$799k here in Seattle.
$565k median home price for me in the Beaverton/Hillsboro OR area.
The median sale price of a home in 02474 (Arlington, MA) was $957K last month. We’re not even at a high point!
As a few posters have mentioned, Boston area is expensive AF.
We have a lot of stuff like this around me:
That’s not 1.375M for the whole structure. That’s for half. 1.4M so you can share walls with someone and have basically no back yard.
I couldn’t afford to move here if I didn’t already own something I bought 15 years ago.
Lol, if I saw a home for sale at that price in San Diego, it would for sure be a scam, but even the scammers know that price is too low to be believable. Two bedroom condos here run $900k and usually come with hefty HOAs (and about $10k per year in taxes alone.) I am always scratching my head wondering who is buying at those prices.
A friend of mine works for a tech company here in Seattle. Bought a house in '22 (before the interest rates started to rise) for 1.2 million. House is old- windows have never been replaced, and the garage door doesn’t open. This, for 1.2mil. Jeezus. But it’s in one of the nice, old, single-family-zoned neighborhoods, so I guess that’s what it is.
We used to toy with the dream of moving to the central coast of California. One day while visiting we chanced upon an open house being held by a guy I grew up with. That house was in need of a serious remodel, and it was going for $700k, this probably 10 years ago. That’s pretty much when we gave up our idea of living on the coast.
Yup. One of my good friends is a contractor and he basically makes his living fixing those kinds of problems. He’s a real perfectionist (to the point of being counterproductive at times) so the state of the industry drives him crazy, it’s a frequent rant of his.
There’s such a demand that many of these builders are hiring crews full of unskilled/inexperienced laborers and there’s no time for proper oversight, it’s just rush to slap a house together and off to the next one.
My niece just put in an offer on a place this weekend. It’s a very old townhouse, 850ish sqft. Just shy of $400k. For perspective, a brand new townhouse 2.5X that size a decade ago was $175k. Housing prices are completely insane.
They are pretty insane. I bought my townhouse for $89k back in 2011, and my neighbor’s house just got bought (identical to mine) for $280k. A part of me thinks: this is crazy, you should sell too, and make a bunch of money doing it! But then… where would we live? Rent prices are really high right now too. Eventually we’d need to buy a home and I have no idea if there’s a crash on the horizon or not.
So about 25 years ago, I looked at a completely dilapidated historic house in a historic neighborhood that was just beginning to recover. The house was $250K and probably needed at least $250K of work just to be livable. I should have done it.
Within 5 years, that house had been flipped and properly restored and sold for over $1M. The houses in that neighborhood of that size now routinely are > $2M.
I guess what I’m saying is that it’s not always about what you’re getting. Sometimes it’s about what you can get if you put in the work. Maybe that neighborhood is similar?
It’s the lot location. This is in a community that has easy access to Lake Austin & the Colorado River via community parks and boat ramps. So you take the already inflated Austin home values and add the inflation of “lake life” and you get your ridiculous price. The empty lot just down the street from this house is listed for $225,000, so the value is in the location, not the structure. Comps in the area range from $450,000-$600,000 for remodels of similar size homes (looks like the flippers take these little 2bd/1ba cottages and turn them into 3bd/2ba homes) to $1.5 mil - $2.5 mil for complete tear down and rebuilds of 3-4bd/3ba homes close to the river.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3005-Brass-Buttons-Trl-Austin-TX-78734/29361809_zpid/
At .35 acres of flat/clear land there is room enough to tear down the existing structure and build someone a 2-story 4bd/3ba lake house with landscaped outdoor party area that will sell for $1.5mil easy, so I’m surprised a custom home builder hasn’t snatched this property up already.
Yeah, I think the issue is, if you need a place to live in, it isn’t fun to live in the house currently being flipped. Definitely worth it if you can.
When we were house hunting, we looked at a house that was on a bank auction for foreclosure, and I we put in a relatively competitive offer, 290k. (It was 2500 sq ft 4 bedroom, finished basement with a huge storage room. It was in a wealthy suburb where houses that size were generally 350k+. Issues were, no plumbing was turned on, so we wouldn’t know of issues til after sale, appliances were all gone, walls were a mess and needed painting, and there were a couple things that needed touching up. But, it had a master suite with walk-through closet into nursery/study, jet tub, wood burning free standing stove (in master suite) as well as a backyard deck that wrapped around between the kitchen and master suite, with a small garden in the back. The living room, was an open concept kitchen with hardwood floors and a second wood burning stove. Basement had a finished side for a second living room, and a bedroom (with egress window), as well as a fully built out storage room (same size as master bedroom) with built in shelving.
My wife was very angry about that offer being put in, because the house was not “move-in” ready, and she didn’t want to move in and have to do a bunch of work. I said that it was just really in need of a coat of paint and appliances, and we could get my Dad, brother and I to paint the entire house in a weekend, and get appliances in (wedding gift asks), and it would be fine. The gamble was the plumbing, but even a 2-3k hit for repairs would be worth it. It ended up getting sold directly to a realty group, where they flipped it and sold it for a bunch of extra cash.
That is the house I 3rd most wanted, when we were looking. The 1st went for, not kidding, 50k over asking, but that was a beautiful home, almost 3k sq ft and the master bedroom opened into a GREENHOUSE! I really wanted that home. Basement was finished, but clearly had water issues with 3! sump pumps installed and a telltale water line on the baseboard. But it was HUGE, with a pool table and sauna. They were asking 260k, and it went for 310k. I still dream about having that greenhouse.
I did buy a house in a similar situation. We put offers in on multiple houses that were move in ready. First house we put an offer in we came in at 50k over asking, and lost by 100k. The house was listed for $710k, and sold for $860k.
Similar happened at a few places (one I loved was up on a hill and had a view of Mt Hood out the living room window).
Our house was a complete remodel. Needed appliances, had wallpaper from the 70s, and needed to be repiped and have asbestos remediation. Even with me doing most of the work it was at least 60k in repairs on top of the $630k purchase price.
It was a lot of work, but fortunately we had 6 weeks after close before our lease ended, so I had flexibility to do it.
I see your typos still reflect this conflict… ;)
Obviously everything is very relative, but for me this is the “Ridiculously [cheap] prices for crappy homes on giant lots”.
For me it’s just the latest reminder of why I left Austin 7 years ago.
I had almost exactly the same experience, and sometimes wistfully think of the house we passed up. On the other hand, the house we ended up choosing we could enjoy living in right away, and it let us focus on things besides renovations and property values. That lifestyle has to appeal to you.
I’ve told me wife for years we can sell our way overpriced house north of Seattle and move to New Mexico, someplace WARM with little rain, and pay at least half or more of the total price of the new house with our measly earnings from the house we still owe a lot on and our other insane expenses. AND, she constantly bitches about the weather and wanting to move but just never gives me the green light. UGH.
Even with the current price retraction on both home values and rents across much of the US, Seattle is still holding roughly steady. I can’t imagine tech companies can afford to lay off many more people, since someone has to write and maintain the code, so I’m assuming this is equilibrium for now. The inner half of the neighborhoods (which are generally older builds, since Seattle expanded above 85th St in 1954, exactly the year my house was built) have decreased by up to 4%, but the outer neighborhoods have balanced that out with marginal increases.
That said, the market has slowed down to a glacial pace, even compared to when we bought right after the flipping frenzy first slowed. Supply and demand are in equilibrium, but there’s not a lot of either.
I’ll go the opposite.
I received an offer for my 1400sq ft w/ full finished basement house with an attached 2 story 2 1/2 stall garage on 11.80 acres for $3.54, and they would pay the closing costs.
And I thought the $7000 offer I got several years ago was insulting.
Both were from a company that scans the public records and mails offers out to the owners and hope someone is in debt and just wants to off load the property.