Entry level/starter homes $200-300,000?

Originally Posted by JOD
Originally Posted by JeffKeryk
Sounds like everyone is happy with their homes and many have proven to be good investments to boot.
In Silicon Valley we live in this crazy housing bubble. A different world to be sure.


Seattle is on its way... We bought our house ~15 years ago (which was a tear down that we didn't tear down) for 235K. The house across the street just told to 3 Amazon employees who are doing a shared ownership deal, as none of them can afford to purchase on their own but they don't want to pay rent. They're all devs making close to 200K, and they can afford 1/3rd of a house... It's truly ridiculous (I applaud them for making an investment vs. paying rent, but I feel for them that they had to resort to doing this).

So yeah, obviously it's very market dependent. While I guess I'm glad for the obscene appreciation of my own place (which is >4 time the purchase price) I feel for anyone just getting into the Bay Area or Seattle markets now.

To those lamenting the lack of 1,200 sq ft houses, note that in the really hot markets (like Seattle), there's a ton of new construction that fits that bill--were they're really trying to cut construction costs due to the cost of the land. In markets where the land is less expensive though, you just won't see it as much, since $ per sq/ft to build goes down as square footage goes up. It just costs a little to make it a lot bigger, and most people want MORE!




In Tacoma there are a lot of old 1920's era 800-900 sf homes that would be great starter homes but you cannot find one for anything less than $250,000 unless it is in very poor shape. Most of these houses have basements.

The big thing in Tacoma and Seattle is bed spacing. You can rent out a bed space for $600-800 a month. For those of you who don't know the term it means you get a bed and that's that. The house amenities are shared. Get 3-4 people in at $800 each and that helps with the house payment.
 
My house cost me $181, including 6.15 acres with it. It is 1600sf. I consider it my forever home, though, albeit it is my first home as well.
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Originally Posted by ZZman
Man I am either out of touch or live in a very reasonable housing market. That seems high for what I would consider to be a starter home in most areas.

Maybe wants are much higher now.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/rea...er-homes-get-built/ar-BBYOb4d?li=BBnbfcN


A bit of both, I would say...

You can't find anything in my area for under $200K and those are some really sketchy places.

There are markets (Coronado) where a starter home is three to four times that.

Consider yourself fortunate.
 
My last house which I considered my starter house was in Puyallup near Tacoma on the Southeast edge of the Puget sound. 1700SF tri-level. It was a new build on a quarter acre when I purchased it in 1988. I paid $89K for it. I sold it in 2005 for $246K. That was some good appreciation for 17 years. The same home when last sold a couple years ago went for $389k so in 30 years it appreciated more than 400%. It's funny because for a couple years around the housing bust it could have been had for around $200k. If I had 20/20 foresight I would have bought it and another dozen or so in the puget sound in 2008 and would be a comfortablty retired multi millionaire now.
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Originally Posted by sloinker
My last house which I considered my starter house was in Puyallup near Tacoma on the Southeast edge of the Puget sound. 1700SF tri-level. It was a new build on a quarter acre when I purchased it in 1988. I paid $89K for it. I sold it in 2005 for $246K. That was some good appreciation for 17 years. The same home when last sold a couple years ago went for $389k so in 30 years it appreciated more than 400%. It's funny because for a couple years around the housing bust it could have been had for around $200k. If I had 20/20 foresight I would have bought it and another dozen or so in the puget sound in 2008 and would be a comfortablty retired multi millionaire now.
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That Puyallup house is probably close to $450,000 by now if not higher.
 
Homes, like anything you buy in this world are priced to market value.
So yes, home prices are the same and much better then they were 70 years ago.

The payment is the payment and more affordable then ever in our history.

Example, the post above this one, interest rates were 10% a YEAR when the home above was bought in 1988 now they are less then 4%.

Its all about the payment, high interest rates keep a lid on home prices, low interest rates make home prices higher, the payment is the same, its just who is getting the money.
Young people are spoiled in the sense that it is so easy to buy a home and they dont have to give up their cars, cell phones, electric toys and live without furniture for a while. In the 1950's and 40s people struggled to buy a home, and gave up everything to buy one.
 
Originally Posted by PimTac
Originally Posted by JOD
Originally Posted by JeffKeryk
Sounds like everyone is happy with their homes and many have proven to be good investments to boot.
In Silicon Valley we live in this crazy housing bubble. A different world to be sure.


Seattle is on its way... We bought our house ~15 years ago (which was a tear down that we didn't tear down) for 235K. The house across the street just told to 3 Amazon employees who are doing a shared ownership deal, as none of them can afford to purchase on their own but they don't want to pay rent. They're all devs making close to 200K, and they can afford 1/3rd of a house... It's truly ridiculous (I applaud them for making an investment vs. paying rent, but I feel for them that they had to resort to doing this).

So yeah, obviously it's very market dependent. While I guess I'm glad for the obscene appreciation of my own place (which is >4 time the purchase price) I feel for anyone just getting into the Bay Area or Seattle markets now.

To those lamenting the lack of 1,200 sq ft houses, note that in the really hot markets (like Seattle), there's a ton of new construction that fits that bill--were they're really trying to cut construction costs due to the cost of the land. In markets where the land is less expensive though, you just won't see it as much, since $ per sq/ft to build goes down as square footage goes up. It just costs a little to make it a lot bigger, and most people want MORE!




In Tacoma there are a lot of old 1920's era 800-900 sf homes that would be great starter homes but you cannot find one for anything less than $250,000 unless it is in very poor shape. Most of these houses have basements.

The big thing in Tacoma and Seattle is bed spacing. You can rent out a bed space for $600-800 a month. For those of you who don't know the term it means you get a bed and that's that. The house amenities are shared. Get 3-4 people in at $800 each and that helps with the house payment.

I believe Seattle has been the hottest market over the past 10 years; rapid increases.
My sister and BIL (he has my old Vette) live in Gig Harbor and have a rental in Tacoma.
CA, OR and WA are all off the charts nowadays.
Silicon Valley homes have dropped over the past year or so, but still insane.
A 1650 SF home is a better area, like Sunnyvale near the Apple Spaceship, sold in July for $1.9M in 1 day. New owners put over $400K down.
It would have pulled $2.1 a year earlier. The local area shot up as the Spaceship was being built.

Sunnyvale CA
 
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The house my folks bought in San Jose in 1960 and sold in 1968 was originally $16K. It is now worth close to a million bucks. 3 bedroom 2 bath 2 car garage on 8000 sf lot in what used to be the barrio near Reid-Hillview airport. My uncle lived in Campbell and had a similar house/price which he sold a decade ago for right at a million bucks, it did have a pool though.
 
Originally Posted by sloinker
The house my folks bought in San Jose in 1960 and sold in 1968 was originally $16K. It is now worth close to a million bucks. 3 bedroom 2 bath 2 car garage on 8000 sf lot in what used to be the barrio near Reid-Hillview airport. My uncle lived in Campbell and had a similar house/price which he sold a decade ago for right at a million bucks, it did have a pool though.

Campbell is a great place to live. Schools are top notch. There are zero houses in Campbell for $1M. Anything close to that is a beater.
 
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Starter homes are mid 300K's around here now. Prices are constantly going up.


Is that Canadian dollars?
 
Originally Posted by sloinker
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Starter homes are mid 300K's around here now. Prices are constantly going up.


Is that Canadian dollars?


Yes. And that's a bargain compared to closer to Toronto. It's almost impossible to find anything below a million in Toronto.
 
Originally Posted by JeffKeryk
Originally Posted by sloinker
The house my folks bought in San Jose in 1960 and sold in 1968 was originally $16K. It is now worth close to a million bucks. 3 bedroom 2 bath 2 car garage on 8000 sf lot in what used to be the barrio near Reid-Hillview airport. My uncle lived in Campbell and had a similar house/price which he sold a decade ago for right at a million bucks, it did have a pool though.

Campbell is a great place to live. Schools are top notch. There are zero houses in Campbell for $1M. Anything close to that is a beater.


My late grandmother's hunting cabin turned home on an acre in Mill Valley was eventually subdivided into two parcels. The cabin/home was torn down 20 years ago and both parcels had custom homes built on them since then by my aunt and uncle. They took the profits and comfortably retired to Paradise,Ca. that's another story. 10 minutes to San Fran from grandmas place. Don't even ask what those places are going for now. They went for 3 million each 15 years ago. It is funny to think that anybody would have considered Mill Valley hunting cabin appropriate but she got it in the 1940's.
 
It was rough here 15 years ago, and not any better today. I finally gave in, after spending too little and getting a place that we never liked (and lost money on when selling), and spent more this time. Much happier. We still have kids at home, but we think we could retire here and use their rooms for hobby rooms if we can no longer get into the basement if age treats us badly (single level ranch).
 
Minimum home size in my county on your own land is 1750 sf.


Oh yeah, minimum lot size is FIVE acres unless you get a variance, it can be 2.5 acres.
 
Local housing market is so depressed on pricing these days. It's hard to go up in value because for every dollar of P+I you pay, you add almost a dollar of property tax. I guess it makes the math easy though, A $200k house probably runs $2k a month total (30 year fixed) - and so on.

Good for Staton that he's doubled his salary. He needs to move here as the trades make well over that > $36/hr he's making now.
 
Originally Posted by sloinker
The house my folks bought in San Jose in 1960 and sold in 1968 was originally $16K. It is now worth close to a million bucks. 3 bedroom 2 bath 2 car garage on 8000 sf lot in what used to be the barrio near Reid-Hillview airport. My uncle lived in Campbell and had a similar house/price which he sold a decade ago for right at a million bucks, it did have a pool though.


My aunt just sold her house in that area, although closer to the big hill than to Reid-Hillview. Zillow says it's in Evergreen She paid like 12 or 14K in 1967, sold it for just a smidge south of $1m in 2019. It's 1400 sq ft 3/2/2. If my uncle hadn't of died, they'd probably still be living there.

I have an idealized view of the house because I have so many memories there, we always went there in the 70s and 80s for Christmas and for pretty much every visit to the Bay Area since. Objectively though it's nothing special. It's not modern in any way except maybe the floors, and the kitchen is tiny.

But still, I'm going to miss it, and my bike rides to the top of the hill on Quimby. End of an era for me personally.
 
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