Even in my own metro area we could move out 60-75 minutes away from our jobs and the prices go down by about $200K. If only there were more jobs out there…hence the reason for the price drop.
Ya never know who has money in the family! The boys across the street from me I heard bought the 1.2 million dollar house with cash. It is one of two homes they own. Only one of them works after they adopted their 2nd child.
We bought our house almost 10 years ago for $285k and it was the last piece of property on waterfront (on a small private lake at that) for less than $350k. We got really lucky to find this place at all. We have 1/3 acre, small waterfront with small dock, 1 loft bedroom, 1 full bath, no garage, small semi-finished basement, older kitchen. House is 1500 sq ft total. At peak prices last year we could have gotten over $500k for it. Who knows what it would be worth now. Still a good investment because of the lake. Crazy. We refused to look at anything over $300k even though they wanted to give us $400k mortgage. No thanks.
If we wanted to move we are looking at $450k for any kind of upgrade on house size in my area. We plan on staying put for quite a while unless we move to a different state.
EDIT: I should mention we live 45 minutes from the city and 30+ minutes from work. We are in the sticks.
My husband and I were watching the other night and thinking the same thing-how do these people afford this? It makes us begin to think “what are we doing wrong?” I will be interested in seeing the show in 6-12 months when they start showing post boom buying-my guess is there might not be a show at all. The most irksome part for me is the entitled attitude of some of the buyers whining “but there isn’t a bathroom for every bedroom” or “the kitchen is a little small” when it is three times the size of mine!
I always have to check myself. I was telling my friend of these “piece of crap” houses in one area, then I qualify by saying, “they aren’t really crap. I just mean they are for $500K when you compare to what you can get for $500K elsewhere.”
Recent House Hunters home that has reportedly been taken back by the bank. People on the show paid $735K. Now listed for $659K:
Bend OR is wicked expensive so I’m not surprised by the housing costs. For what it’s worth, here in Seattle we paid ~3x more than Tik and got half the house (1200sqft - 100 years old too) with 20% down. While we both really like Boise we would be making half of what we make here but with the higher income in Seattle comes higher home prices (though -for now, no state income tax). Course we came from NYC so for us we were psyched we could get a house and a small yard for what would have gotten us a 500sqft studio in Manhattan (no joke!).
I think it is sometimes surprising who has money and can afford what type of house. As the book title says, the millionaire is often the person next door who’s driving the used car and not buying the expensive clothing/electronics. On the other hand, at the height of the market the banks offered us an obscene amount of mortgage money. We’re too conservative to take that risk (and so glad we didn’t!) but there are also a ton of folks who leverage themselves to the hilt and figure they’ll just make it work out in the end. I watched one episode where a newly married couple in Atlanta bought a $500K home and put 0% down. Just made my stomach churn thinking how that one likely turned out.
"In my town $191,000 will get you a 1200 sq/ft fixer upper "
In my town (pop 1800) $191,000 will get you a mansion on the hill, literally. Fixer uppers are less than a 1/3 of that. It’s at times like this why I’d never move back to a large urban area. Of course you have to be able to find work in these small towns to make it plausible.
What we did was decide what we could afford right then and didn’t make a gamble on what we would be able to afford in the future. I think that was key for us and what people don’t always take into consideration. There is no guarentee you will make more money in 3 years therefore making it easier to afford your mortgage. The houses we looked at before getting pre-approved were gorgeous. We would go into the really expensive houses just for kicks. I could see how easy it would be to overspend. There was one house that was $450k that I really really wanted but it just wasn’t going to happen. If we’d been approved it would have been really hard to talk me out of it. Rational thinking prevailed in the end.
I don’t know about that show but 200k in Vancouver will get you a burned out shell of a crackhouse/meth lab after it’s been raided by the cops and fully trashed, several times over, and located in the middle of gang war turf.
Are you sure about that? I think the going rate for burned out crackhouse/meth labs is still at least in the 250k range.
Jen
I did the same thing. Before I even started looking I determined how much I was comfortable to spend in a payment and worked backwards based on a 30yr fixed loan. Then I knew what I could afford and didn’t compromise on what I was looking for. I even put it off for a year so I could make myself debt free and build a healthy down payment.
I ended up getting lucky on the house that I bought because it was a short sale home. It took almost 2.5 months to close but ended up paying almost $46K less than what the people paid for it 2 years previous. I felt bad for the people but very happy for my deal.
I’m a pretty cautious with my money so no way I was going to leverage myself. When I look at people in my subdivision with a nice house, 2 nice cars (SUV, Lexus), a boat, RV, 4 wheelers. It blows my mind thinking how leveraged they must be. Of course they could have paid cash for all of it but I doubt it. I was raised with the notion that if you can’t afford to buy it then you shouldn’t have it. Cars and a home are the only payments that I will allow myself to have.
I hear you. I grew up in a small town and there are many aspects that I really liked about it. There were also aspects I didn’t like. The closest thing I can do here is live as far on the edge of town that I can. You’re right though, the line of work I am in absolutely requires me to be near a large urban area. However when effective telecommuting becomes more widespread I may consider moving out of town a bit more. I have a friend that works at Cisco who telecommutes and actually now lives in Argentina.
My wife & I saw that episode and were laughing at the end when they showed her decorating a cake. It looked like crap, I think my daschund could have done a better job! They should have got a smaller house and spent the saved money on cake decorating lessons!
Be nice now.
I’m interested in seeing what transpires next? There is tough road coming up. I think I did pretty well and can afford for what I have committed to with my mortgage comp.
There are 5-6 in my sub that are for sale now, that I’m really interested to see what happens. Are the politics going to break these houses free? Sorry had to go Micro but my neighborhood seems like a prime example of people that bought and could not keep up with the variable rate loans.
I live in London and prices are expensive, though they do not have to be exorbitantly so, I have a 1 bed, approximately 700 square feet? (a 15 by 14 bedroom, 14 by 14 living room, 8*8 bathroom and small kitchen plus hall space) and this would run at its peak about 210k sterling (420 US at the highest exhange rate, now I’d guess 300+).
In London this would be middle of the range for a one bed, its an ok neighbourhood however I just got back from Courchevel in France and the property values are astonishing, 1 bedrooms starting at 750k US at the highest resort, 3 bed rooms in the lowest resort starting at 1 million.
We saw a pint of Heineken on the day we arrived for 17 euros, that would be knocking on for 34 dollars. There are clearly people with money out there, I just happen to not be one of them…
Try the website below. The cost of living calculator is interesting.
http://www.bestplaces.net/col/
For Bryan and Jen…the cost of housing in Seattle, WA. is 390% more expensive than in Jackson, TN.
Though I’d be really hard pressed to find a reason why you’d want to live in Jackson, TN. Even if you scored one of the decent jobs at one of those wee colleges there, I’d rather commute every day from the eastern suburbs of (sigh) Memphis.
TN probably won’t be a great choice for us. We are flaming liberals and as far as I know the south isn’t known for those political leanings. 
When we move it will be to the southwest. We’ve talked about Tucson for a while now and it is 36% cheaper than the area closest to mine, east of Seattle.
Where in NH? I grew up in Plymouth. My parents are still there and talk about sub-zero temps. They aren’t creating a compelling case for us to move closer to them.
Yeah, try being in jr high and high school there. Ugh.
Cool site. Housing in Seattle is 360% more expensive than Indianapolis, but I’m sure you get what you pay for.