LOL. Looking for a house up here in the overpriced, overtaxed, lowly paid, north.

We found a very depressing example of the differences between the houses and their prices in Massachusetts versus Texas:

This is a house in Wayland Massachusetts listed at 299,000. And Yes it is a house and not a shed!

This is 1 bedroom 1 bathroom





A house priced at 279,700 in Austin Texas, where we would love to live:

Beds 4 Baths 2 Halfbaths 1 Sq.Ft 3,559



I won't bother to show you the insides of either one, as there is absolutely NO comparison!

So why in the world does it cost so much to live in Massachusetts in what is to me SUB standard housing? The area isn't awesomely beautiful. It's cold as Arizona in the winter. And they have no really good "national" chain restraunts like "Sonic" "Long John Silvers" "Krispy Kreme"? I mean COME on!!

I've seen some of those real estate ads near the Boston area, and you are NOT kidding about the prices!!

As for the home in Austin, I'll just write them a check! LOL!

I know, we have friends who live near you and they told us our first house here - 2000 sf and we sold it last year for $105,000 - would go there for close to 250 K in their opinion! That is one reason we like it here....

I know exactly where you are coming from. I grew up in Austin, once a Texan always a Texan. You'll love it there. It's a great place to raise a family.

We lived in TN for 6 years before coming here to CT. In TN, we had built our dream home, Mike and I designed it ourselves, drew up the blueprints, gave it to our builder and purchashed an acre on a lake. This house had no linoleum or formica - floors were tiled or hardwood and all the counter tops were granite, the house was brick. We could have put a bowling alley in the basement, it was huge. All of this was under $300K. When we moved here, we couldn't touch anything like that. We did the best we could and bought a 50 year old fix-er-up-er for the same price. At least it's in a nice neighborhood. On top of that, day care went from $50 a week to $200 a week. Thank G_d we're done with daycare now. Of coures, in TN we did get what we paid for and were happy to leave. We wanted the kids to learn how to read before they went to college LOL. In Austin, the people are genuinely friendly, the schools are good and there is lots to do. Of course, by August, you'll be wishing for the snow.

I wanted to add something about the house in Austin. A house in the Charleston area, same size and number of beds/baths would be an easy $500,000, and that's minimal. Depends on which ritzy neighborhood... LOL

Yep I have to admit that Texas is a great place to raise a family when it comes to having plenty of space to let your kids run around etc.. But one thing I can say for the north is that the school system is the best I have seen. You very rarely here of kids being held back a grade in school here the opposite of when I was growing up in the south. They do their best to catch kids problems early in the school year and will assign your child to a assistant who works on their weakness with them during class. I didn't even know my 6 year old had a problem with her writing and her kindergarten teacher identified it early own. The same with my 9 year old when she was in 1st grade they noticed she was having some problems with math and got a special teacher who would come in the class to help her and a few other kids during their math lessons.
I have also heard that MA has one of the highest percentages in the US of kids that go on to college after they graduate. Maybe that is also because they have some top notch colleges around here IF you can afford them lol. My previous boss had to girls in college at the same time. One at MIT and the other and University of MA. I could always tell when it was time for him to pay their tuition he always came to work grumpy lol..

It's not just the North with overpriced homes anymore. In South Florida, home prices have skyrocketed. I bought my condo just four years ago and I could easily sell it now for twice what I paid for.

The only problem is that everything else has jumped in value too, so I'd need about three times my salary to afford a decent sized house and a decent neighborhood. The taxes alone would crush me.

My only moving option is to move out of South Florida. But despite the occasional major hurricane, I love it here.

Rapid appreciation in home prices isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

Space, space, space! Around Boston, land is a premium and that makes the housing market so high.
Come to Ohio - we have good schools, plenty of land and a good deal on a great house!
Well, the weather still stinks - but hey - you can't have everything!
Also, property taxes in Texas (lived in Dallas for a while) are a lot higher than up there.
Although, Texas didn't have state income tax when I lived there.

Love my house - 1540 sq ft, nice yard, half a basement, 2 car garage, 1-1/2 bath, a nice shed - paid $100,000 9 years ago.

LOL Brady we have all 3 "Sonic" "Long John Silvers" "Krispy Kreme" right here just north of Tampa. We've been looking into moving further inland, the house we bought 19 years ago 4 BR and my office/Nicoles Playroom we got for $50,000 in 1987, we can now sell it for $300,000.00 along with extra for the lot we bought right next door. Moving inland we'd be away from storm surges but not hurricanes, just better off. House's inland go for a lot less then on the water, with getting older (NOT OLD), having a house without a mortage sounds so appealing!
We've found some beautiful houses just inland putting us at least a little bit out of harms way of hurricanes. So selling is what we plan to do and hopefully before Nicole starts 2nd grade. Only thing that has me holding off is memories here, kids raised here it makes it kind of hard to do so.
I can't believe the price of that little shack tho, but moving here from NJ 19 years ago, I guess it about fits the price now!
Good luck with looking!
One thing I do miss here is White Castle, wish FL would get some! Even a decent Pizza or Sub place would be nice!

Ooh I tell ya they make the best subs up here! Sub Way has nothing on the little mom and pop shops that make grinders and great other kinds here. I had never even heard of a hot sub before I moved up north lol! One thing that neither of us like though is the cold cheese pizza that they have at pizza places here. My friends eat it like it's the best thing.

Ahh, I'm another Massachusetts resident west of Baaaaston. But I'm a transplant from Ohio originally. My hubby is a native of these parts.

We were very lucky back in 1998 when the housing market was hot and stayed hot until just recently actually, we found a fixer-upper that the original buyer backed out of (too much work.) We were able to make an uncontested offer (the only way we were going to be able to get a house) and got this tiny dilapidated cape style house for $115,000. (We payed $15,000 under their asking price.)

Well now the house (after getting it most of the way fixed up) is worth well over double that in this market.

It's 1000 sqft, originally only had 1 bathroom on the upper floor. The land is a postage stamp .1 acre. The foot print of the house is 23x26feet. So we've got 2 upstairs bedrooms, a living room and eat in kitched on the main floor and a finished room in the basement.

Pack into that 2 adults, 3 kids and 2 cats!

Because we're a single income family, I'm comfortable with this set up and really don't need a McMansion. But I would like something closer to 2000 sqft, but man I feel it would be financially too much of a stretch.

I do miss Sonic, Long John Silvers, and any restaurant serving Biscuits and Gravy for breakfast. *sigh* Oh and I miss polite drivers!

But our school ROCKS! My two older boys are candidates for the gifted and talented program at the school. They have a retired engineer coming in to give extra instruction to the kids who are advanced in math. My oldest is one of 5 in the school doing this.

They're in the top rated two-way bilingual program in the entire country! They get half their instruction in english, half in spanish in a half and half class of native english and native spanish speakers. The kids help each other! My two older sons sound like native spanish speakers when they speak spanish! (And they use it too, the grandparents of the family behind us only speak spanish, and the kids can talk to them!! It's soooo cool!)

And all their teachers have gone the extra mile to meet their education needs. For my 1st grader at his conference, the teacher was showing me how she would paste over his math problems in his workbook with harder problems because the regular workbook problems were too easy for him! Ooh Rah! They get books to stretch their reading skills, and they can also help other kids in the class if they finish their work or just pick up extra sheets of problems to do from a box tuned to their skill level.

All this in grade school!

So it might be a little more expensive to live and work up here, but it's all relative. I figure if I save for retirement up here, once I'm done I can retire very comfortably to some more rural location in the midwest somewhere and live near a Sonic for the rest of my life.

Now just to convince my very New England husband that this is a good idea! Trips to Missouri to visit my parents have gotten him hooked on Sonic, so we're part way there!

Lady Googlebrains

Housing costs here in New Jersey are driving me nuts. With my not very small family it is close to impossible to find a affordable home that does not require major improvements. And since we are here on a temporary visa I do not want to invest $500,000 only to need to sell it 2 years from now. We have to wait and see if our greencard will be approved. Untill then we are sitting in a 3BR townhome with 5 Kids and spend almost $3000 per month in rent.
Just south of NJ in Delaware we would only pay half for a single family home. But 1.5 to 2 hours commute on the New Jersey Turnpike is just too much.

LOL all this talk of Krispy Kreme and Subway has me hungry.

I live in one of the few places in Canada that has a Krispy Kreme and despite all the hype they got up here I have heard that the other stores that opened are in financial trouble or maybe have already gone under. I do know the one near my home is not a busy place at all where the Tim Hortons across the street is always nuts.

Housing prices always interest me. I live in an area that is quite expensive for housing and the fact that our area is getting the 2010 winter games has only added fuel to the crazy upward trend in pricing. I am just glad we bought when we did because we could never afford this house now!

The Krispy Kremes near my home have closed, though there are a few left in Charleston.

You have to eat Krispy Kreme when they are hot. They melt in your mouth. Once they cool their ok. I like to put them under a broiler with a little butter on top. Yum.

We moved from CA to Tampa 9 years ago and paid not much more and got 1000 square feet more. 3 bedrooms upstairs, master downstairs, 3 full baths and a sitting room off the master bedroom. I love the sliding doors that open to the lanai(that's screened enclosure for you northerners). We double the living space for parties when we do that. We are far enough inland to miss any storm surge.

Much better than CA. Now, if I could get rid of the armadillos.......

I thoroughly loved Florida when I was there for college. Except for the fire ants. OUCH!!!!!!!!

Eugene Oregon is great for me. Decent schools, good families, lots of outdoor options (hiking, skiiing, canoeing, biking) within reasonable distances. Our housing cost has gotten crazy too in the last few years. We bought our house from a friend who had to relocate for work reasons and got a good enough deal that the taxman wrote us a letter to inquire why we underpaid so much! Hee hee!

Yep, I've heard about those MA prices. We are going up to a wedding for my dh's cousin in June. I know that they had a hard time finding a house that they could afford up there!

We went into sticker shock when we moved from GA to Benicia, CA (about an hour away from San Fran). We rented b/c we knew we wouldn't be there long term. My dh wished we had bought b/c the houses went up in value 100,000+ in the 6 months we were there! Just crazy.

Megan

please translate what a crusty creme is?

I sort of understand "sub "having been to various parts of USA but never encountered a crusty creme.......

I want to feel like I`m actually eating one so guess it`s over to you.

LLK