House Porn question about home values you see on TV....

[LiberalHeart]

When watching HGTV's various shows -- the ones showing home values in different parts of the country and the house hunting shows where they reveal what price place the shoppers are looking at -- I'm struck by how far out of whack the prices seem compared to where I live (Northwest Ohio).

Do the prices ring true to you and what the prices are in your community?

If so, I must live in the part of the country that has the cheapest real estate.

[boozepusher]

1. Real estate prices vary greatly

depending on what part of the country you are in. I moved from southern CA to Oklahoma. I went from a studio apartment to a two bedroom house with a nice yard for less money. I know housing prices in my area are some of the cheapest in the country. My current home would be valued at about 900,000 where I lived in CA. Here it's barely twenty percent of that.

[KitchenWitch]

2. At the height of the housing costs here in SoCal

A 4 bedroom 2 and a half bathroom home with a two car garage was going for about 980,000 here in Irvine, CA.

The same home in Bloomington, MN would have gone for between 250,000 and 300,000.

[LiberalHeart]

3. I don't know how people can take on debt like that (if, like those on the shows, they're putting ...

...little or nothing down). When I see young families facing monthly payments of two grand, give or take a bew bucks, I have to wonder if the pay in their areas of the country are also much higher than where I live. That, or they can't afford groceries to put in their shiny new refrigerators.

I have a friend who lives near Irvine. She tells me her house is very modest but would sell for about $400,000. Here, that would buy a palace.

[KitchenWitch]

7. Some families in these homes are three generation families

Meaning that Grandparents, parents and children are all living in the same household.

[cemaphonic]

4. The estate settelment for my grandfather's death sold his old house in Elmore,

(near Toledo) for 65k. It was a pretty modest house and property, but it would be worth 250k in the poorer neighborhoods here in Seattle, and probably closer to 500k in the more middle-class areas.

The midwest in general is much cheaper than the coasts, and I would imagine that that would be especially true in anywhere in Northern Ohio which has been hit so hard in the current economy.

[LiberalHeart]

5. I love Elmore ... great old homes in a quiet community.

[cemaphonic]

6. Yeah, it's a neat town

I have a ton of family there, and spent several weeks there every summer from about age 6 to 13. I'm a city person, but I can see how that kind of lifestyle would be very attractive to a lot of people.

Plus, it has a haunted bridge.

http://www.louisvilleghs.com/LGHS_MASTER/SUB/Investigations/Elmore_Rider/Elmore_Rider.html

I don't believe in the supernatural at all, but I am a total sucker for local ghost folklore like that.

[LiberalHeart]

13. Brrrr!

I've never heard that ghost story, though we do have some others in this area. Here's one:

http://www.forgottenoh.com/Counties/Lucas/columbian.html

I think the restaurant is closed now, but I saw interviews with the employees a few years ago. They swore the tales about the unexplained stuff going on there were true. I ate there a couple of times and it was about as unhaunted as a place can be.

[cemaphonic]

17. There seem to be a lot of great ghost folklore from the Midwest

I actually found out about the Elmore one from a book that I think was called "Haunted Heartland." When I asked my uncle about it, he told me about the time that he and my dad staked out the bridge, but didn't actually see anything ghostly. The two of them also rigged up one of the local abandoned house that was supposed to be haunted in order to scare their friends.

Ah, here is the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Heartland-Beth-Scott/dp/0446357251

[puerco-bellies]

8. I just checked zillow.com and our house dropped 30,000 since last June.

Someone posted the zillow site last summer and I was surprised at what the houses were going for in our neighborhood. Even today the houses on the block are going from 900,000 to 1 point 7. My wife inherited the house from her mom, and we will leave it to her daughter. If we bought our house today with a 20% down, the monthly payment would be 5,100 even with a 6.4 rate. No way could we live here right now.

[KitchenWitch]

9. That is our situation as well.

We could never afford to live here if we did not inherit the house.

[puerco-bellies]

10. We are still paying the mortgage.

But the monthly is only a few hundred more then I was paying for a one bedroom in Venice while dating Ali. The house is under prop-13 so our property taxes are almost laughable.

[KitchenWitch]

11. Yah, we are at a 1982 Prop 13 cap.

I would hate to have to pay REAL property taxes here.

[LiberalHeart]

15. How does that work? Are your taxes frozen at a certain point in time?

[puerco-bellies]

16. Yes, Proposition 13 passed in 1978

At that time property taxes were reduced to 1% of accessed value, and cannot be raised (unless sold) more then 2% per year. Since my wife inherited the house from her mom who owned it before '78 we pay around 1,600 a year on a house that could sell for around 920k on today's market. It was called the Tax Payers Revolt, and I think served as a model for other states.

[LiberalHeart]

14. I've never seen zillow before. Very interesting site.

[mwooldri]

12. Real Estate still affordable around Greensboro, NC.

Yep prices went up, but in 2000 a nice "starter home" was 80k. Now it is $125k, but like everywhere else building rates are slowing. We never really "boomed" - we grew a bit, and we're probably shrinking a bit, but nothing really extreme.

Mark.