There seems to be a minor poutage over Bernie buying a $600,000 summer home. Me, why should I even care how Bernie spends his money? Someone on this very board stated he couldn’t even begin to buy a house in San Fran for that amount. Which reminded me of when me and my husband were house hunting in Brooklyn ten years ago. There was nothing, and I mean nothing under a half a million. Not even in bullet-riddled, dilapidated Brownsville.
We finally purchased in Elmont (Gateway to Nassau County!). This is a neighborhood of summer cottages. Way back in the day, this is where rich people built tiny summer homes-- before The Hamptons were an option. Because of that, you probably couldn’t find a house selling for 600k. However, 2 bedroom, 4,000 square foot Cape Cods sell for more than 350k.
Bernie got a deal in Vermont with 500 feet of beachfront on Lake Champlain. What could you get in your neck of the woods?
I’m not sure we have houses that expensive in my town. I’m looking through some listings in my zip code and the most expensive purely residential property is a $450k house. 5 bedrooms, 7700 square feet. There’s a property selling for almost exactly $600k that includes a house, but it also has 40 acres of land and an equestrian facility that appears to be larger than the house.
A fancier zip code a little down the road has more options at higher price points. It looks like $600k gets you 4000-5000 square feet and 4-6 bedrooms. Or a little less house but double-digit acreage.
I’m trying to wrap my head around “4000 sq ft, 2 bdrms” !!
As I live in a 2 bdrm, 1000 sq ft house, I’m struggling to picture what that looks like. I’m imagining a house where each of the rooms are four times the size of the ones in my place! Wow!
The top price homes in West Little Rock are 250k to $300k. That’s very, very upscale. Probably at least 2500 sq ft.
Houses in my Little Rock neighborhood sell for 60 to 75k. They are 1200 sq foot ranch homes built in the 1950’s.
But, lake front homes are uniquely priced. They sell at a premium. Depending on how nice the lake is. Private dock and boathouse etc. I can understand why Sanders spent 600k.
I’m wondering who can buy in popular urban centers? As I said in the OP, in Brooklyn you cannot buy a house for less than $500,000. And those houses are in neighborhoods nobody wants to live in, in houses that are falling apart. How can the market bear these prices?
A lot of people were living there before prices spiked. But there are often less popular areas pretty darn close to popular urban centers. And people commute. Far. I had neighbors in PA who commuted to Manhattan, which has as many people commute there as who live there. Or they rent (70% of households in Brooklyn.)
And there are plenty of homes available for far less than $500k in Brooklyn. Not “houses” if you mean free-standing, single family homes. Maybe not newly renovated. But plenty of homes available. And not just in bullet-riddled, dilapidated Brownsville.
Are you looking at listing prices or actual sale prices? Because I live just over the Brooklyn Queens border, and there are still listings for under $500K - and in fact, I found listings in Brownsville for single family houses under $500K Thing is though, listing prices don’t have a reliable relationship to sale prices- sometimes buyers bid up the price over the listing and sometimes the sellers are out of touch with reality and list the house at a price no one will pay.
But some of it is because the neighborhoods that nobody used to want to live in are becoming popular. If I remember correctly, Brownsville does not have a lot of single family houses - and the rents there may be going up as the hipsters keep moving. First it was Williamsburg and then Greenpoint, and it's now gotten to Bushwick and Ridgewood. As the rents go up, the sale prices also go up - if you can get $2400 for each two bedroom apartment in a four family house , you'll pay more for the house than if the rent was $1500.
As I said in my OP, I live within a 5 minute walk to Queens in Elmont and HAD to move here because me and my husband were priced out. The 3 bedroom apartment we lived in on the border between Park Slope and Sunset Park now rents for $3600 a month!
Brownsville has many row houses. They are all in terrible shape and are very small. Don’t know how much they go for now but, as I said, 10 years ago they were going for the incredible price of $500,000. I mean under the El beside an empty lot with homeless people sitting on the stoop.
Just did a search of my zip code. There’s a house for $599,900 on the water. Just over 1 acre, 5BR, 3BA, 2 boat lifts, a jet ski left, 2 car garage, on a small creek that feeds into the Patuxent River, and eventually (some miles away) the Chesapeake Bay. It’s been on the market almost a year.
If you get closer to the Bay, or on the Bay, you’ll pay lots more. Most new, non-waterfront developments in this county start in the $300K region and move up, and we’re in Amish country about an hour from DC. $600K, while more than I’d pay for a house, isn’t outrageous, especially for a person of means. I suppose I could get all righteously indignant, because my parents bought their first home for only $10K!! OK, it was a row house and it was in 1956, but still…
Too many people get their panties in a bunch about what other people choose to buy. Personally, I don’t understand spending upwards of $50K on a vehicle, but as long as I’m not being asked to make the payments, why should I care?
Detroit is obviously an unusual case. There are areas where you buy the whole neighborhood for 600k.
But as far a single properties, it’ll get you a damn nice crashpad in one of the nice neighborhoods. Indian Village for example, where the rich car company owners built their mansions. Here is one priced about that.
6300 Sq feet in apparent great shape with fancy-shmancy decor.
$600k US is $780k AU - you could get a 2 bedroom terrace with no garden for that where I live or, if you were willing to move a couple of suburbs north, an un-fancy three bedroom weatherboard. Definitely no lakeside views
In Hoboken, NJ that would typically get you a 1-2 BR, 1BA 500-900 sq ft condo, most likely in a walkup. They seem fairly evenly distributed around town, but generally the closer to the water, the nicer and more expensive the apartments.
A lot of them are people like me. Professionals who work in the various banks, law firms, tech companies, consultancies, media firms, and other corporate offices in Manhattan (and to a lesser extend Jersey City, Brooklyn, Long Island City, Hoboken and Weehawken). You have a couple each making over $100k, that’s a lot of people who can afford $500k+ condos. There are a lot of big buildings in New York where those people work.
My question how the market bears all the multi-million dollar condos. I know a lot of them are owned by foreign investors, but I can’t imagine that there are that many celebrities, hedge fund guys, tech millionaires, athletes, trust fund kids, C-level executives and other assorted rich people who can afford 5-10 million dollar condos, but I guess there are.
