Can someone explain this to me?
$375,000!!!
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3236-Brass-Buttons-Trl-Austin-TX-78734/29362607_zpid/?
The lot is tiny too! Just .35 acres.
“Austin”
Location, Location, Location. It’s been this way since Og the Caveman was flipping former bear dens.
More ridiculous even than a shack-like home for a third of a mil (the lot is probably worth 99% of that) though are the McMansion-type homes that you see all over the place. The trades people who work on my house also of course work on a lot of other houses, many of which are very expensive. According to them–and other anecdotal evidence, as well as eyeballing the atrocities–it is not uncommon for houses costing upwards of $500k, even close to a million, to have things like no access panel to change the AC/furnace filter, miswired electrical systems, sub-standard plumbing, etc.
Ughhh, that’s nuts.
In DC, a one bedroom apartment in a decent neighborhood will run you close to half a million. Location matters!
Also .35 acres is not a tiny lot by any means. It’s nearly double my lot size, and I have a decent sized lot for my area. My lot is .19 acres, and most new construction by me is on .1 acre lots.
I don’t know Austin but the standard Chicago lot is .07 acres. And while there’s a wide range across the City there’s a lot of areas where an empty standard lot is worth more than that.
Our house was built in the 70s, and we have a .25 acre lot, which is way bigger than the newer developments, which end up with less than .10 acres.
They don’t build new homes with yards, at least not in the city or near suburbs.
Housing market is stupid though. Our house was bought for 250k, and comparable estimates in the area have our value at 410-420k. The value has just skyrocketed in the last 6 years.
There are places I know of where people buy homes at ridiculous prices and then tear them down to the foundation and rebuild. Granted that occurs mostly on the coast but we kind of did that for a client here once. And my older brother did it, although he had not planned to but the inspector basically condemned the old house he bought.
New homes here, for the most part, have backyards that you could honestly just call a dog run. Very small yards even for 2,000ssf homes.
Wanting some semblance of a yard while still having access to “stuff” really cut down the areas I could buy in, unfortunately. I’m just shy of a quarter acre and it’s still one of the largest lots in this neighborhood. And even in a very LCOL area the estimate is up 25% since end of 2020.
We have just over an acre, on a corner. One road is dirt, the other is paved but is a cul-de-sac with a handful of other houses. All of them around us were also built in the '70s, by a builder who shall we say did not place quality of construction high on the priority list. My assessed value has gone up steadily, but is far under what houses are actually selling for. No way I could afford to buy this house on this lot today.
Likewise, I am incredibly fortunate to have purchased my house when I did.
I knew we had made a great purchase a few years ago (2019), when the house next to us sold for 60+% of what we paid. It was half the size and had MAJOR work to be done (like relocating the septic system) and hadn’t been updated since the 70s where our place has been rebuilt from the studs a few years prior.
The quality of the build on a house varies from builder to builder. Our first house was built on a state program for first time homebuyers. The quality of construction on that house far exceeds this one that we paid more than twice as much for 10 years later.
When my brother was looking to build a house he went out and looked at some homes built in an expensive area and he came back saying the quality was worse than our state bonded house.
There are quite a few YouTube channels with home inspectors checking out new construction and the quick summary is: Yikes! So much stuff done wrong, left out, damaged, etc.
Why does this feel like a personal attack? Lol. (Sold my house in 2021, moved to Austin metro area, rented instead of buying in case I didn’t keep the job.)
The minimum home price in the Austin area is about 300k. I’ve started to see some homes just barely creep below 300k… for like 1,100sq foot homes.
(To be fair, this is fairly prime real estate in a gentrified area. The people buying this will tear it down and build a 1.5m home in it.)
The average price of a home in Fresno is, according to what I googled, $367,000. And Fresno is considered affordable compared to other California cities.
The median here is ~$275,000 and that’s exactly what my house is now worth (which seems crazy to me).
There was an old house several miles from me that sold for a ridiculous amount a couple years ago:
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/17989-Algoma-Ave-Sand-Lake-MI-49343/23740485_zpid/
They did remodel the outside, but it still isn’t worth the half million they claim on Zillow.
Madison WI is 385k