Are we on the verge of a housing bubble?? - Page 2

I live in the same metro area and its even lower cost of living where I live than up in the city. My house has gone up in value from about $100K to $180K over 12 years and that is only because I invested about $50K in improvements to it. My taxes are dirt cheap (10 acres plus at 2350 square foot house for $1150 a year) and the mortgage was paid off earlier this year. We don't have any significant bubble in our area. This prevents me from moving elsewhere, even though I'm in need of a location change.

Depending on your tolerance for a drive, you can still pick up single family homes in my county for under $50K. I have a 35 minute drive to Overland Park each day. This is the price of a starter home of old - gotta love that there are still pockets of affordable homes in the country.

I live in NJ, unfortunately. I also live in Trenton... which is not a nice neighborhood at all. I posted a while back about a murder that happened only a few blocks away from where I live and right behind where I work. Kind of scary!!

I pay $895 a month for a 1 bedroom apt. No washer, dryer, dishwasher. One crappy A/C which doesn't work at all. It was "newly remodeled" by the super.. and while it looked nice when I first wanted to move away from home.. I have now noticed how bad the work is.

I would like to move to a bigger apt/nicer area or perhaps even buy a house of my own. But it seems impossible!!! Some houses in the GHETTO of Trenton can go for $100,000!!!!! My grandmothers house which was built in the 40s or 50s and has had no major renovations except the addition of central air has gone from in the $20,000s when she bought it to approx. $350,000!!

I hate it because it seems impossible for someone like me to be able to start their own life with a place of their own.

Why wasn't it me that won the $258 million mega millions lottery??

Holy cow! I'm beginning to see why everyone is moving here! We live in a nice part of town, about 4 miles from the foothills (5 miles from Red Rocks Amphatheater), 20 +/- minutes from downtown. We have a 890 square foot, 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment, with central air and washer/dryer that we're paying $840/month (plus pet rent of $30). Granted, I know our median income is lower too, but I simply cannot fathom the cost of housing that a lot of you guys are paying!!

But we are still trying to hit that $167 million Powerball lottery!

Actually I considered moving farther out in order to afford something. I work in Overland Park so it would have to be reasonably close to that and to my parents who live in Raytown which is on the East side of KC. I am an only child and my parents aren't getting any younger. I just don't want to wind up with a house too far away from them when they get older and need my help. And I don't want to have to move in 5 or 10 years in order to be closer. Plus I do plan on having children in the next two to three years so I want to have the close security net. But living further out has it's own draws, I would love to live in one of the small towns around here and have started looking into them actually.

At any rate, I'm only planning on living with my parents for a couple of years. It will give me a chance to pay off my debt (Student loans and credit cards suck...never again will I be in debt like this...never. And my car will be paid off in August 2007 which will free up quite a bit of money.) and save up a reasonable down payment on a house (with the added bonus of giving my parents a little breathing room with their own finances) which should set up me to live in a fairly nice home.

Thankfully I don't want anything extravagant. I would love to find a nice little fixer upper. Just not too much of a fixer upper, I definately don't want to have to deal with major problems at any rate but there is something very rewarding about taking something run down and restoring the beauty it's lost. I don't want a large house, I've never seen the need to have a huge house when you have a small family. And older homes seem to have so much more character than the newer homes they build now, not to mention they seem to be better built.

I better stop rambling on.

GrayKit, you live in an area I would call "cheap!" Yet, in NJ -- and I live right outside of Manhattan -- I have coworkers (who work in downtown Manhattan) who live in the sticks of Pennsylvania for the sake of "having a house" or rather an affordable house. It's INSANE!!! It's not even that close (like 1.5 hours to upper manhattan than prob tack on another 40 minutes to get to the office).

Over a four hour commute each way to get to work? Um, no thanks.

I quoted your rambling on because I get rambly when talking about these issues!

If any of you've ever visited my website, you know the fixer-upper I was saddled with. We bought it from my in-laws in Feb of 2001. The house, an 1800 sq weirdo with 4-5 acres was appraised at 65k then I believe and that was pushing it, and we took out a loan for 50k plus closing costs. The-inlaws cleared their debts then handed us back a check for 30k of which 20k went to clear our debt (pay-off on mobile home and pay-off on a cc.) The 10k that was left hardly started getting the place into some kind of livable condition, and then comfortable and also some decent furniture.

Talk about a money pit.

We refinanced in 2004 for 100k at which time the house appraised for 124k. Trust me, in this area the housing prices have not gone up all that much if at all (changing demographics to put a PC term on it) so I've put approximately 50k worth of work into it.

I don't like the area, I don't like the busy road in front of the house and the traffic noise from it, I don't like that my blood pressure goes up every time we have an extended rain (because the creek next to the house floods,) but with housing prices the way they are, even if we could sell the place for 130-140k that would only give us about 30-40k to put on what, a 2-300k house? Maybe when we win the lottery

Yes I don't understand why anyone would want to have that large a communte. As far as affordability, I would say that even starting out people around where you live make a lot more money than people around here. Of course that drives up housing costs and the cost of everything else as well.

I'm very thankful I grew up this area and thus have no problem living around here because if I lived where you live, I would never be able to afford a house. Of course, in return for a lower cost of living we have less night life, less entertainment, less variety to choose from in quite a few areas...it's all a trade off.

I grew up in Chicago and won't go back because of the housing prices. My modest $180K home would run over a million in that area and I would have a 1.5 hour commute to work. I do miss the night life sometimes, but my trade off is the entertainment that my large 4-legged family brings.

OK, I love so many things about California but I'm really hoping the housing prices go down. But heck, I'd settle for them just ceasing the upward climb, at this point! Here's what makes me sad and frustrated: My husband and I are trying to save up for our first house, as many others are. We are strictly budgeting ourselves and living simply, so that we can sock away as much as possible. I actually get paid really well for a woman of my age, too, so that helps. So, because I guess I still have some of the whole "American dream" idealism, you can have anything if you work hard enough stuff, rattling around in my brain, I find it upseting that I can work really hard, sacrifice a lot, save lots of money . . . and still be priced out. I mean, I don't want to talk dollar amounts, but we've put away a lot and will continue to. However, a total piece of crud here (adjacent to railroad yard and main street in a "bad" section of town) goes for around 340K (we moved here, by the way, because the last place in CA we were that same house would be pushing 500K). So in order to get a REASONABLE down payment (10%) I'd need to have about $34,000. It just doesn't seem fair that despite all my hard work and good saving habits I'd have to mortage my soul to get in a house (a junky house!) because I won't have a good down payment. It's very discouraging.

Tucson's housing prices aren't out of line. Median price, for a new home is about 180k and resales are about 154k. Four years ago, we paid 90k, for a 50 y/o 3BR, 1 bath, in a solid middle-class neighborhood. The house had been remodeled, with an added family room and bedroom and new kitchen. Average price in our neighborhood is now 138k. Ours would easily sell for around 125k.

Currently, Tucson has a housing shortage and new ticky-tacky, look-alike subdivisions are going up, all over the valley. Resales are not staying on the market, for more than a couple of weeks and sellers are getting their asking prices.

I've been looking, for myself and, I can get a decent house, in a decent neighborhood, for under 150k. I've been looking at 30-40 y/o houses, well maintained. I also found a nice, 4BR/2bath double-wide, on a full acre, for 68k. The land alone is worth it.

Just to digress only a little...
"Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same...
There's a green one, and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same...."

Every time I see one of those developments, I think of Pete Seeger -- but then, I guess I'm dating myself....

The only dated thing about that is that the HOAs would never allow green, pink, blue and yellow paint to be in the same neighborhood!

Yeah, that's another thing with the newer developments. The controlling HOAs that cost another arm and a leg to be a mandatory member with them after you purchase your home. Does anyone else remember the X-Files episode about the HOA from hell (literally)? OMG, that was such a great show! Way too many truths hidden in the sarcasm there.

Oh my god, do I have a bone to pick with HOA's. My parents' HOA won't let them put up a fence (and they have a known drug house directly behind them since we back up onto public housing...yay gentrification!) or have a pool. We had to petition to put my brother's swingset up, the landscaping has to be done within so many months of one moving in (and it has to be done by a specific landscaper) and the color of your house has to be approved before you can break ground. Ground was broken on my parents' house in 1999, after my grandfather died and my grandmother mover in with us when the interest rates were scarily low. Now, the HOA that the people I nanny for belong to tried to cut my bike lock because they think (and didn't warn me or anything) that bicycles out of garages are "an eyesore". I'd hate to find out what some of their other rules are...

I refuse to buy in a neighborhood, with an HOA. It is MY house and MY property and, as long as I'm not breaking health and safety laws, I'll paint it any color I like!

Recently, a Tucson HOA went after a homeowner, because he placed a flagpole, in his front yard. The court ruled that the HOA could not infringe upon a person's right to fly the American flag on his/her own property. City and county codes dictate the maximum height of the pole but, that's the only caveat.

Almost as bad in some instances, there was something I read recently about a homeowner in a "historical" house that wanted to renovate his front steps and had to apply to the society for permission and was turned down.

Unfortunately they had nothing in their rules about the color the house could be painted ...

As I recall he painted it green with purple spots.

The society swiftly reversed themselves on the denial.

I suspect they probably shortly thereafter added something about approved colors also .