Middle class house prices aren’t really related any more to the neighborhood but to the jobs and the schools.
Around here (near Bath, England) $300000 will get you a downmarket 3 bed semi and we’re considered affordable. Go 15 miles West and the prices start to fall as the commutes get longer.
One of my kids lives in a terrace in North London, on street parking only, 1200 sq foot of land and 2000sq ft of house. Convenient for the London colleges, the Law Courts and government. School rated outstanding. Another lives in East London, semi, off street parking, 1200 sq ft land and 2000 sq ft of house. School rated outstanding. We live in a small town near Bath, small retirement house, 5000sq ft., double garage, 1500 sq foot of house. North London is filthy with high crime and poor services. East London is a bit cleaner, better services, close to park and station to the financial districts. Our area is clean, safe, near park, schools, services, houses for sale don’t normally even make it to the agent’s window let alone Rightmove.
So:
N London $3 million ($1.5 million increase since purchase)
E London $1.8 million
Small town $500 000.
Having said that, I suspect that the next occupier of our house will either extend it massively or build a second house on the plot, whereas the London houses are already extended to the limit. But that huge differential can be explained almost entirely by income.
In the the town i grew up, Aspen Colorado, houses start at $8.5 million USD now, which is actually dip in the market. many homes are in the hundreds of millions. $300,000 gets you a 1 week a year share in an apartment on an off season week. You see an ads like this: Apartment #53 Week 11 ($300k).
Makes me sad too, because it was/is a beautiful town, all the real working folks now live at least 2 towns over. renting in town is NOT an option for any working class people.
That sounds exactly like what’s happening in Auckland here in NZ as the median house price pushes inexorably to the million dollar mark. In fact the opposition Labour party recently got accused of racism for showing a disproportionately large percentage of Auckland houses were sold to buyers with “Chinese sounding names” compared to the Chinese resident population. Of course the government doesn’t have any stats on who is buying the houses which makes it easy for them to cry racism.
I remember an ad we had on TV in NZ here for years. It hasn’t been on TV now for probably 15 years if not more, but it used to start with a couple budgeting to buy a house and stating that the average house price was $120K. It’s almost laughable now if it wasn’t so tragic. I bought my house for three times that value, and it’s probably worth four times that value now just 4 years later.
Here in Bombay, India, in a middle class area (which can have some really shabby buildings) $300,000 will get you a 1BHK apartment with no amenities.
Willing to travel a few KMs towards even further from city center? This will get you a ground floor 2BHK of 800sqft (so you can imagine how small the rooms are) with access to some amenities.
In the main city, $300,000 might get you a mouse hole.
None of the ads mention this of course, its told once you visit the property.
And there are people here who would want to tax such increases as “capital gains”, without worrying where the poor resident-owner can get the money for that between all the other costs and expenses. And of course without any corresponding reimbursement mechanism when the house value falls later.
$300,000/£200,000 in Oxford will get you a one bedroom flat in an undesirable area. Below that and you are starting to look at areas with a reputation for violent crime. The house I rent is valued between $400,000 and $450,000, and it has some bad problems with the plumbing, and the amount of power sockets is inadequate for the 21st century.
About a quarter of the houses on sale in Oxford right now are $1,000,000 or higher, and there is barely anything below the stamp duty threshold of £125,000 (about $195,000) so you will be paying between %2 and %12 extra tax on that too.
Doesn’t anyone watch House Hunters International and other ‘reality’ shows like that?
The trick for you dollar/pound/euro earning folks is always to move to some remote island with a weak currency. So you can say goodbye to middle class and get an instant upgrade to ‘the local rich foreigner with the seaside villa’.
Yeah, you’ve never heard of the place and there’s not much for the likes of you to do there, but that’s why it’s cheap.
That’s kind of what my neighborhood is like. It doesn’t matter how the house looks, if you’re fronting on one of the lakes you can easily ask 2 million for the property. Want to live near one of the tech giants? There’s a ton of housing in Redmond, and none of it is cheap. Now, I’m getting a very good deal on my house, but there’s small rental apartments in Redmond that rent for more than my 4-bedroom home.
I find I don’t mind renting so much after my dad, who owned his own home from the time he was 25, told me “If I had to do it all again I might never buy a house.”
Kirkland is getting all the overflow out of Redmond and Bellevue, it seems like. Same thing happened to me in So Cal; I lived in Ventura, and as Santa Barbara prices shot into the stratosphere even the horrible neighborhoods of Ventura went through the roof.
Mr. Bells works in Bellevue and he already hates his commute. We’re only in South Juanita.
A bit a go we had a neighbor with great danes that would bark for hours. We were prepared to sell and move (they decided to move first) and rent for 2 bedrooms for anything nearish our house was more than our current mortgage payment, and with me telecommuting at the time 3 bedrooms was a minimum.
At the time we bought the mortgage payment was more than a 2 bedroom rent but not a huge amoutn more so it was a good deal.
Without tools…
Being a CA native, it’s never been “cheap” to live in any of the major metro areas, but man.
I feel for people that are young and trying to start out, especially those in the Bay Area.
Long Island is an odd place in that it is very expensive compared to other places. $300k will basically buy you a beat up college rental or a decent home toward the center of the island as far away from the beaches as possible.
However, compared to close to the beach property elsewhere, it’s quite a deal. I live one mile from the Long Island Sound and, yeah, my house is one of the smaller ones in the neighborhood but it’s on a pretty sizeable chunk of land for a developed area. It cost 400k. In my previous area, you couldn’t be anywhere this close to the water for this kind of money.
But if you saw the house my mom owned in Mississippi for $200k (and my sister says she way overpaid for the house) it’d make you cry - an original Arts and Crafts home fully restored with gorgeous high ceilings, woodwork on the walls and ceilings, beautiful original light fixtures - it was such a show house. And for twice that I live in a tiny cottage with less than 1000 sq ft.
There are apparently quite some devices out there that work as negative conditioning. When they detect dog bark, they emit ultrasonic whine. One of many here:
Yeah, like the other Seattleites say. Round here, $300K gets you a 600 sqft 1bed condo, or a fixer-upper with ‘potential’.
You can double that and you’ll still struggle to find much, and what is there will be snapped up as soon as it goes on the market.
You could have bought Edith Macefield’s (not up to code) nail house, but now it’s being moved to the San Juans (allegedly, if someone stumps up the cash for that).
renting in town is NOT an option for any working class people.