Starter homes.......

There have been pre-manufactured [pre-fab] homes for many years....Hell Sears&Roebuck had a line of them...There are still some of them here in the area.
 

Three years ago we sold our house which was built in 1955 for 130,000. We had poured money into it and five years earlier it wouldn't even sell for 80,000. We couldn’t give it away. Lol. Today the house next to it, same as ours, is for sale for 250,000. It has three bedrooms and one bath and is 1000 sq ft. Should have waited another 3 years :(.
 
Aneeda72 said:
Three years ago we sold our house which was built in 1955 for 130,000. We had poured money into it and five years earlier it wouldn't even sell for 80,000. We couldn’t give it away. Lol. Today the house next to it, same as ours, is for sale for 250,000. It has three bedrooms and one bath and is 1000 sq ft. Should have waited another 3 years :(.
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I think neighborhoods rise & fall in popularity as well? Sometimes it has to do with the schools.

I'll shorten a long story, an old neighborhood near here was at one time very affluent...then almost slum like....now affluent once again. At one time in downtown Cincinnati residential property was near worth nothing...unless zoning could be changed for business . Now condos in the 1000-1500 sq/ft range are selling for half a million & up.......go figure?
 

First home was on 78 Oakwood Avenue, Falmouth MA, in 1964. Paid $10,600, plus borrowed $1400 for redoing heating and kitchen. Looked it up on Zillow... price was "down" $3600> to $458,000. Also rented the "1720 House" in Martha's Vineyard in 1963 from William Randolph Hearst's niece, for $90/mo. You can rent the same house in August of this year for ONE week for only $8400. :)
 
Our first home was waterfront on a canal on the south shore of Long Island. It cost us $14000. The monthly payment was $63 for mortgage, taxes and insurance. I bought a small boat for $50 plus $50 more for an outboard motor.
 
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Oh man,wish I had never started looking on Zillow. The house we bought in 1980 for 282,000 and sold in 1982 for 292,000 is now estimated at 5,900,000. 5M bucks would come in handy right now:rolleyes: Have to make sure hubs doesn`t see it-he`d probably have a stroke. Must have had some major remodeling done but no square footage added. It was 3,880 sq.ft. when we bought it and it says it still is.
 
When most of our parents bought their homes, it was in the 1950-1970 range. That when we had" Levittown "type of developments. They were priced to capture the returning WWII GI market. They were mass produced, entry level, basic homes. Today, nobody is chasing that market, The profit is in McMansions. Not in eking out a tiny profit on each basic house.
 
Starter homes are still available. But price isn't what determines whether to buy or not. The most basic. Jobs in what you are qualified in doing to pay for it.


This is an example. Rural Arkansas.




103-Cargill-Ave-White-Hall-AR


$25,0003 bd 1 ba 1,249 sqft
103 Cargill Ave, White Hall, AR 71602
For sale
Est. payment:
$126/mo


What was like husband working while wife stays home raising 3 or 4 kids. IMO what couples want. No kids, each working living where there is something to do & ease of getting to places to go.
 
I think you're way off. A home is worth what it is worth to someone. Period. When I was 20 I had a prestigious job (for an office worker) that paid $325/mo. That was a decent salary for those days.

Our "starter home" is currently in the $700K range. But incomes here are high, and the majority of couples are dual-income.

You want cheaper, you buy in areas I wouldn't even walk around in the daytime, let alone at night - or you purchase a condo, of which they are building plenty since density in our area is still fairly low for an urban metropolis.

People can go way out in the boonies and buy, of course - but we're centered between two of the largest employment areas; an easy 30-min from either one, with multiple transit options as well as driving.

So....you could save $200K buying a home that's 2 hrs drive (that's one way, with no transit option), or you could save yourself an extra 3 hrs/day by buying a home more centrally located. The market says people value their time more, assuming they can swing the extra $$$$. Which is why we bought our home 30 yrs ago to begin with, because we didn't want to have a crappy commute.

As they say in RE sales, location is everything.......
 
As others have stated, depends where you are. We still live in our 'starter home' --- never moved. It's in far Chicago burbs, originally a 1500sf home built in the mid 1950's. In 1981, it was $87000. There were less expensive homes at that time going somewhere in the $60,000 range. Not possible to get anything less than that (in greater Chicago area) unless you're talking manufactured housing.
 

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