We’re looking to buy our first place, and boy, am I dreading it.
Prague has been going through a boom for a few years, and prices are pretty high. 6,000,000Kc is around $250,000 and will get us a new development 3 bedroom apartment in a nice area of Prague.
We like this one because it has a funky wintergarden/glass room loft.
In other areas of this town, $250,000 will get you a nice 2 bedroom apartment that only needs a little reconstruction. :rolleyes:
My dad left me half of a house in Texas when he died 25 years ago. Ranch style, huge yard, 2 car garage, suburb of Dallas… A whopping $35,000 when sold.
10 years ago my ex-girlfriend bought a small 3 bedroom house with a nice yard in Denver for $120,000.
'round here, $250K will get you a decent house. 2-4 bedrooms, nice yard, etc. It will also get you a 1500 square foot condo across the street from a very nice beach on Lake Superior.
If you go slightly out of town, the possibilities go up. With a little looking, I’m certain you could get a nice house on many acres, if you’re willing to put up with a 15 or 20 minute drive.
Round here (Fairfax, VA), 250K will get you a hefty mortgage to pay.
Actually, that’s not really true, I ran a search on the MLS and it shows that $250K will get you a 1 or 2 bedroom, 1 BA condo in a garden type place, a 3 BR 1BA condo in a high rise type place. For $180 you can get an efficiency condo in a high-rise.
Hmm… that’s NOK 1,633,125. You can find some nice broom closets in that price range… :eek:
Seriously, in Bærum where I live, just west of Oslo, forget finding a house, even a townhouse, for that money. In the most fashionable areas that’ll get you a one-bedroom or studio apartment. A bigger place in the less popular eastern areas of the township. In my neighborhood specifically, I don’t think you’ll find anything for that price. Which is scary because it’s not a whole lot less than we bought our semi-detached house for in 1998.
In my neighborhood, $250k will get you a house similar to mine. 4bd, 2bath, about 2300 sq. ft. The neighborhood is very nice. No streetlights, we all have a gas lamp in the front yard and the ambience those lamps make when they light the streets up at night is unbelievable.
SWMBO and I have commented more than once that when we drive down Westheimer with all of its traffic and noise and then turn into the neighborhood, it’s like going into another world that is quiet and peaceful.
It’ll buy a pretty darn sweet house where I live (Lubbock, TX). The highest-end houses on our annual “Parade of Homes” run about $300K-490K, so you see where I’m coming from.
Lemme find a representative sample for $250K…how about thi one, a four-bedroom, three-bath, 3,145 square foot home, in Lakeridge (the hoity-toityest area of the city), asking $245,000.
Here in Oklahoma City, you can get a huge house for that. I found several 4-bedroom houses with at least 2 baths and 2 car garages in some really good parts of town, all over 2100 square feet on a nice-sized lot.
If you’re willing to settle for one bathroom and a one-car garage, you can get a four-bedroom that’s slightly smaller for half that price.
Or if you’re willing to pick a neighborhood that’s not quite as upscale, you could buy TWO three-bedroom houses for that price. Maybe even three houses.
If you want to live in one of the smaller towns, like Ada where I grew up, that amount of money will get you a 4-bedroom 3-bath house with a pool, fireplace, and a multi-acre lot on the nicest street in town. You can’t spend more money on a house and land without getting a huge acreage with it just outside of town.
Now I’m starting to see why people take their retirement money and move there!
I also checked Realtor.com. Somewhat surprisingly, $250,000 can still buy you a small (600-700 square foot) one-bedroom in my current neighborhood (western Harlem/Hamilton Heights/Washington Heights) and in the less-nice parts of my old neighborhood, Jersey City. There aren’t many listings at this price, though. In most of Manhattan, $250,000 is a nice down payment.
One hour north of the city, in Peekskill NY, you can buy a small one-bedroom condo.
Two hours north of the city, in the Hudson NY area, you can buy a house on a big lot, 2-4 bedrooms and 1500-3000 square feet.
I just sold my 2 bedroom 1 bath townhouse in Montgomery county for just under 250. I could have gotten more but I sold it with out a realtor so I ended up with more money. The house was small, 800sf or so. Other then that you could probably buy a condo for that.
Here on LI, $250,000 will pretty much get you a shack. A shack in the woods. Or maybe a HUD home in a questionable neighborhood. There are some decent, fixer-upper 1-2 bedroom houses far out east (as in far from NYC) but anywhere in the center or west of center of the Island you need at least $300,000 to think about owning even the smallest of homes.
You could get about 200 months of rent for a 1 bedroom apartment with that though.
Same as Clothahump for me in Lexington, Ky. We paid a bit more for our house in 2004 and have a four-bedroom, three and a half bath, with a two-story den and 2500 square feet. It’s about three years old. However, there is a fashionable neighborhood here where houses half that size go for twice that much. Location, location, location.
Here in the Heart-Of-The-Bay Hayward, $250K would net you maybe an empty lot.
I was lucky. We got our house just before the explosion. 1220 sf (pretty small) in a sorta okay area. I emphasize the sorta. We spent $150K. I was aghast when my girlhood BF purchased the house down the street for $308K, thinking that was outrageous. Now the houses on our street are listing in the mid 400s. But…even if house sold @ say $450K, and we paid the $100K mortgage, leaving $350K, we’d need to double that simply to get into a better school district and smallishly upgrading our home. Houses routinely go for $600-700K in Castro Valley, which is where I aspire to live.
What kind of house can $250,000 buy in my area? Any house you can point to. Even if it’s not for sale.
Real estate has gone up tremendously around here in the past years, but it never ceases to amaze me just how astoundingly expensive it is elsewhere. For some perspective:
Normal in-town houses run in the $75-$100,000 range, less the further out you go.
$125,000 will buy you a 15 room Colonial with a barn and garage on an acre of property in the center of town. In need of paint and hell to heat, but you can say that of building here.
$200,000 will get the enormous Victorian on the hill at the south end of town, with a barn and guest house (real guest house–two floors, a couple bedrooms) and a fair bit of property.
A quarter million will get you that palatial three-and-a-half storey Greek-revival with barn and carriage house and views of the river on the north end of town.