Do you remember when you could buy a nice house for less than $60,000?

Move to North Dakota! You could be my neighbor! lol We just bought a house for $37,000. It was gutted and rebuilt in 2001. All the appliances, the flooring, vinyl siding, etc were replaced in 2003. There is no structural damage to the basement, and the basement does not leak. The square footage is approximately 1500. We don't have much land, only about half an acre, but the lots next to us and behind us are both empty. We're doing a few minor things to the house, like ceiling fans in all the bedrooms, the dining room, and the living room, and putting up a fence. But the house was definitely in a livable condition when we bought it. The downside is we are in a tiny town kind of out in the middle of nowhere. It's about 45 minutes to the closest town that has like a Walmart, mall, etc. But it works for us, because my husband actually spends less time on the road getting from here to base (20 miles) than he would if we lived in the bigger town that is the opposite direction from base.

An old neighbour once told me she purchased her very nice home in the early 70's for only $10,000.My jaw dropped. Houses around here these days go for $200,000-$700,000.It's crazy. How are people supposed to shelter themselves!?

The year before Hubby and I met (1999) there was a house down the street from my Mom that was a 3 bedroom, 1-level, with a shed, carport, new furnace, new roof, new carpeting and a good sized yard. The area was pretty good and the house was only $48,000. Not bad. I met Hubby and we moved up to where he lived for a year while we were waiting for him to get transfered down to where I had been living. When we moved back the same house was up for sale still only now they wanted $150,000!! I was stunned!! Nothing new had been done to it but they'd more than doubled the asking price. I started looking around and sure enough all of the homes in our town had went through the roof. The only thing your going to find around here for less then $50,000 is a run down dump the size of a doghouse with no more yard than a parking spot. It's sad but true. I am so glad we decided to go with an apartment. Have a great day!! AT PEACE WITHIN

Hi there. Yes I do remember the days when homes and property costs, averaged around the $50,000-$60,000 mark, I often think back now, if I were older enough back then and held a decent job that paid, I would have bought 3-5 properties and made huge profit off them in todays market... But oh well, I was still in primary school, and my parents both bought a 4 bedroom home each...

Well here's one thing to consider with those 300k+ houses. A good number of them are built VERY poorly. A couple of people electrocuted themselves in their houses just from doing simple handiwork. By the way, they did shut off the power prior, both incidents were due to bad wiring and fuses. In another house the wiring was so bad they needed to hire an electrician at do redo the entire thing. Fuses would blow out easy, yea a TV and the occasional laptop were enough to set it off in the den/familyroom/office quad of the house. One person's deck collapsed right out from underneath him, house was only a month old. Another case, the stair broke off right out from the deck, but luckily he didn't have a spill like our last contestant. There was also a few houses where the water and sewerlines were not connected right to the houses. Something like that, or it was the inner plumbing done wrong. Well anyways, one homeowner found out after answering a call of nature, 20 minutes later he tried to take a bath, guess what color the water was... Oh and this can also happen if the house is built on frequent floodplain or flood area. One guy had to deal with number 2 biproduct in the shower, totally angry when he told me about it (and thats a real understatement). I know there are plenty more out there too. I've seen one guy out in front of an affluent neighborhood, sharp homes and a nice lake-waterfall too, pretty well off. The guy is almost always in the entrance to the subdivision with a signs saying "Bad Home Construction" "$400,000 and all I got was crap" "Unhappy Homeowner" "Fix our home NOW **** Homes, do it right!" Personally, I'm better off in the inner suburbs, its more of a community feel. People aren't as fake as those "well off" areas.

Yea you are totally right. But look at it this way. Communities like that are poorly made and the people there seem really false. And soon enough they won't be able to function efficiently. People will start to get a reality check. I'd suggest moving toward modest areas with stable communities.