level townhouse in 1999. We could sell it for nearly $250K right now. Housing prices are astronomical in this area. The urge to make $100K profit off our house is tempting, but where in the heck would we go? Down the street where 3-bedroom single families placed 5 feet apart from each other are going for $450K?
North Atlanta (Alpharetta), in supposedly one of the fastest growing zip codes in the country. We paid $250k for a new 4-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath house (3300 sq ft) with unfinished basement sitting on a 1/2 acre of land in a cul-de-sac.
This was three years ago. Our neighbor, similar house/acreage/location just sold his house for $300k so I am hoping that for now at least, the increase in value is ‘paying’ the mortgage for us.
I swear, it’s just a coincidence. You’re not a very good stalkee. I’ve yet to receive a visit from the gardai or anything.
You just seem to go to the same places I go. You are a posting maniac, and I’m merely filling up time whilst I try to find a low-paying thankless job to pay for the overpriced kip we’ll wind up in someday.
Bellingham, Washington; about an hour north of Seattle, or about a half-hour south of Canada.
We paid $170,000 for a 3-bedroom, 2-bath. About 2000 sf. Homes here are very reasonable compared to Seattle, where my brother just paid $260,000 for a 2-bedroom, 1-bath. Of course, he gets to live in Seattle for that price. Bellingham is not known as an entertainment/cultural mecca; you can just trust me on that.
Hey! I live in Centreville, too! Right near 66/28
We bought our 3br townhouse in 2001 for $180,000. Our neighbors sold last summer for $195,000. I’d love a single family house, but I don’t have the eight gazillion dollars that they cost around here 
We must live very close to you… we live right down the street from 66/28 off of Stone Road – across from the Giant.
You got a good deal in 2001… that was probably right before the ‘flood’ of super-inflated prices for homes around here. I hear you about the single family homes in our area… and most of them don’t have much more space than the townhomes!
Even in the suburbs of Baltimore, it varies quite dramatically.
I live just outside the Beltway, northeast of the city, and paid just over $100,000 for a 4-bedroom rancher on a quarter-acre with a garage. It’s sort of a Cookie-Cutter neighborhood, with 4 basic floorplans. It’s an older neighborhood, though, and people have made additions and improvements, so they don’t all look alike anymore.
There’s a certain uniformity, but they’re not all identical.
We live off Braddock just as you come off 28 
My gosh OpalCat, we’re practically neighbors!
Wow! Where in Chicago do you live? I’m about a mile west of Wrigley and a newly built home down the street from me went for $700K, but the average in my area I believe is closer to $400K. Still way out of my league, but that’s why we rent.