You literally couldn’t even get a motor home here for a quarter mil.
Here’sthe only house listed in my county for $250K. It’s located about 10 miles from me. My neighborhood has been selling in the middle $300s and up, and we’ve got minimum 3 acre lots here.
Here’s the closest house to mine that sells for around $250K.
Hey Elmwood, you live pretty close to my folks! 
I just plugged the $250K (actually $250-275K) figure into Realtor.com for San Jose, CA. It came back with one listing: a 468 sq. ft. condo. For $270,000.
So currently the answer for San Jose is: nothing.
Well, this house isn’t quite finished, but it has everything listed. It’s the closest I could find in Lake Charles without going over the price.
These houses are all that are available in my tiny hometown. You could buy the most expensive one and still have money left over for a Land Rover or something.
Back in 2000 or 2001, $250K would’ve gotten you a pretty nice 2000 square foot house with a small yard.
The place got completely caught up in the real estate boom, or got “discovered,” or something. Now, as has been said above, that might get you a nice empty lot. Or a 1-Bedroom fixer-upper.
No mountains. No ocean. No way.
Actually, Milwaukee was okay, and I would’t turn my nose completely up at Minneapolis, but both of those towns are becoming increasingly pricy.
And no offense, Skip, but I shudder at the thought of ever returning to Missouri. Even having to fly through MCI makes my skin crawl.
In my area, as Campion has already noted, $250K makes a nice downpayment on a McMansion, or about half of a studio. I’m just waiting for the bubble to pop…
Stranger
Wow, what a timely thread. As I’m transferring to Wilmette, Illinois this year, the wife and I just returned from a house hunting trip there last week. Our price goal: $250K. Our distance goal: within 20-30 minutes of Wilmette. We looked into Niles, Skokie, Glenview etc. Basically, $250K will get us a townhouse, 2 or 3 bdrm with about 1000-1200 sqft.
Ugh.
Anyway here outside of Portland, Maine is only slightly better. You could probably get a nice 3 bdrm 2 bath cape with an acre or two for that kind of money.
In my area of Sydney (the lower North Shore) it wouldn’t get you anything.
Here in Flint Michigan, you could literally buy 100 or more houses 100 or more houses for $250K. The cheapest house on realtor.com is $100, right now. No joke.
I bought one here for $14,000 cash; it’s a nice little house with lots of updates; a bank foreclosure. It might take me a year or more to sell it for about twice that much, though. It could easily be worth half a mil elsewhere.
Location, location, location…
I just did the same thing with our zip code.
I got one hit for .35 acre of land only for $275,000.
So the answer for Santa Rosa is also nothing.
250k will buy a 1 bed/1 bath starter home in a nicer area, or 3/4 somewhere not so good. The crime rate here is pretty bad, as a lot of the gang activity from LA has relocated to the cheaper housing up here.
But, if someone can afford to buy a house out here, they’re likely commuting to LA every day (about 60-70mi one way; but it’s 80mi from my house to downtown) anyways.
why, in my projects, you can own yourself one of THESE
http://www.realtytrac.com/freePropDetails.asp?a=b&propid=6667257
or, if you wanna get a touch more suburban, which is my neck of the woods anyways
http://livingchoices.com/home/homedetail.aspx?refer=homegain&hid=534977121&mid=2160
amen, brother…amen
Where I come from, the southwest half of Bergen County NJ, $250k would get you … a kitchen.
What’s that, you want the rest of the house? That’ll be another $1 million, please.
If you had a $250,000 house in my town…well, you’d pretty much have the most expensive house in town. You’d be “the people with the mansion”. This is why I’m so freaked about going to school in a big city next fall. I’m used to cheap living.
We have a very large 4 bedroom 2 bathroom two story house and I think my parents said it was $70,000.
The Dallas/Ft. Worth area is so huge and spread out, you’d have your options open.
Here is a nice condo you could buy in my neighborhood. My neighborhood doesn’t have a lot of single family homes although they could be found in that price range in parts of the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.
Or, up by my way, a 1 BR condo, if you’re lucky ::shudder::
My husband, before we met, lived in the OKC area for almost 5 years. There he rented a 3 BR/2BA house situated on 2 acres for around $300 a month, excluding utilities.
When he moved back here to take a new job, he had to break into his savings just to put a deposit on his first apartment. The rent, if I recall, was $1800/month for a 2BR. It was the only place he found that would allow his dogs.
We currently live with my mother in the not-so-swanky part of what’s considered an “exclusive” town. The property tax estimates came in the mail the other day. Even with the abatement, I have no idea how we’re going to pay it…gulp
In semi rural suburban Hokkaido it got us our house, and two plots of land.
Our land is 27m long by 13m deep, so we actually have a garden unlike the other houses who have a parking space for two cars and a mini mini patch out front, and only the edges around the house.
Our house is a 5LDK (Living Dining Kitchen plus five rooms) small by US sizes but reasonable by UK standards. We have parking for four cars, hall and toilet, living room, Japanese room, kitchen (big enough for a small table that seats four) classroom (was Granny’s room before we bought the house) bathroom, sink and changing area. Upstairs is a small hallway, two single bedrooms and one double bedroom - no toilet or water upstairs. Under the large slope of the roof we have a store room that could be easily made into another single bedroom or a second bathroom.
In Japan only the land has any value - in our contract the house itself is only worth about 45000 dollars - the rest is the land. If we were to build a similar sized (but a lot better quality is available these days) house on half our land new, it would have cost the same as our bigger plot and older house. We thought space was more important than the house, and we are satisfied.