Well, you could go in with a friend and buy half of this thing.
Here in Northern LA County, a much bigger home, on a much smaller lot. Say 3000 #, 5 bedrooms, 3 baths. Maybe a pool. Maybe solar.
Most homes are here are $550K.
In my neighborhood, $600,000 would get me right out of this neighborhood! It would buy a very large house, brand new construction, veddy nice, anywhere in town, heck probably in the state. There’s probably something even more expensive available but this would fetch a very large, very new, very nice home if that’s what you wanted. Not sure but I suppose you could use it to fix up an older home and get a very nice outcome.
Average 3-4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 1800-2000 sq ft home on a modest lot. Really nothing special that probably needs repairs or updates.
Big one bedroom condo in newer building or small two bedroom in an older/converted building. No actual house is less than $1mil.
According to Zillow (never heard of them before, fun site, wish I had known about it when I was looking) the most expensive house for sale here in town is $449,000. For that, you get 4,000 sqft, 3 beds, 4 baths, 3.6 acres, a 1.6 acre pond, and a 485x32 barn by the pond.
Actually, that isn’t in town. It is across the road that makes the city limits. So the highest price in town would be $415,000 for a 3825 sqft, 6 bedroom, 3.5 bath, 1.15 acres, partial basement, private backyard, etc., etc. Only been listed since June 16, and they’ve already dropped the price $85,000.
There are some places with no listing that could probably go for close to $600,000. They are just outside the pricey subdivision where a bunch of places sell for 200k to 300k.
A quick search of Zillow reveals two houses in my city going for $600K+. One is a four bed, five bath, 3,700 square foot house with a pond in the most exclusive neighborhood. The other is a 3 bed, 1.5 bath, 1100 square foot ranch in a normal neighborhood up for “pre-foreclosure auction”. I figure that one must be a decimal point error. Those are the same stats as my house, which is valued right around $100k, and isn’t in foreclosure.
In general, though, $600K will get you a pretty nice house hereabouts (St. Louis area).
In order to find a house going for more than $100,000 I had to search 30 miles away. Zillow doesn’t seem to show much as far as just acreage property because I know I just saw a listing for something like 100 acres for $600,000 recently. Here’s one with a 4 year old house that if it was a bit closer could be my dream house/property: http://www.landwatch.com/Van-Buren-County-Iowa-Farms-and-Ranches-for-sale/pid/2727139
In town there are 3 houses for sale ranging from $15,000 to $80,000.
In Toronto, the current average selling price of a detached house is now over CAD$1MM or just shy of USD$800K at today’s rate.
I get a daily email with house prices (for no good reason), and noticed this sale from yesterday: http://v3.torontomls.net/Live/Pages/Public/Link.aspx?Key=425b931089af49b597a5fa387aa87ca4&App=TREB
This house is a little over a mile from me, a 1 bedroom ~ 900 sq ft bungalow on a 3300 sq ft lot. It just sold for CAD$1,036,000 in “As Is” condition! It will most likely be a tear-down, replaced with a new build 2 or 2 1/2 story house.
In my neighbourhood, USD$600K/CAD$800K might get you a 3br/1bath semi that needs work.
In my little slice of heaven, I could probably snap up 6 houses, each sitting on 2 acres.
In my zip code (an exurb of San Francisco), $600,000 would get you a slightly better than median house, generally 4 bedrooms, 2-3 baths, around 3000 square feet.
At this moment, there is a 2 bed, 1 bath house, 1019 square feet, in SF available for $479,000. Doesn’t even look like it’s got any gotchas like unwarranted (i.e.: illegal) in-law apartments or big gaping charred holes where the roof used to be.
Not as much as you’d think. The only house on the market in my town around that price (and we have three way over 600k currently on the market) will get you an 11-year-old three bedroom, three bath house of 3000sq feet set on five acres of land.
In my town, I see a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath house, 1350sq feet, on a major highway, going for $650,000. That’s currently the cheapest thing available in town, per Zillow. Sold “as is”, I assume it need work. More likely, it will be torn down to build something larger.
It would definitely cover the downpayment. Well, most likely.
I live in Chicago, near Wrigley Field. There are almost no single family homes here, it’s all apartments and condos .
Here’s one for $600k in the same zip code. 1325 sq feet
In my neighborhood that much would get you pretty much the entire neighborhood. In the city in general probably a couple of the finest houses not on the historical registry. And possibly a few of those as well.
Well now, I was totally off on the prices in Elmont. A new construction will easily sell for well over 500k. There are a few going up around here. Here’s one that is asking $624,000. That is ridiculous to me. Also, must re-value my own home!
Where I am (Regina, Saskatchewan), we had our housing market take off starting in 2007. (Yes, just when the bubble burst in the US and much of Canada. ). We bought our current house a few years earlier than that, but house in our neighbourhood are now being advertised for about $700,000. Same in the new divisions that have gone up. So Bernie’s house-price would be right in line for our residential market.
Out here in middle-of-nowhere, Missouri, in a dirt poor county, $600k would buy you something resembling a mansion, plus a few hundred acres. You would have to try to spend that kind of bank on a house.