Was a report in the L.A. Times this morning that median home prices rose 20 percent over a year ago. Median being in Southern California, it's the price that 50 percent of homes sold are below that price, and 50 percent of homes sold are above that price (includes condos and townhomes)

The median prie was 300,000 average. this includes L.A. proper, inland empire (prices dropped) Sn Diego, Orange County (rose significantly) etc.

This 300,000 price seems like a bargain to me, as in West Los Angeles/santa monica a 3-bedroom home about 1600 square feet goes for 850K - 1.1MM.

:cuss:

But you get to ride your bike year-round.

I wish I could buy a house for under $200k. I'm in San Diego, you can't get anything decent for under $400k. Even at that price, you're sacrificing something (neighborhood, size, lot, etc).

But you get to ride your bike year-round.

Talk about californication, my house is bargain basement price in comparison to the 3 bedroom home/ 1600 feet.

http://www.trulia.com/property/31099...-65781#photo-2

The condition of the house looks okay, but there are so many variables in that sight unseen. It could use a few thousand dollars touch up here and there or find out it has mold and you have to gut it out and spend some serious jack on the place. Regardless for 21 acres it seems like a great deal.
Hopefully there isn't a pig farm close to it.

my case for example:

I bought 30 acres of land. already had water and electricity. mostly all timber. had a metal shed on a slab w/power ran to it and a very shitty trailer house. all kinds of junk and brush grown up.

spent every weekend and day off for 4 months, over there clearing brush, loading up junk and hauling it off. hired a guy w/a trackhoe to destroy the trailer, burn what would burn, then bury it. while he was there, I had him dig a pond.

next step was to partition the shed in half and build a small apartment(1bedroom, bathroom, washroom, kitchen/living room). I believe at the time, I did this for about $8k. also, during this time we sold our old house/property, put a shitload of stuff in storage and lived 2 weeks with my sister in law(which was tolerable, since I was spending all my time at the new place).

moved into the apartment and lived there for 9 months while we had a new house built. this was great, because we were there every day to oversee the construction and keep involved.

this might not work for everyone, but it certainly worked out for us, and it actually saved us a bunch of money. most people considered it "crappy land" when we bought it, but after the work we put into it, the increase in value has been pretty amazing. people tell us all the time that they can't believe it's the same place.

sec

That is pretty freaking awesome!

I still want come live with sec and be his groundskeeper.

(no homo)

hell, come on down and try it for a weekend. your competition is my 85 year old great uncle, though. fyi, today he's bagging up 3 dead coons that were getting in the trash cans. I value that.
(no homo back)
sec

This. If bank owned, squeeze the crap out of them. They want it off their books...

That sucks. The house we just bought in OP for about $210,000 built in 1996 is 2300 square feet plus another 1,000 or so in the basement should we get it finished. I am sure most of KC is the same way.

I couldn't stand to live somewhere were the price per square foot is $400. We aren't even over a hundred.

Boston is right up there with the most expensive real estate in the country. In the really nice towns around here, a 25,000 sq. ft. lot (no house, or a house you PLAN to knock down) is still over half a mill.

I don't know if this is relevant, but I'm an evangelist against commuting, so I'll present it here.

Assume that you have a 30-minute commute for 15 miles each way. What does that cost you?

Assume minimum wage for your time at around $7.50 an hour. So that's $7.50 a day for the round trip. Now assume 30 miles at an average vehicle cost of 50 cents per mile for maintenance, fuel, and replacement. That's $15 a day.

So you're paying $22.50 a day. If you work 21 days per month on average, that's $472 per month.

How much extra house can you get for $472 per month? Keep in mind that interest is tax deductible and that a house will generally appreciate slightly.

If you take what you would spend on a house, you can add $210,000 to the purchase price and still break even if the house is walking distance to work. The math goes like this, with a few assumptions.

Price increment: $210,000
Monthly payment (30 year loan at 3.75%): $972
Interest writeoff (assume half of payment is interest, and you write off 30% of that: $145 a month subtracted from your cost.
Appreciation (assume 2% over a given year on the price difference: $350 per month subtracted from your cost.

Total: $477 a month total cost.

Now, this is from a total wealth perspective. The house will cost you more cash flow because you're not getting paid minimum wage for your commute and you don't get immediate cash from appreciation, but if you don't like my analysis you can adjust downward and not pay the whole $210,000 to adjust that out. There's an increment on taxes and insurance and maintenance and stuff, too, that I'm ignoring for convenience, but you get the point.

Commuting is a terrible financial investment. It's essentially wasted money unless there's some absolutely compelling reason you have to do it. I recognize that there are some compelling reasons sometimes, but when you run the numbers it's far better to invest your wealth in real estate rather than gasoline and antifreeze. Assuming that you aren't also using the antifreeze to kill annoying people.

That does seem really cheap. I wonder if it's like Denver, though, where there are lots of sales in cheap neighborhoods that we don't see. I think Denver's median is around $200,000 or a little higher, and that's around the price of a 1-bedroom condo in my part of the city. However, you go out near the airport and there are 3-bedroom homes galore that were foreclosed on in the low $100s.