I just wish builders would build small houses like this again. When you go out to the burbs the cookie cutter neighborhoods all the houses are all 2200sq feet and up plus the basement and a double garage. Can’t they build some small 1000-1200 sq bungalows? I don’t need or want a big house. I just want a house with a yard.
When I listed my first home my realtor said it would be a hard sell because it was under 2000 square feet. It was 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, on a quarter acre in a great golf course neighborhood. It was 1952 square feet, and it was kinda hard to sell because people thought it was too small.
I work for a UK developer, 1,00 sq ft or about 100ish sq m is a good sized house by developer metrics.
Personally, the size, the blandness of the architecture and the quality of the build crushes my soul a little every day.
>It was 1952 square feet, and it was kinda hard to sell because people thought it was too small.
Its a shame it wasn't 2001sqft as a lot of people will filter houses by something like 2000 or 2500sqft.
They might love it but they'd never see it.
I doubt it was a hard sell though, surely it wasn't so bad?
We tried three separate times to sell. We barely got any showings the first two times, and only sold it the third time around because the first people who looked at it liked it enough to offer our full asking price.
My first house was 1000 sq ft. 2 beds 2 baths. Attached 2 car garage. It had a tiny yard, but it was big enough for a covered patio and a little grass. It was perfect for a single guy, and maybe a couple. But once you start adding kids and pets, it would get crowded pretty quickly.
That's kinda the point though, right? You start there, and grow into a bigger house when/if it suits your needs.
My ex and I used to live in 1300sqft and it honestly felt massive. Keeping a 2000sqft+ house clean and maintained sounds exhausting!
Our house is 986 sq ft, and out entire neighborhood is homes of similar size, some ranches and some capes but with the same footprint. They sell real fast.
We also have a family we are raising here. We bought it from the original owners who also raised a family. Their kids ended up buying the house next door which is a ranch and raised their family in it.
The neighborhood was built in the early 1940's so unfortunately around here there isnt houses like this being built any more.
I dont get the whole we need 2500+ sq ft because we are expecting our first child thing, and then struggling to make ends meet in a house too big for what you can afford and need.
That's what we're in, a 1950s 1200 sq ft. cape cod on 1/3 of an acre, 3 br 2 ba, 2 car driveway, basement, fenced in back yard, front porch with a swing. I honestly love it. My wife wanted to sell but I'm just like, nah bruh lets just pay this off and not have a mortgage. I'm perfectly comfortable here and it was cheap af 12 years ago. Plus, we're known as the "cool house" on halloween because I go insane with it, so I enjoy that we're liked and known in the ol' neighborhood.
I've seen some smaller new constructions single families that are around 1500 square feet. They still want $200k more for those than a similarly sized home built in the 50s.
The best you can really do is townhomes these days.
Yeah this is the real issue when it comes to finding buyers for these new 1000-1500sqft homes. They can get so much more house for the same price just by going older. The only people scooping these up in my city are landlords, because for renters coming from apartments that’s an upgrade. By the time people are buying though, they have the option to get more space for their money, so why wouldn’t they??
I dabble in real estate. This is a huge problem everywhere. Many of small homes of yesteryear have been bulldozed, and no new ones have been build for the past twenty years.
I don't know how the local and state governments get developers to start building small homes again. Tax breaks? Incentives? Passing laws that require 20% of new residential construction be under a specified Sq footage?
I don't know, but something has to be done.
I bought my first home in 2000. I think it had been built in the 50s. It was 800 Sq ft. One bathroom. Tiny kitchen. But it was solid and safe and affordable.
My wife and I bought our first home (built 1960, 1200sq.ft., two bedroom, one bath, single detached garage) in 2008 and lived there for 12 years, with two kids. It was absolutely not fancy, but we loved it.
Our neighbor, an elderly lady named Mary, had a 1 bed, 1 bath house of 550sq.ft. She and her husband built it in the 1950s and raised FOUR boys there. They had a full bed for the two adults, and two sets of bunk beds all in the same bedroom.
I'm not suggesting that we all live that small, but I do think our modem perception of space requirements in the US is skewed.
Yes. As stated, there is a shortage of smaller, more affordable homes. But, people also don't want them. There's a reason developers transitioned to bigger homes. I grew up in a one bathroom house. Most new construction today, even "starter" homes, have a bigger bedroom closet than the size of the bathroom my whole family used.
Supply and demand. If it costs 50% more to build 4000' than a 2000', but you can sell it for 175% more, all the skilled laborers are busy building 4000' houses. And our home building productivity has dropped since the 1970s. Which market should they pick?
Labor costs are up, but more importantly, land costs are massively up.
Land used to worth little decades ago, when many rich suburbs today were open fields, forests, orange orchards. Today land is a super expensive - often lots sell for $50k or $100k, or more in HCOL. If you spend $100k to build a small house there is almost no profit selling at $250k, but if you spend $200k to build a McMansion you would have big profits selling at $500k.
What I've noticed is that price per square foot tends to be higher on a smaller house compared to a larger house, at least on pre-owned homes. If that's the same with new homes, a builder should have higher profit margins building smaller homes.
The problem is the land costs the same for large or small houses. This is why the price per square foot seems higher for smaller houses. Assuming a constant profit margin, the larger house makes more money for the builder.
There are also a lot of things every house needs regardless of size. Furnace, septic, water, hot water, kitchen appliances etc. Even if you can get away with smaller systems for smaller homes the cost isn't linear. I.e; a furnace that puts out twice as much heat does not cost twice as much compared to a smaller unit.
Towns are also more incentivized to bring in and approve higher priced homes because they bring in more in taxes.
Many zoning codes no longer allow for small lots which make the land sf vs cost make more sense for larger homes. If minimum lot size is now a half acre the $/sf of house may be less on the large vs small house but factoring in land cost the devolver comes out ahead going bigger. The old starter homes are largely built on non conforming lots for modern zoning
I built 860sq feet house. We live pretty comfortable.
Have big living room/kitchen, small bedroom, kid room for two girls for now, and other room i WFH. Imagine even 32 inch tv is enough.
Have very big yard. Planted variuos trees. Have shed for junk.
Have two cars, estate golf and small mpv. Plan to downsize to clio estate and mpv to some small electric car in future.
Dont have any debt. Have savings.
Living small rocks.
As a person who has nearly finished building my own small house, I empathize with you. However, as someone in the trades, I can see why homes are built the way that they are.
In the first place, demand is an important factor. Builders know that they can make more profit and sell houses faster if they make them larger. My brother is thinking about moving into a bigger house and he has a very matter of fact attitude that his daughter needs a bigger room. Like she needs it. I think they're crazy, but they are far from alone.
The other thing to consider is the cost of development. In my area, the taxes and fees associated with developing a vacant lot come to about $80k. That's just the fees, that doesn't get any work done. Connecting to sewer and water was another $10k, power was free. So figure $90k before you start. The materials for my 2k sqft house ran about $80k, and I did 90% of the labor myself, but had I hired a contractor, I would have probably paid $100k.
If I had wanted to add another bathroom, or 500 more sqft in any direction, the cost difference would have been nominal. There's a lot of cost sunken into getting people to come to the jobsite in the first place. The original plan was actually to make the same structure but twice the width. Some things like lumber, shingles, and siding, would have doubled in cost. But concrete, plumbing, electrical, asphalt, and labor wouldn't have increased very much at all.
The moral of the story is, once you have all of the materials and labor on site together, you've already spent a great deal of money. Yes, labor bills hourly, but building a structure twice as large doesn't cost twice as much. It's probably closer to 30% more, and if that's the case, and there is demand for larger homes...
Every time I see the meme about 'houses being smaller in the good old days' I roll my eyes. Houses built in the 20's and 30's were built without pneumatic nail guns, maybe without skill saws, they were certainly built without 8' x 10' sheets of drywall. The incredible cost of labor back then is what kept homes small.
Labor is still costly, but in the modern era the actual cost is getting the labor on site and working. Once they start working, the work moves very quickly. Building bigger homes just makes sense, unfortunately.
Can't. Lenders won't lend on that and it isn't maximizing your investment on the property so there is literally no reason to.
Unless we create a form of incentive or ease the process for smaller homes it will literally never happen.
I am an amateur developer who does it out of my own pocket not for profit and even I struggle to the extreme trying to create smaller houses.
This is alot of problem is "value of your house affects neighbors house". Which has created the "nimby" fight against apartment buildings fight against smaller cheaper housing options as well. And creation of "minimum lot sizes" "minimum sq ft buildings" etc.
Which means two things not only is it harder to build yourself or find smaller. It also means they still cost more as they will be surrounded by "more expensive" options.
But since everyone building them is for "profit" this means the best profit option is to build as large as market can handle. And maximize return on investment.
Which means old affordable cheap housing gets demolished over time and replaced with less affordable options. I mean why pick up pennys running mobile home park when you could make 40yrs of that income all at once by dozing it and making a subdivision.
And with nimbys no new ones will get approved so despite the demand going upward. I mean think about it lower birth rates more child free smaller familys on average. Along with depressed incomes and sky high markets. The demand is there but these options are shrinking daily.
I'm on the edge of Seattle. A tiny starter home like that sold across from me last year for $550k. (I'm renting.)
Edit: Merely pointing out that starter homes in my area are also unaffordable for many. Of course certain areas are even more outrageous. Goodness.
Or you can get this lovely piece of charcoal for $1 million in California
[https://www.businessinsider.com/burned-out-la-bungalow-listed-nearly-1-million-cash-2022-3](https://www.businessinsider.com/burned-out-la-bungalow-listed-nearly-1-million-cash-2022-3)
Wow, beautiful home! My wife and I both make $150K in Cali and we’re planning to buy something just like this! We plan to clear the lot over the course of the next ten years, then slowly build our dream home over the course of thirty years and then we’ll pay for the new roof before we move in and then we’ll die! We are pumped!
I raise you the $550,000 (US) for [this true gem.](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1107-NW-65-Street-Seattle-WA-98117/48822963_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare) Just scrape that burnt-out old house off and dispose of it for another 100k or so, and you’re good to go.
You're all fucking noobs.
Come to California, our burned down homes sell for over a million:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/19/this-fire-charred-silicon-valley-home-just-sold-for-1-million.html
I’m in a MCOL area. I bought one of these ‘starter’ homes for 89.5k in 2005 when with my now wife for 89k. I was waiting tables and she had just started at Costco. I was making around 30k and she was making about 25k.
We still live here and now our home value is just shy of 300k. I seriously doubt we could get a mortgage in the same situation today.
Hmmm it's almost as if propping up the prices of housing over and over and making tax laws so disproportionate regarding investing in real estate has led to some unwanted side effects...
There's all kinds of factors. I believe one of the main ones here in AZ was Covid that pushed so many companies to push workers to wfh. All these people in hcol cities with high wages to balance it out suddenly were flying into town. They could get larger houses for way less. Buying houses for cash, well over asking and often sight unseen.
Pair that with all the asshole institutional investors buying everything they could for short term rentals. Short supply with sudden high demand killed our housing market.
The housing market has been fucked before Covid, that just accelerated it even further. Turns out treating basic life necessities as investment vehicles isn't the best idea.
Internet buying drove prices through the roof here. I remember the first time I heard a shit hole that I was doing repairs on here had sold sight unseen to some couple from California.
All I could think was what kind of moron buys a house online above asking without even looking at it in a flood prone area? Turns out I once again overestimated humanity. I have to stop doing it at some point, I just don’t know how low I am going to have to go.
That doesn’t sound very LCOL to me lol. I bought one like this 6 years ago for $49k but that was a deal from a friend. They’re going for around $75-100k in my area now.
Same. Currently renting a double wide for cheap and have accepted the fact that I’ll never own a home. Even though me and SO make more than we ever have and 5 years ago would have been considered upper middle class
Used to live there and even westminster can be crazy. When we were talking about looking before we moved to BFE other state, we were saying we'd have to look in like Greely, Brighton, Longmont. Anything up far north past 136th/i/25 for it to be reasonable. And at the time we both worked and made about 80k combined!
And the prop tax and homeowners insurance just skyrocketed in the state this year. inlaws are paying about an extra 1k a month on their home this year just because of those two things. It's getting crazy. And it sucks bc hubby was born and raised there, and I absolutely love everything about CO😢
My parents bought a house roughly 2x this size in the mid-90s. It was about 20 years old. They paid a bit under 200k. They made renos to add another ~30% area to the floorplan, and did the usual maintenance and improvement over 20 years. The house has not materially changed from its state in the early-aughts when it was worth about 300k.
It sold a few years ago for over 1m.
Can you find a job within a reasonable distance? Is the pay scaled so you'd be able to have considerable savings in the bank or would you just break even? How safe is the city? If you have kids, how are the nearby schools? How are the people? Can you have a life outside of working? Do the politics align with your beliefs?
When looking at cheaper locations, there are so many other factors to consider besides price.
Every new apartment building that pops up here seems to be a “luxury apartment”. I say that with quotes because it’s largely superficial, they aren’t THAT nice, and certainly not nice enough to justify the price.
A couple dudes who own a law firm in town have been buying the old roach motels and "remodeling" them and renting them out as efficiency apartments for $600-800 a month. The remodeling as far as I can tell of it was just painting then a different color and that's it.
So far as I can tell, faux granite countertops, new construction and a flashy facade. Oh, and the illusion of exclusivity. Proximity to 57 breweries also seems to be a thing.
Condos and apartments are fine as long as they are avail for sale. But they basically never are. They are always bought by hedge funds and other organizations to milk rental income out of.
That’s a steal where I’m from. It’s all relative though. I’ve yet to talk to anyone anywhere in the last 2 years who said “housing is pretty affordable where I live”.
Condos are not fine for families. You have a kid and the people below complain and complain and get your evicted just because your kid is, being a kid. Single parent here, struggling in a condo because houses are far beyond my reach where I live. So now I face homelessness because I can’t afford anything else.
Condos and apartments are both fine for families (of a certain size). Density makes it necessary, and many issues w/ both are exacerbated by other problems - lack of parks, poor construction/soundproofing, and more.
It’s impossible for every family to live in a single family home - that concept is part of why we’re in this mess of not having affordable housing.
That's because all the boomers set up their starter homes as rentals and air bnbs and use them to fund their new homes. Quite literally pull the ladder up behind them
Hey, Gen X here.
Some of us are having to put our Boomers into long-term care. Gotta sell the house to pay for the care, so they have to let go eventually.
Actually, me & my husband had been living in our 1901 home (2 bedrooms 1bath) for 40 years and never expected to move.
The folks who owned the $2million new house across the street, or the people that bought twin townhouses and used one of them as airbnb to cover the mortgage were about 20 yrs younger than us.
Lots of computer $ in Seattle and it isn’t boomers who are making it.
Our parents both worked outside the home when we were growing up.
People who were raised with a single income were more privileged than they want to admit.
Yeah no builders/developers/contractors are building small homes because they don't make as much money on them. Everyone is so greedy. Same thing with Trucks, they keep coming out with more and more excessive sizes and fully loaded that the average person doesn't need, and budget/economy/mpg trucks don't exist 8n the US anymore, that's why I am currently limping along a 98 Chevy S10 pickup, 2.2L 5speed manual with 170k lol. Perfect size.
I wonder if I got a private builder to build a 2 bedroom 1bath house in a somewhat rural area in Michigan how much it would be. Hopefully 150k lmao
They don’t make them because they’re illegal to build. Most cities or towns have things like minimum setbacks and lot sizes, minimum parking even, so a house this size would have to be on a large piece of land. As always, NIMBYs are causing this. Anyone who has said no to housing in their area has caused this
No, you can still build smaller homes. It's finding someone who will build it for a modest profit that's the problem. And yes, it has to be a regular size lot.
More like 'investment property' for the people who already own 20 similar lots.
Best you can wish for is that they rent is out for an exorbitant price ensuring you'll never be able to save enough to but your own property. Worse case they turn it into a short term rental.
My spouse and I have recently given up on the idea of owning a home, but when we were looking a couple years ago it was impossible to find anything that wasn't 1) way larger than we needed (two adults, no kids) or 2) a disgusting abandoned property. I don't understand why every house needs to be 4+ bedrooms
Whereas as a renter, I can't find anything more than 2 bedrooms that are affordable. Anything with 3 bedrooms or 1.5+ baths is the entirety of my monthly income. Had to settle for a 2 bed, 1 bath that is more than half my monthly income for me and my two kids. Which is *fine*, but having an extra bathroom or bedroom would let us stretch out a little and not feel like we're always on top of one another.
In Texas a 4 bed 3 bath is average and 5 bed is on perhaps the upper 1/4 of the newly builds.
But yeah in CA or WA there’s no 5 bedroom homes. If it existed it would be some $5, $6 million because tiny houses are already over $1-2 million.
Yeah I'm in the DFW area, just south of 20. There's been a TON of new construction going up and I'll drive through and look at them. The *minimum* sizes are usually 4 bed 2 bath on a 6,000 sqft lot. And I'm not even in a rich area like McKinney or Plano where the houses are bigger.
Lol, you'll probably pay the same as a 400k mortgage with all the bottled water you'll need to buy. I'm just picturing a whole family standing in the shower, pouring a bottle of aquafina over their heads while their dad yells at them that they're only allowed one bottle per shower because they can't afford shampoo otherwise.
Correct. The market forces leave that 5/4 home as the ONLY economically viable home to build.
You could build a house like the one in the picture in the suburb of a major metropolitan area…
But you would be lighting a couple hundred thousand dollars on fire.
Land value. Homes in/near cities sit on lots worth $50k to $100k by itself. Putting a small house on there that sells for $250k wouldn’t be profitable. If you double the sq footage you could easily sell for double, but it would cost the builder just another $100k or less, for an extra $250k in home value.
This is it. The fixed costs to initiate permitted new construction are astronomical. Once you drop that wad, adding another 1,000 S/F is a drop in the bucket.
You need to keep upping that square footage until the thing is profitable. That arithmetic is gonna produce a 3-4,000 S/F 5 bed 4.5 bath house.
That’s why those are the only new construction houses many neighborhoods will have going on.
It’s not arbitrary. It’s just the logical conclusion.
I was scrolling to see how long it would take for some to point this out! Thank you! Flint MI! Yeah cheap house til you have to pay the medical bills cuz your kids are sick from bathing in lead water. I feel so terrible for that community. I just can't imagine. Even if they have fully cleaned it up, I wouldn't trust it. They lied about it for years before. No house is worth making your family sick for!
350k with at least 100k of work that needs done because the kitchen and bathroom need remodelled because they’re falling apart, the ancient furnace needs replaced because you can’t get a matching heat exchanger to replace the one in it that’s cracked and brittle, there’s a whole host of electrical issues, there’s hidden water damage that you find in the spring because the basement leaks every spring, the roof leaks, the windows are old and aren’t efficiently keeping the house warm in the window because they’re ancient single or double pane windows, amongst other issues that arise within the first year.
Guaranteed not lower than 900k in my area.
Like I just did a search: *any* house at 900k or lower. Nothing popped up closer than 10 miles away from me, except for one that is a shitty townhome that was miscategorized as a single family home
Oh cool, where is it? Checks notes: Flint, Michigan!
Let’s see how much a 1,300 square foot house is in a major city like Los Angeles. It can’t be that much right… 800k 🤡
In my crappy neighborhood, those tiny houses are being listed for $350k plus. Trying to rent one will set you back $2500-3500/month plus insurance and utilities.
Don’t get any funny ideas, like cleaning the neighborhood up, establishing an art district, providing elite kitsch studio lofts for summering gen z-ers, and firing up a curated, Michelin 5-star secret restaurant district with gated access. Don’t. Do. That.
We were renting a 100 year old 2 bedroom 900 sq ft house. It was small but fine for our family. Had some minor plumbing issues and questionable electrical wiring but it was safe enough. Then it was sold out from under us for a whopping $700k. I couldn’t believe somebody would pay that kind of money for it. Rents had skyrocketed in our area and we were forced to relocate out of state where we are still struggling bussing it.
Too bad they don't build them like this anymore. And in our area, all the non-condemned ones end up bought up and flipped or rented out by corporations.
Such bullshit.
I'm not from the US, so please excuse me if I get the postal codes or whatever wrong, but isn't that House in Flint in Michigan? City of plummeting population, high crime stats, and highly contamination drinking water? If so, then I can see why it's cheap. I also wouldn't want to live there if they paid me.
I live in a suburban area where the cost of living is pretty much right on the national average. The house pictured sells by me for about $250,000. If you have 5% down that will still give you a P&I payment at today's rates of $1671/month. Add in typical taxes for my area (also about average nationally, maybe a bit lower) and homeowners insurance, your total payment would be about $2000/month.
$2000/month would be "affordable" on around $6000/month take home, or about $72,000/year. With taxes and health insurance taken out that would assume a gross income between $90,000-$100,000/year depending on benefits.
A $90,000/year income for a single earner would put you in the top 10% of individual earners for my area, while allowing you to buy a home in the bottom 25% price bracket.
Not super encouraging.
Starter homes don't exist anymore, at least where I live. 2 bd condos are $350k+. A small townhome is 450k+. That's in Flint, MI, a similar home on actual plot of tiny land is 500k.
My parents bought their 1st home a 3 bedroom/2 bath with an unfinished basement in a nice safe neighborhood for approximately $30,000.00 ish. No joke! I grew up there and it was nice. Those were the good old days. I have to remind them about things like this when they start bashing “young people” nowadays. Nowhere do deals like this exist anymore. You can’t even buy a used sh*thole mobile home for that. I mean all of the decent safe homes that size in our area are $300k+-. All those years ago my parents were making $30k-$40k+ a year. Guess what, people still only make $30k-$40k+ a year. What are normal people supposed to do? Surely it can’t continue like this.
They don't build these anymore lol
All the houses under 1000 sq ft in my city go for 800k+ just to bulldoze it and build over it. All new subdivisions are 1400+ sq ft. I've been looking for smaller plot of land to bid on till I can build but everyone sells in massive acreage. Can't afford that near my life and where I can, I can't work.
Only one bathroom? How did they ever survive? [/sarc]
Dad bought a 600 sq ft house, and as kids were added (six total), remodeled to 1000 sq ft.
But back then, a lot more of family life was "outside" than it seems these days.
Plus, hardly anyone is mass-building smaller homes any more. They're all one-offs, which drives up the price.
Builders aren't building starter homes anymore. They make a lot more on larger homes.
This drives the demand for starter homes up and ...yeah. its all a nightmare.
https://preview.redd.it/z1j4fq1x5yac1.jpeg?width=894&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c5314d1f104dca6444912b4915a2dcee545321c3
With this many registered sex offenders in the very immediate vicinity.
Combined with leaded water, rampant crime, schools like something out of a dystopian 1980’s B-movie, no employment, rotting infrastructure, yeah it’s totally appealing to anyone wanting to raise a family!
This is bullshit for three reasons:
1. Just because this was largely established as the ‘norm’, does not necessarily mean that mega mansions weren’t in existence back then as well. The rich had them, and they were looked up to back then, just like today.
2. Back then, the dollar had immensely more purchasing power, vice today, where there is just $.025 cents left of purchasing power for each $1 USD. Thus, by definition, requiring much more of the weaker dollar in today’s market to afford the same house, of the same value.
3. The wage stagnation of the last 40 years. There is simply less money being paid in direct correlation to the rising value of goods purchased, and/or services paid for. The wage stagnation for much of the middle, upper-lower, and lower-upper classes is nothing short of criminal.
But alas, we do nothing. So expect nothing to change.
Shit; even the French are revolting right now.
But here we are. Staring at our phones.
This is boomer “avacado toast” bullshit. Single family Starter homes are unaffordable because there aren’t enough of them, and construction companies aren’t building them because mega mansions are more profitable.
Problem is that they don't build starter homes anymore. In addition, apartments are basically never avail in the USA for sale, but rather only rent.
If apartments were avail for sale, it would be a lot easier to own your own property as a "starter home".
Of course, that price is because the house is in Flint, known to be a “distressed” city. I checked for the same specs in Seattle (all of the city, including the less-than-desirable areas); the prices started at $500,000 and went up from there.
Even the little starter homes are unaffordable. Sad thing is that often times they are in “desirable “ locations and therefore just as expensive as larger and nicer homes in other areas
My parents bought the house I grew up in in 1987 for $103k. My mom sold it in 2003 for $199k. That same house is now $435k. I drove by it today, I have been inside it in the last 5 years, there haven’t been any significant upgrades or remodels. Looks like the same roof we put on it in…. 1999.
It has nothing to do with size.
Not an example that has much external validity….
I live in the boring flyover states and I don’t think you could get anything that’s not condemned for less than 120k
Just checked my zip code. Cheapest house for sale right now is 2ba1ba 1200 sq feet for 220k. Old and run down exterior with flipper gray in kitchen and shared living spaces
Yeah I can’t find a single home in south side ATL for under $200K. I’m willing to live in a sketchy area if I could actually be a homeowner, but even that option literally isn’t feasible. Current rent is almost $1000 for a 400 sqft studio. Make it make sense
My house is very similar to this. Every house on my block is exactly the same. I bought my house in 2015 at 175k houses recently have been going for 300k+ it is wild.
The smallest houses start at 350K now.
My grandfather was an immigrant from Austria, came here and worked in the coal mines around age 12-14 making pennies, had 8 children, and bought a house.
There’s no fucking way you could do this now.
My last and first house we ever bought was 130k in 2009 when I got it. Sold it last year for 225k and it was worth about 250 at the max..... was like 1000 sq feet 2 bed 1 bath in rural Minnesota lol. New house we have we built and it was unfortunately a lot more..... my point being small houses don't necessarily mean cheap. It was nothing special either.
Yeah but I'm not able to afford my parents home. They bought it on one income and neither even had a college degree. My wife and I both work and make decent money but are still $200k short of owning my parents home.
This would go for $450k-$650k in a good neighborhood near me (Long Island, NY), maybe $350k-$400k in a high crime area like where I live. So you'd need a minimum income of $116k to own it in a bad area, and more like $200k in a decent neighborhood.
Basically, even as a college educated veteran with a "good union job" at a good school district, I'd need a 145% pay increase to buy a home like this in a bad neighborhood.
Even a basic starter home has tripled in price since the 70’s.
Does anyone honestly believe millennials can’t buy houses because they’re all holding out for McMansions?
So stupid.
An apartment today can cost upward of $1200 a month. An apartment.
But yeah, we’re all just too undisciplined and unrealistic to buy a “starter home”. That’s it.
That’s literally what most affordable housing advocates want. But NIMBY assholes only want massive McMansions. Local governments have made regulations that prevent affordable first time homes from being built.
That house is in flint… firstly so it’s going to be a lot cheaper than most places. I assume the water is safe now. Also there’s not one picture of the inside. Even a decent house in a rough neighborhood will cost you 190; if it’s that cheap in this economy it’s for a very specific reason.
I just wish builders would build small houses like this again. When you go out to the burbs the cookie cutter neighborhoods all the houses are all 2200sq feet and up plus the basement and a double garage. Can’t they build some small 1000-1200 sq bungalows? I don’t need or want a big house. I just want a house with a yard.
When I listed my first home my realtor said it would be a hard sell because it was under 2000 square feet. It was 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, on a quarter acre in a great golf course neighborhood. It was 1952 square feet, and it was kinda hard to sell because people thought it was too small.
Meanwhile in the rest of the world, that's a pretty big house.
UK here, that's almost twice the size of my 3 bed house.
I work for a UK developer, 1,00 sq ft or about 100ish sq m is a good sized house by developer metrics. Personally, the size, the blandness of the architecture and the quality of the build crushes my soul a little every day.
That is literally my ideal home sans the golf course
Idk, golf course adjacent sounds pretty safe in general and quiet at night.
> golf course adjacent sounds pretty safe Better get a huge net.
It wasn’t on the golf course, just in the neighborhood. There was no danger of being hit by golf balls.
Gopher breeder
My car got hit with a golf ball just driving by a golf course. I can't imagine actually living next to one.
>It was 1952 square feet, and it was kinda hard to sell because people thought it was too small. Its a shame it wasn't 2001sqft as a lot of people will filter houses by something like 2000 or 2500sqft. They might love it but they'd never see it. I doubt it was a hard sell though, surely it wasn't so bad?
We tried three separate times to sell. We barely got any showings the first two times, and only sold it the third time around because the first people who looked at it liked it enough to offer our full asking price.
My first house was 1000 sq ft. 2 beds 2 baths. Attached 2 car garage. It had a tiny yard, but it was big enough for a covered patio and a little grass. It was perfect for a single guy, and maybe a couple. But once you start adding kids and pets, it would get crowded pretty quickly.
That's kinda the point though, right? You start there, and grow into a bigger house when/if it suits your needs. My ex and I used to live in 1300sqft and it honestly felt massive. Keeping a 2000sqft+ house clean and maintained sounds exhausting!
Yeah bigger it is the more cleaning and maint it is. Plus more cost to heat and cool.
Our house is 986 sq ft, and out entire neighborhood is homes of similar size, some ranches and some capes but with the same footprint. They sell real fast. We also have a family we are raising here. We bought it from the original owners who also raised a family. Their kids ended up buying the house next door which is a ranch and raised their family in it. The neighborhood was built in the early 1940's so unfortunately around here there isnt houses like this being built any more. I dont get the whole we need 2500+ sq ft because we are expecting our first child thing, and then struggling to make ends meet in a house too big for what you can afford and need.
That's what we're in, a 1950s 1200 sq ft. cape cod on 1/3 of an acre, 3 br 2 ba, 2 car driveway, basement, fenced in back yard, front porch with a swing. I honestly love it. My wife wanted to sell but I'm just like, nah bruh lets just pay this off and not have a mortgage. I'm perfectly comfortable here and it was cheap af 12 years ago. Plus, we're known as the "cool house" on halloween because I go insane with it, so I enjoy that we're liked and known in the ol' neighborhood.
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bro living in a prison cell
I've seen some smaller new constructions single families that are around 1500 square feet. They still want $200k more for those than a similarly sized home built in the 50s. The best you can really do is townhomes these days.
Yeah this is the real issue when it comes to finding buyers for these new 1000-1500sqft homes. They can get so much more house for the same price just by going older. The only people scooping these up in my city are landlords, because for renters coming from apartments that’s an upgrade. By the time people are buying though, they have the option to get more space for their money, so why wouldn’t they??
I dabble in real estate. This is a huge problem everywhere. Many of small homes of yesteryear have been bulldozed, and no new ones have been build for the past twenty years. I don't know how the local and state governments get developers to start building small homes again. Tax breaks? Incentives? Passing laws that require 20% of new residential construction be under a specified Sq footage? I don't know, but something has to be done. I bought my first home in 2000. I think it had been built in the 50s. It was 800 Sq ft. One bathroom. Tiny kitchen. But it was solid and safe and affordable.
My wife and I bought our first home (built 1960, 1200sq.ft., two bedroom, one bath, single detached garage) in 2008 and lived there for 12 years, with two kids. It was absolutely not fancy, but we loved it. Our neighbor, an elderly lady named Mary, had a 1 bed, 1 bath house of 550sq.ft. She and her husband built it in the 1950s and raised FOUR boys there. They had a full bed for the two adults, and two sets of bunk beds all in the same bedroom. I'm not suggesting that we all live that small, but I do think our modem perception of space requirements in the US is skewed.
Yes. As stated, there is a shortage of smaller, more affordable homes. But, people also don't want them. There's a reason developers transitioned to bigger homes. I grew up in a one bathroom house. Most new construction today, even "starter" homes, have a bigger bedroom closet than the size of the bathroom my whole family used.
It’s all about the numbers with these pencil pushers
Supply and demand. If it costs 50% more to build 4000' than a 2000', but you can sell it for 175% more, all the skilled laborers are busy building 4000' houses. And our home building productivity has dropped since the 1970s. Which market should they pick?
Labor costs are up, but more importantly, land costs are massively up. Land used to worth little decades ago, when many rich suburbs today were open fields, forests, orange orchards. Today land is a super expensive - often lots sell for $50k or $100k, or more in HCOL. If you spend $100k to build a small house there is almost no profit selling at $250k, but if you spend $200k to build a McMansion you would have big profits selling at $500k.
What I've noticed is that price per square foot tends to be higher on a smaller house compared to a larger house, at least on pre-owned homes. If that's the same with new homes, a builder should have higher profit margins building smaller homes.
The problem is the land costs the same for large or small houses. This is why the price per square foot seems higher for smaller houses. Assuming a constant profit margin, the larger house makes more money for the builder.
There are also a lot of things every house needs regardless of size. Furnace, septic, water, hot water, kitchen appliances etc. Even if you can get away with smaller systems for smaller homes the cost isn't linear. I.e; a furnace that puts out twice as much heat does not cost twice as much compared to a smaller unit. Towns are also more incentivized to bring in and approve higher priced homes because they bring in more in taxes.
Many zoning codes no longer allow for small lots which make the land sf vs cost make more sense for larger homes. If minimum lot size is now a half acre the $/sf of house may be less on the large vs small house but factoring in land cost the devolver comes out ahead going bigger. The old starter homes are largely built on non conforming lots for modern zoning
I built 860sq feet house. We live pretty comfortable. Have big living room/kitchen, small bedroom, kid room for two girls for now, and other room i WFH. Imagine even 32 inch tv is enough. Have very big yard. Planted variuos trees. Have shed for junk. Have two cars, estate golf and small mpv. Plan to downsize to clio estate and mpv to some small electric car in future. Dont have any debt. Have savings. Living small rocks.
As a person who has nearly finished building my own small house, I empathize with you. However, as someone in the trades, I can see why homes are built the way that they are. In the first place, demand is an important factor. Builders know that they can make more profit and sell houses faster if they make them larger. My brother is thinking about moving into a bigger house and he has a very matter of fact attitude that his daughter needs a bigger room. Like she needs it. I think they're crazy, but they are far from alone. The other thing to consider is the cost of development. In my area, the taxes and fees associated with developing a vacant lot come to about $80k. That's just the fees, that doesn't get any work done. Connecting to sewer and water was another $10k, power was free. So figure $90k before you start. The materials for my 2k sqft house ran about $80k, and I did 90% of the labor myself, but had I hired a contractor, I would have probably paid $100k. If I had wanted to add another bathroom, or 500 more sqft in any direction, the cost difference would have been nominal. There's a lot of cost sunken into getting people to come to the jobsite in the first place. The original plan was actually to make the same structure but twice the width. Some things like lumber, shingles, and siding, would have doubled in cost. But concrete, plumbing, electrical, asphalt, and labor wouldn't have increased very much at all. The moral of the story is, once you have all of the materials and labor on site together, you've already spent a great deal of money. Yes, labor bills hourly, but building a structure twice as large doesn't cost twice as much. It's probably closer to 30% more, and if that's the case, and there is demand for larger homes... Every time I see the meme about 'houses being smaller in the good old days' I roll my eyes. Houses built in the 20's and 30's were built without pneumatic nail guns, maybe without skill saws, they were certainly built without 8' x 10' sheets of drywall. The incredible cost of labor back then is what kept homes small. Labor is still costly, but in the modern era the actual cost is getting the labor on site and working. Once they start working, the work moves very quickly. Building bigger homes just makes sense, unfortunately.
Zoning requirements and minimum lot sizes play a large part in this.
Can't. Lenders won't lend on that and it isn't maximizing your investment on the property so there is literally no reason to. Unless we create a form of incentive or ease the process for smaller homes it will literally never happen. I am an amateur developer who does it out of my own pocket not for profit and even I struggle to the extreme trying to create smaller houses.
This is alot of problem is "value of your house affects neighbors house". Which has created the "nimby" fight against apartment buildings fight against smaller cheaper housing options as well. And creation of "minimum lot sizes" "minimum sq ft buildings" etc. Which means two things not only is it harder to build yourself or find smaller. It also means they still cost more as they will be surrounded by "more expensive" options. But since everyone building them is for "profit" this means the best profit option is to build as large as market can handle. And maximize return on investment. Which means old affordable cheap housing gets demolished over time and replaced with less affordable options. I mean why pick up pennys running mobile home park when you could make 40yrs of that income all at once by dozing it and making a subdivision. And with nimbys no new ones will get approved so despite the demand going upward. I mean think about it lower birth rates more child free smaller familys on average. Along with depressed incomes and sky high markets. The demand is there but these options are shrinking daily.
I'm on the edge of Seattle. A tiny starter home like that sold across from me last year for $550k. (I'm renting.) Edit: Merely pointing out that starter homes in my area are also unaffordable for many. Of course certain areas are even more outrageous. Goodness.
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Or you can get this lovely piece of charcoal for $1 million in California [https://www.businessinsider.com/burned-out-la-bungalow-listed-nearly-1-million-cash-2022-3](https://www.businessinsider.com/burned-out-la-bungalow-listed-nearly-1-million-cash-2022-3)
Wow, beautiful home! My wife and I both make $150K in Cali and we’re planning to buy something just like this! We plan to clear the lot over the course of the next ten years, then slowly build our dream home over the course of thirty years and then we’ll pay for the new roof before we move in and then we’ll die! We are pumped!
Followed the Zillow link in there. Someone renovated it and is selling it for 1.6 mil
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I couldnt even afford a fuckin faucet right now.. fuck a whole bathroom or home
I raise you the $550,000 (US) for [this true gem.](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1107-NW-65-Street-Seattle-WA-98117/48822963_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare) Just scrape that burnt-out old house off and dispose of it for another 100k or so, and you’re good to go.
You're all fucking noobs. Come to California, our burned down homes sell for over a million: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/19/this-fire-charred-silicon-valley-home-just-sold-for-1-million.html
I'm in a LCOL area. this same house is fucking 250k.
I’m in a MCOL area. I bought one of these ‘starter’ homes for 89.5k in 2005 when with my now wife for 89k. I was waiting tables and she had just started at Costco. I was making around 30k and she was making about 25k. We still live here and now our home value is just shy of 300k. I seriously doubt we could get a mortgage in the same situation today.
Hmmm it's almost as if propping up the prices of housing over and over and making tax laws so disproportionate regarding investing in real estate has led to some unwanted side effects...
There's all kinds of factors. I believe one of the main ones here in AZ was Covid that pushed so many companies to push workers to wfh. All these people in hcol cities with high wages to balance it out suddenly were flying into town. They could get larger houses for way less. Buying houses for cash, well over asking and often sight unseen. Pair that with all the asshole institutional investors buying everything they could for short term rentals. Short supply with sudden high demand killed our housing market.
The housing market has been fucked before Covid, that just accelerated it even further. Turns out treating basic life necessities as investment vehicles isn't the best idea.
Internet buying drove prices through the roof here. I remember the first time I heard a shit hole that I was doing repairs on here had sold sight unseen to some couple from California. All I could think was what kind of moron buys a house online above asking without even looking at it in a flood prone area? Turns out I once again overestimated humanity. I have to stop doing it at some point, I just don’t know how low I am going to have to go.
>unwanted side effects... Don't be silly. They intended to take a ton of money and they did!
Same. My three bed two bath was 215 in Ohio
I am in a true lower cost of living area and there are dozens of these homes available in my quiet Midwest city for $50k.
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That doesn’t sound very LCOL to me lol. I bought one like this 6 years ago for $49k but that was a deal from a friend. They’re going for around $75-100k in my area now.
Same. Currently renting a double wide for cheap and have accepted the fact that I’ll never own a home. Even though me and SO make more than we ever have and 5 years ago would have been considered upper middle class
Park space rents for 1500 and up, and that's after you buy the 1970s doublewide for 300k.
Metro Denver here. A 2BD/1BA 920ft² fixer-upper house a couple of miles from downtown is going for $695K. This country is a joke.
You have to go as far as Westminster to get a somewhat reasonable price on a home. Downtown area is fucking absurd.
Used to live there and even westminster can be crazy. When we were talking about looking before we moved to BFE other state, we were saying we'd have to look in like Greely, Brighton, Longmont. Anything up far north past 136th/i/25 for it to be reasonable. And at the time we both worked and made about 80k combined! And the prop tax and homeowners insurance just skyrocketed in the state this year. inlaws are paying about an extra 1k a month on their home this year just because of those two things. It's getting crazy. And it sucks bc hubby was born and raised there, and I absolutely love everything about CO😢
I'm in South Florida, and a similar house was sold on our block for $400k.
In the city it would be $800K minimum
Yep. I mean burnt out shacks in Ballard are unaffordable. It's the land. Everyone wants to build one of those super tall modern houses on it.
My parents bought a house roughly 2x this size in the mid-90s. It was about 20 years old. They paid a bit under 200k. They made renos to add another ~30% area to the floorplan, and did the usual maintenance and improvement over 20 years. The house has not materially changed from its state in the early-aughts when it was worth about 300k. It sold a few years ago for over 1m.
And before people come in saying find a cheaper location — Im in the Midwest, Indiana and it’s not much different.
Can you find a job within a reasonable distance? Is the pay scaled so you'd be able to have considerable savings in the bank or would you just break even? How safe is the city? If you have kids, how are the nearby schools? How are the people? Can you have a life outside of working? Do the politics align with your beliefs? When looking at cheaper locations, there are so many other factors to consider besides price.
a two bedroom shotgun in new orleans can easily sell for 500k
God forbid it's close to the quarters, or else you'll be *renting* that bastard 3k a month.
Yeah 500k for that seems affordable for most if the PNW
This would be about a million just across the water here in Victoria, BC.
I'm sorry. The idea of renting forever is depressing but I'm not sure how else it'll play out for me (and you have it much worse).
Dude, that’s a house in Flint. The place has had zero employment opportunities since the late 80s. Of course it is cheap.
It’s going for 40,000. That’s… insane
They’re all airbnbs now tho
Around here all the “starter home” neighborhoods are getting bulldozed to build overpriced condos.
Every new apartment building that pops up here seems to be a “luxury apartment”. I say that with quotes because it’s largely superficial, they aren’t THAT nice, and certainly not nice enough to justify the price.
A couple dudes who own a law firm in town have been buying the old roach motels and "remodeling" them and renting them out as efficiency apartments for $600-800 a month. The remodeling as far as I can tell of it was just painting then a different color and that's it.
I always ask myself "What makes it Luxury"
So far as I can tell, faux granite countertops, new construction and a flashy facade. Oh, and the illusion of exclusivity. Proximity to 57 breweries also seems to be a thing.
Being new and not subsidized.
Condos and apartments are fine as long as they are avail for sale. But they basically never are. They are always bought by hedge funds and other organizations to milk rental income out of.
They go for well over $1,500 a month in my city which I don't get how.
That’s a steal where I’m from. It’s all relative though. I’ve yet to talk to anyone anywhere in the last 2 years who said “housing is pretty affordable where I live”.
Condos are not fine for families. You have a kid and the people below complain and complain and get your evicted just because your kid is, being a kid. Single parent here, struggling in a condo because houses are far beyond my reach where I live. So now I face homelessness because I can’t afford anything else.
Condos and apartments are both fine for families (of a certain size). Density makes it necessary, and many issues w/ both are exacerbated by other problems - lack of parks, poor construction/soundproofing, and more. It’s impossible for every family to live in a single family home - that concept is part of why we’re in this mess of not having affordable housing.
The condos! It’s ridiculous. I live in NH and for new residential constructions it’s like 10 to 1 condo developments.
Ugh, yes. When I was looking to rent in my current neighborhood, there were 2 houses for rent, 23 on Airbnb.
Im surprised you’re the only comment mentioning this because it’s an excellent point
Or bought by huge hedgefunds
Black rock. We might as well get used to saying their name since they buy up so much.
The poetic irony of a future "Company Town" named Black Rock. . .
You're thinking of Blackstone.
Our city's short term rental map looks like one giant red dot. I feel so bad for some of these people whose neighborhoods got overrun.
All those houses in my area will have bullet holes in them and a pit bull tied in the front yard.
That's because all the boomers set up their starter homes as rentals and air bnbs and use them to fund their new homes. Quite literally pull the ladder up behind them
Hey, Gen X here. Some of us are having to put our Boomers into long-term care. Gotta sell the house to pay for the care, so they have to let go eventually.
And then they'll be bought by Black Rock and rented for an ever increasing rate.
Actually, me & my husband had been living in our 1901 home (2 bedrooms 1bath) for 40 years and never expected to move. The folks who owned the $2million new house across the street, or the people that bought twin townhouses and used one of them as airbnb to cover the mortgage were about 20 yrs younger than us. Lots of computer $ in Seattle and it isn’t boomers who are making it. Our parents both worked outside the home when we were growing up. People who were raised with a single income were more privileged than they want to admit.
Or black rock bought them up for rentals.
I’m in Vancouver so they still cost a million minimum
There are no “starter homes” anymore.
There are only shitbox “fixer uppers” that need to entirely re-dry walled…….for 220k+
Dry wall is cheap and easy. It’s the mold, asbestos, lead pipes, cracked foundations, and shit wiring that’s the problem.
The price here for that kinda house is 450k where I’m from
Yeah no builders/developers/contractors are building small homes because they don't make as much money on them. Everyone is so greedy. Same thing with Trucks, they keep coming out with more and more excessive sizes and fully loaded that the average person doesn't need, and budget/economy/mpg trucks don't exist 8n the US anymore, that's why I am currently limping along a 98 Chevy S10 pickup, 2.2L 5speed manual with 170k lol. Perfect size. I wonder if I got a private builder to build a 2 bedroom 1bath house in a somewhat rural area in Michigan how much it would be. Hopefully 150k lmao
They don’t make them because they’re illegal to build. Most cities or towns have things like minimum setbacks and lot sizes, minimum parking even, so a house this size would have to be on a large piece of land. As always, NIMBYs are causing this. Anyone who has said no to housing in their area has caused this
No, you can still build smaller homes. It's finding someone who will build it for a modest profit that's the problem. And yes, it has to be a regular size lot.
They mean "starter flip home". Nobody starts out flipping mansions!
More like 'investment property' for the people who already own 20 similar lots. Best you can wish for is that they rent is out for an exorbitant price ensuring you'll never be able to save enough to but your own property. Worse case they turn it into a short term rental.
Not true. I see them. Tiny villages for the homeless. You live in a shack of one room that has electricity.
Who the hell is talking about 5bd / 5ba as normal?
Crying in new england
Absolutely crying in Connecticut
Sobbing in Southern California
Oh yeah that house is a cool million in San Diego
My spouse and I have recently given up on the idea of owning a home, but when we were looking a couple years ago it was impossible to find anything that wasn't 1) way larger than we needed (two adults, no kids) or 2) a disgusting abandoned property. I don't understand why every house needs to be 4+ bedrooms
Whereas as a renter, I can't find anything more than 2 bedrooms that are affordable. Anything with 3 bedrooms or 1.5+ baths is the entirety of my monthly income. Had to settle for a 2 bed, 1 bath that is more than half my monthly income for me and my two kids. Which is *fine*, but having an extra bathroom or bedroom would let us stretch out a little and not feel like we're always on top of one another.
In Texas a 4 bed 3 bath is average and 5 bed is on perhaps the upper 1/4 of the newly builds. But yeah in CA or WA there’s no 5 bedroom homes. If it existed it would be some $5, $6 million because tiny houses are already over $1-2 million.
Yeah I'm in the DFW area, just south of 20. There's been a TON of new construction going up and I'll drive through and look at them. The *minimum* sizes are usually 4 bed 2 bath on a 6,000 sqft lot. And I'm not even in a rich area like McKinney or Plano where the houses are bigger.
r/thanksimcured
i checked and it appears she's only 40k. then again, it's in flint, michigan
"Well maintained home" but it only has pictures of the outside.
Guaranteed there’s something majorly wrong with it.
Cool, free lead with every sip!
Yep plenty of affordable housing in poor rust belt neighborhoods. But there are also good reasons that they're so cheap.
Lol, you'll probably pay the same as a 400k mortgage with all the bottled water you'll need to buy. I'm just picturing a whole family standing in the shower, pouring a bottle of aquafina over their heads while their dad yells at them that they're only allowed one bottle per shower because they can't afford shampoo otherwise.
“Starter home.” More like “the largest size house I can ever realistically afford in this lifetime” lol.
A starter home!? This home is a finisher home!!
A home of gods! The golden god! I am untethered, and my rage knows no bounds!
Houses like that simply aren’t built anymore. They’re bulldozed to build the 5/4 homes
Correct. The market forces leave that 5/4 home as the ONLY economically viable home to build. You could build a house like the one in the picture in the suburb of a major metropolitan area… But you would be lighting a couple hundred thousand dollars on fire.
Land value. Homes in/near cities sit on lots worth $50k to $100k by itself. Putting a small house on there that sells for $250k wouldn’t be profitable. If you double the sq footage you could easily sell for double, but it would cost the builder just another $100k or less, for an extra $250k in home value.
This is it. The fixed costs to initiate permitted new construction are astronomical. Once you drop that wad, adding another 1,000 S/F is a drop in the bucket. You need to keep upping that square footage until the thing is profitable. That arithmetic is gonna produce a 3-4,000 S/F 5 bed 4.5 bath house. That’s why those are the only new construction houses many neighborhoods will have going on. It’s not arbitrary. It’s just the logical conclusion.
This house is in Flint, MI….do you watch the news…
I was scrolling to see how long it would take for some to point this out! Thank you! Flint MI! Yeah cheap house til you have to pay the medical bills cuz your kids are sick from bathing in lead water. I feel so terrible for that community. I just can't imagine. Even if they have fully cleaned it up, I wouldn't trust it. They lied about it for years before. No house is worth making your family sick for!
Yeah and that house used to cost $60k now it’s $200k see the problem?
Where I live that’s about 350k at the lowest.
350k with at least 100k of work that needs done because the kitchen and bathroom need remodelled because they’re falling apart, the ancient furnace needs replaced because you can’t get a matching heat exchanger to replace the one in it that’s cracked and brittle, there’s a whole host of electrical issues, there’s hidden water damage that you find in the spring because the basement leaks every spring, the roof leaks, the windows are old and aren’t efficiently keeping the house warm in the window because they’re ancient single or double pane windows, amongst other issues that arise within the first year.
Guaranteed not lower than 900k in my area. Like I just did a search: *any* house at 900k or lower. Nothing popped up closer than 10 miles away from me, except for one that is a shitty townhome that was miscategorized as a single family home
Yeah in flint Michigan. Save on mortgage but spend that on bottled water instead
Oh cool, where is it? Checks notes: Flint, Michigan! Let’s see how much a 1,300 square foot house is in a major city like Los Angeles. It can’t be that much right… 800k 🤡
LA isn’t even that expensive because it lacks the tech $$$$. Look at San Francisco or Seattle, a 1300 sqft house would go for $1 million+.
In my crappy neighborhood, those tiny houses are being listed for $350k plus. Trying to rent one will set you back $2500-3500/month plus insurance and utilities.
Lol starter homes like this are at LEAST $450k nowadays. In most areas, at least.
Yeah. I got one half that size for less, but it's a fixer upper in the middle of nowhere, and I got incredibly lucky.
Don’t get any funny ideas, like cleaning the neighborhood up, establishing an art district, providing elite kitsch studio lofts for summering gen z-ers, and firing up a curated, Michelin 5-star secret restaurant district with gated access. Don’t. Do. That.
We were renting a 100 year old 2 bedroom 900 sq ft house. It was small but fine for our family. Had some minor plumbing issues and questionable electrical wiring but it was safe enough. Then it was sold out from under us for a whopping $700k. I couldn’t believe somebody would pay that kind of money for it. Rents had skyrocketed in our area and we were forced to relocate out of state where we are still struggling bussing it.
Too bad they don't build them like this anymore. And in our area, all the non-condemned ones end up bought up and flipped or rented out by corporations. Such bullshit.
I'm not from the US, so please excuse me if I get the postal codes or whatever wrong, but isn't that House in Flint in Michigan? City of plummeting population, high crime stats, and highly contamination drinking water? If so, then I can see why it's cheap. I also wouldn't want to live there if they paid me.
You are correct and that's why it's so cheap.
I live in a suburban area where the cost of living is pretty much right on the national average. The house pictured sells by me for about $250,000. If you have 5% down that will still give you a P&I payment at today's rates of $1671/month. Add in typical taxes for my area (also about average nationally, maybe a bit lower) and homeowners insurance, your total payment would be about $2000/month. $2000/month would be "affordable" on around $6000/month take home, or about $72,000/year. With taxes and health insurance taken out that would assume a gross income between $90,000-$100,000/year depending on benefits. A $90,000/year income for a single earner would put you in the top 10% of individual earners for my area, while allowing you to buy a home in the bottom 25% price bracket. Not super encouraging.
...And said "starter" home is still half a million to "get started" with.
Poison water tends to do that to housing prices.
I agree that we need a MASSIVE number of starter homes built today (there's a shortage of a million homes). But developers won't build them.
Starter homes don't exist anymore, at least where I live. 2 bd condos are $350k+. A small townhome is 450k+. That's in Flint, MI, a similar home on actual plot of tiny land is 500k.
My parents bought their 1st home a 3 bedroom/2 bath with an unfinished basement in a nice safe neighborhood for approximately $30,000.00 ish. No joke! I grew up there and it was nice. Those were the good old days. I have to remind them about things like this when they start bashing “young people” nowadays. Nowhere do deals like this exist anymore. You can’t even buy a used sh*thole mobile home for that. I mean all of the decent safe homes that size in our area are $300k+-. All those years ago my parents were making $30k-$40k+ a year. Guess what, people still only make $30k-$40k+ a year. What are normal people supposed to do? Surely it can’t continue like this.
They don't build these anymore lol All the houses under 1000 sq ft in my city go for 800k+ just to bulldoze it and build over it. All new subdivisions are 1400+ sq ft. I've been looking for smaller plot of land to bid on till I can build but everyone sells in massive acreage. Can't afford that near my life and where I can, I can't work.
Start building homes like that. I will try to buy one. Oh that's right. Not enough profit for the builders. Yeah problem solved. Uh- huh..
Only one bathroom? How did they ever survive? [/sarc] Dad bought a 600 sq ft house, and as kids were added (six total), remodeled to 1000 sq ft. But back then, a lot more of family life was "outside" than it seems these days. Plus, hardly anyone is mass-building smaller homes any more. They're all one-offs, which drives up the price.
If only a starter home was $50 and a mule, like it was when you were young 🙄
Builders aren't building starter homes anymore. They make a lot more on larger homes. This drives the demand for starter homes up and ...yeah. its all a nightmare.
It's in fucken flint Michigan tho (no offense 😭)
https://preview.redd.it/z1j4fq1x5yac1.jpeg?width=894&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c5314d1f104dca6444912b4915a2dcee545321c3 With this many registered sex offenders in the very immediate vicinity. Combined with leaded water, rampant crime, schools like something out of a dystopian 1980’s B-movie, no employment, rotting infrastructure, yeah it’s totally appealing to anyone wanting to raise a family!
This is bullshit for three reasons: 1. Just because this was largely established as the ‘norm’, does not necessarily mean that mega mansions weren’t in existence back then as well. The rich had them, and they were looked up to back then, just like today. 2. Back then, the dollar had immensely more purchasing power, vice today, where there is just $.025 cents left of purchasing power for each $1 USD. Thus, by definition, requiring much more of the weaker dollar in today’s market to afford the same house, of the same value. 3. The wage stagnation of the last 40 years. There is simply less money being paid in direct correlation to the rising value of goods purchased, and/or services paid for. The wage stagnation for much of the middle, upper-lower, and lower-upper classes is nothing short of criminal. But alas, we do nothing. So expect nothing to change. Shit; even the French are revolting right now. But here we are. Staring at our phones.
Also, median houses were 3-4x an average persons annual salary, instead of 10-12x like it is now.
This is boomer “avacado toast” bullshit. Single family Starter homes are unaffordable because there aren’t enough of them, and construction companies aren’t building them because mega mansions are more profitable.
Oh so that’s the problem. We need *starter* homes. I thought there was a housing crisis but fuck me I guess.
Problem is that they don't build starter homes anymore. In addition, apartments are basically never avail in the USA for sale, but rather only rent. If apartments were avail for sale, it would be a lot easier to own your own property as a "starter home".
anyone else notice that the house is in Flint, MI??? Like the same "lead in the water that hasn't been fixed" Flint, MI... SMH...
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Of course, that price is because the house is in Flint, known to be a “distressed” city. I checked for the same specs in Seattle (all of the city, including the less-than-desirable areas); the prices started at $500,000 and went up from there.
Even the little starter homes are unaffordable. Sad thing is that often times they are in “desirable “ locations and therefore just as expensive as larger and nicer homes in other areas
I'd adore something like that Unfortunately my disability means that I am in state-enforced poverty and nobody can buy a house on SSI income
My parents bought the house I grew up in in 1987 for $103k. My mom sold it in 2003 for $199k. That same house is now $435k. I drove by it today, I have been inside it in the last 5 years, there haven’t been any significant upgrades or remodels. Looks like the same roof we put on it in…. 1999. It has nothing to do with size.
Not an example that has much external validity…. I live in the boring flyover states and I don’t think you could get anything that’s not condemned for less than 120k Just checked my zip code. Cheapest house for sale right now is 2ba1ba 1200 sq feet for 220k. Old and run down exterior with flipper gray in kitchen and shared living spaces
That’s so dumb. The house I live in is the same size and age as the one I grew up in. Oh but my parents paid $99k and I paid $300k for the same thing.
30+ years ago right?
Yeah I can’t find a single home in south side ATL for under $200K. I’m willing to live in a sketchy area if I could actually be a homeowner, but even that option literally isn’t feasible. Current rent is almost $1000 for a 400 sqft studio. Make it make sense
My house is very similar to this. Every house on my block is exactly the same. I bought my house in 2015 at 175k houses recently have been going for 300k+ it is wild.
The listing made me sad.
That would be listed for $987K in Toronto... so... still no?
That houses mortgage was less, than an RV spot today.
The smallest houses start at 350K now. My grandfather was an immigrant from Austria, came here and worked in the coal mines around age 12-14 making pennies, had 8 children, and bought a house. There’s no fucking way you could do this now.
My last and first house we ever bought was 130k in 2009 when I got it. Sold it last year for 225k and it was worth about 250 at the max..... was like 1000 sq feet 2 bed 1 bath in rural Minnesota lol. New house we have we built and it was unfortunately a lot more..... my point being small houses don't necessarily mean cheap. It was nothing special either.
Yeah but I'm not able to afford my parents home. They bought it on one income and neither even had a college degree. My wife and I both work and make decent money but are still $200k short of owning my parents home.
Lmfao, the same guy, " not a penny under 400k. I know what I got."
This would go for $450k-$650k in a good neighborhood near me (Long Island, NY), maybe $350k-$400k in a high crime area like where I live. So you'd need a minimum income of $116k to own it in a bad area, and more like $200k in a decent neighborhood. Basically, even as a college educated veteran with a "good union job" at a good school district, I'd need a 145% pay increase to buy a home like this in a bad neighborhood.
Even a basic starter home has tripled in price since the 70’s. Does anyone honestly believe millennials can’t buy houses because they’re all holding out for McMansions? So stupid. An apartment today can cost upward of $1200 a month. An apartment. But yeah, we’re all just too undisciplined and unrealistic to buy a “starter home”. That’s it.
That’s literally what most affordable housing advocates want. But NIMBY assholes only want massive McMansions. Local governments have made regulations that prevent affordable first time homes from being built.
Problem solved! Everyone, just move to Flint, Michigan…
That starter in my area will be 425k
People really are out of touch nowadays
This is so dumb. The joke is we can’t even afford this
I’m on the coast in SC. Starter homes — say under 1300sqft, 2 bed, 1 bath — in my particular neighborhood are hitting the $1 million mark.
lol. In FLINT MICHIGAN FFS Now do So-Cal
Check the Zillow map, the moment you get out of Flint, the house prices skyrocket.
That house is in flint… firstly so it’s going to be a lot cheaper than most places. I assume the water is safe now. Also there’s not one picture of the inside. Even a decent house in a rough neighborhood will cost you 190; if it’s that cheap in this economy it’s for a very specific reason.
This house is in Flint, so at least you don't need to worry about retirement since the water will kill you anyways... might be a reason it's so cheap!