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Home Prices

Quasi

Critical Thinker
Q
Joined
Oct 7, 2002
Messages
424
I realize this is a little out of step with the usual JREF fare, but is anyone else really concerned about home prices? Here in Boston, a decent 2 room single family will run you $400,000 in a bad area to $800,000 in a "good" area. Even a condo in Cambridge or Somerville can go for 600-800. I also recently heard prices have collapsed 25% in western Mass. and that soon, 1 of 7 families will go bankrupt. I will be buying a house not too long from now. Scary stuff. I can't imagine having a 400,000 dollar morgage. What is the alternative? Move 1-2 hours away in New Hampshire (you still must pay Mass. income tax even though you don't live there if you work there.)
 
Chelsea or Everett? ;) Outside of 128 or 495 - maybe the Plymouth area?

And before anyone suggests that this thread is out of place, I'd say the housing prices around Boston are pretty paranormal.
 
Did you perhaps mean to post this in the "Community" forum? Or do you think that the house prices are paranormal? Or maybe you are just generally skeptical about house prices....

To address your main question, however, I thought that house prices here in Toronto were crazy until I read your post. Are you serious? A two bedroom in a BAD neighbourhood for $400K? :eek: (I think that is the first time I have used the eek smiley. That is how crazy I think those prices are)

I think you need to be concerned about what is driving the market. In the early 80's, at least around here, there was a lot of buying and quick flipping of real estate that drove the market prices to unprecedented levels. Of course, like some sort of grand pyramid scheme, it all came crashing down.

Now, however, the housing market seems to be driven more by what I would refer to as "real" demand - people buying a house not as a quick flip investment, but to live there. This is mainly due (again, here at least) to low interest rates that make mortgages more affordable and attractive.

So, do you know if the demand is "real" deman, or are people buying and flipping like Tom Vu and other late night get rich in your sparetime hucksters?
 
Move to Fitchburg or Leominster, buy a decent old Victorian for $200k, and take the commuter rail into Boston, and the T to work. Fitchburg is the end of that rail line, takes about an hour and twenty-three minutes to get from there to the Harvard Square stop on the Red Line. Spend your time on the train reading.

Send me the $200k-$600k you save. :cool:
 
I almost went to work in Boston. The cost of living, however, was just ridiculous.
 
I've got to say that I'm shocked as well. $400K for a home in a bad neighborhood is more than I can handle.......I'd be thinking about moving.

Here in good ol' Dayton, Ohio, I have a one and one-half story brick home with two bedrooms and a half bath upstairs and one bedroom and a full bath on the main floor. It has a full basement with a rec room, laundry, and office area. It was built in 1936 and has hardwood floor, a fireplace, and plaster walls.

It's not big, but it's in one of the nicest suburbs of Dayton. The school system is one of the top ten in the entire state. Police, fire protection and other city services are ideal.

I paid about $61K for it about 20 years ago. I figure it would sell for $150-160K today.

Your post reminds me why I've never wanted to live on the east or west coast of the US.

All hail the Midwest.......home of affordable housing!
 
Do you think it might have anything to do with it being the State Capital?


I think you will find a concentration of government bureaucracy in any area is inflationary wherever you find it.


It is an excuse for politicians at all levels, to give themselves raises while they raise taxes..
 
Mr. Skinny said:
Here in good ol' Dayton, Ohio, I have a one and one-half story brick home with two bedrooms and a half bath upstairs and one bedroom and a full bath on the main floor. It has a full basement with a rec room, laundry, and office area. It was built in 1936 and has hardwood floor, a fireplace, and plaster walls.

It's not big, but it's in one of the nicest suburbs of Dayton. The school system is one of the top ten in the entire state. Police, fire protection and other city services are ideal.

I paid about $61K for it about 20 years ago. I figure it would sell for $150-160K today.

Your post reminds me why I've never wanted to live on the east or west coast of the US.

All hail the Midwest.......home of affordable housing!
Click to expand...
After a little over a year on this board, this thread is becoming a series of personal "firsts" for me. The eek smiley would have been enough for me, but now I get to say something that I have never before felt the urge to say until I saw this post from Mr. Skinny.




















Bite me, Skinny :p
 
LO effing L, Thanz. :)

Welcome to the not-so-sooper-sekrit-Bite Me, Skinny- society. :p
 
You think that’s bad ?
Pity the Japanese, some of them have had to take out 100 year mortgages due to the astronomical land prices over there.

Not a nice thing to inherit. :(

Bite me harder, Skinny. :)
 
Mr. Skinny said:

All hail the Midwest.......home of affordable housing!
Click to expand...
Except Chicago, my sister just bought a 2 BR condo in Uptown (not a real good neighborhood) for $300k. And the rehab work on it (it was converted 7 yrs. ago) was sub-par. Single family? $700k and up. In my part of town (Lincoln Park) $400k will get you a small vacant lot (25' x 75'), which is why I rent.

Of coarse if you buy a sh--hole in the ghetto it's a little cheaper, roaches and crackheads included free of charge.
 
I haven't looked at house prices in the SF Bay Area lately, but I am pretty sure they are just as bad out here. I keep thinking they have to go down sometime, but they just keep going up. It's uncanny. A few years ago, I saw a studio apartment being sold for -- hold on to something -- one million dollars.

Perhaps you didn't hear me.

A STUDIO apartment.

One MILLION dollars ($1,000,000).

This was the height of the dot-com days, so it probably doesn't exist anymore, and I hope nobody really paid that, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone did.
 
JesFine said:
I haven't looked at house prices in the SF Bay Area lately, but I am pretty sure they are just as bad out here.
Click to expand...
When I worked for a very short time in the Bay Area, real estate prices really floored me. A modest (and by that, I mean very small) apartment just a few blocks from my office was way out of my price range. And there was nothing special about this apartment at all. It was about thirty years old, and although it was in good shape, it was showing its age.

I asked some of the folks at the office how they could afford to live in the area (they made much more money than I did), and many of them said that they they couldn't afford to live in the area. Some of them lived between 60 to 100 miles from the office.
 
I went looking for housing around Foxburro and found the prices pretty reasonable. As I recall there was a large colonial for $180,000, which would be a huge leap up from my little 3 bed room ranch which would sell for $450,000. Unfortunatly I was not able to get the transfer (and a month latter they closed down the plant so that was a good thing.)
 
Thank you all for reminding me why I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere. I have a 1300+ sq. ft. home, hardwood floors, 3br 2 ba on .8 of an acre. I closed for 55k and have gained 10k in value in 5 years.


:p



Boo
 
In my Midwest neighborhood, a 1400 sq ft. house just sold that was being listed at $595,000. I rent, too.
 
I'll stay where I am, thank you. We have a 3500 sq. ft. home in one of the very best neighborhoods in town, with 5 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, maid's room, utility room, two living areas and a room for my studio, and a two car garage, all on 1/4 acre. We paid $136,000 for it.
 
I guess I am also concerned for many of my friends and family who bought in the past 2-3 years. If the prices collapse, they will not recover for a long time, plus interest rates are going up. It will be interesting to say the least to see what happens. I have a 1 hour and 50 minute commute right now on the rail, which is terrible, but I read a lot. I am also oncerned about the collapse effecting the economy and business i.e. we may not have jobs if that market collapses. But what is the worst that can happen?
 
Michael Redman said:
In my Midwest neighborhood, a 1400 sq ft. house just sold that was being listed at $595,000. I rent, too.
Click to expand...

Where do you live? South Minneapolis?

I'm in a 1st ring Minneapolis suburb and our tiny little townhouse was 125k. Probably worth about 150k now. We've only had it 3 years.
 
Pittsburgh has one of the lowest housing costs of any metropolitan area in the country. You can still get nice homes in decent neighborhoods for under $100,000. Between $100K and $200K you can get homes you couldn't even dream of touching anywhere else. If you want a half-million or million dollar palace, we've got those too.
 
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