What are house prices like near you?

Where I'm at, about twenty minutes north of Philly, they've been steadily increasing for about five years now. Seems they've just begun to level off. We're moving about an hour to an our and a half south of here in DE. We actually just sold our house on Fri after only being on the market for two weeks.

It's amazing the difference an hour and a half makes! Where we're moving to, we're getting a whole lot of house, in an awesome neighborhood. Our house now is nice, and plenty big enough, but the location is horrible.

The more I looked around, it seems like there are a lot of other areas that you can get a whole lot for your money. North Carolina, for instance- we were looking online at brand new construction, almost 3K square feet for like 150K!!! Where w're at now, 150K couldn't get you a one bedroom shack!

We watch a lot of those home shows on HGTV, and it's always interesting to see what home prices are in different areas of the country.

So whats it like in your area? Are prices still rising, or is it sort of levelling off? They say it's no longer a sellers market, and is now becoming a buyers market. Anyone else planning a move anytime soon?


-evil

 

My house is 45 years old, 1240 sq ft on a large lot in Cranbrook, pop. 19,000. It's worth about $160,000. An hour East in Fernie pop. 5,000 or North in Invermere, pop. $4,000, it's worth at least double. The difference, these are both ski and golf resort towns.

 

1250 square ft. 3 bedroom brick, attached 2 car garage with door opener, 2 bath with a good sized yard cost me $105k, brand new with all appliances and privacy fence 4 years ago. Probably worth $120K today.

When I got it, I sent floor plans and pictures to my sis in Placentia California (south of LA), and she told me same house in HER area with NO yard would have been $350K.

Housing prices vary wildly across the country.

 

1600+ sq ft, 4bd, 2ba, 2 car garage .3 acre lot

apraised last year at 440k, still needs work. Unbelievable prices out here. If I finish all the work next year it should easily approach 500k and im not doing anything fancy, just replacing doors, windows and some flooring.

 

similiar to GT's but a little smaller and built in the early 80's. Needed updating (trim, doors, paint, tile, etc) but other than that it was in great condition. came with new windows, new garage door, and newer dishwasher, stove, and above-stove microwave. paid 92,500...will probably sell it for at least 100k.

 

Bluesman, where is this? That sounds a lot like where I am now. People are paying almost that much for a townhouse!

To really show how fast it boomed, we bought our first house, a small twenty year old townhouse in '98 for 100K. five years later we sold it for double that amount, and we did NOTHING to it in the way of upgrades or maintenance.

Two and a half years ago we bought our current house, a 50 year old cape (I forget the exact sq ft) in a crappy location for $225K. And at that time, $225 got you NOTHING! We basically settled on a nice house/bad location. We just sold this house for $280K after doing virtually no upgrades.

Now we're moving to DE in a 5 year old Colonial in a bueatiful neighborhood for $300K. Where we're at now, $300K gets you either a small townhouse or condo, or a small old cape or ranch in a bad neighborhood/school district. We could NEVER get up here what we're getting down there for that amount of money, never.

Where we're at now is a major hub for folks commuting to NY and Phila. We're somewhere in between. When I was a kid, when we first moved to this area, it was all farmland and woods. Now there are houses and traffic everywhere. You can't go ten feet without running into a Target or WAL MART. They are building "McMansions" everywhere you look. There's just no more room for houses, but the still keep squeezing them in. Two towns over there is a "ghetto"- mostly minorities that have low income. Anyway, the place is so bad, the mailman won't deliver the mail there anymore because they've shot at him. They all have to go pick up their mail from the post office! It gets worse. Anyway, some developer bought a peice of property adjacent to it and is building like a dozen "luxury homes", that are going to sell for about $400K. The crazy thing is, all of the units were sold the very first day the plots were available! God help those poor idiots who move there unknowingly.


-evil

 

Outside Sacramento, CA about 14 miles in a suburb.

 

Ahh, that explains it. Seems like most of CA is very expensive.


-evil

 

I have a 23 yr old 3 bdrm ranch. bought it about 20 yrs ago for 61K. Getting close to 200K now. Real Estate kinda hi around here. Where I'm orig from in Sou Ill can get a mansion (almost) for 200K .

Jack

 

I guess this is a US one only?

House bought for £520k last summer, valued at £550 already

 

Bought house @ 167k last year, appraised at 215k not even 6 months later.

 

My place is over 80 yrs old, and was bought for $89,000 about 15 yrs ago (two bedrooms, two sunrooms and large yard with garage).

Today, it could sell for over a million. It's certainly not worth it.

Sydney is overpriced. The average price for a house here is about $500,000, and that's for nothing flash.

 

I bought my place(a fixer upper) for 122000 back in '91. It's worth about 345000 now, and I haven't started fixing it up yet. House prices are insane here in the Lower Mainland of BC, but I see they are that way elsewhere too.

It can't last, I tell you. It can't...

 

I bought this place almost exactly three years ago for $100K. I don't know the area of it, but it's nothing that big. 4 bedrooms, 2 living rooms, big block, powered huge garage, etc. Valued at about $300k, now. That's tripled in three years.

Admittedly, I got the place pretty much dirt cheap through a friend, but 100% per year is a really crazy price spiral. Perth prices in these areas have gone through the roof in recent years. Great seller's market, a.t.m. Lousy buyer's market.

 

LOL, Thanks for that MrPewty.

 

Me and the wife just bought a new construction townhome back in january (supposed to be finished at the end of may) and we got it for approx. 172,000 for about 1500sf.

We live in montgomery, a far west suburb of Chicago (on the southwest side of Aurora) and we had to go out west another thirty minutes to get something we could afford. This area is booming so fast it is making the real estate prices DISGUSTING!!!!! It is kind of understood around here (and this is why we bought what we did, where we did) if you buy new construction in a new subdivision...by the time that subdivision is finished, your 200,000 home could EASILY be worth 300,000!! Not a bad return on the investment!! Unfortunately, when this real estate boom stops (and it will) you will have to play hell to sell your house!!

Where I came from...150,000-200,000 will buy you an AWESOME home, and Southern Illinois is not really that underdeveloped, it actually a pretty nice place!! The key though...find a job that pays more than the average for that area, which you usually have to have college for!! Otherwise...a job, in a warehouse for example, up here where I live now, might start you at 10-12 dollars per hour, where as down south you would be EXTREMELY lucky to get that same job starting at 7-8 dollars per hour!! A gallon of milk in chicago cost just under 4 dollars...a gallon of milk in Southern Illinois cost about 2.50.

Anyway...enough with my ranting...but real estate prices around here have been the hardest thing for me to accept, when I moved to this neighborhood!! But I know it could be worse, Like out in california, a buddy and his wife bought a condo smaller than our new townhome, and it was in the upwards of the 500,000 range!!

I often wonder what it would be like if the cost of living was a median constant from one coast to another!?!?

Roger

 

Purchase price of my house, $90,000.
It's a 3 bd, 2 bath, 2 car garage. My house is about 40
years old. Approx. 1700 sq. ft. I've been told that houses in
my neighborhood are currently going for over $100,000
now.

My brother and his wife live in Massachusetts. When they
come to visit, we like to go to open houses and see what
the newest homes look like in the Edmond area. My brother
and his wife are always amazed that the prices for new
homes here are so much less than in Massachusetts.

Maggie

 

@Adrynalyne, have you sold or put your other place on the market yet?

And if so, what happened?