With taxes finally filed and paid (O.M.G. that was not fun), the man and I have been looking at our finances with the aim of buying a house in the near future. Or, maybe I should say, the sometime future, considering the state of our finances. Not that we're destitute - thanks to self-publishing, we're actually not in the hole this year! Woohoo! But the price of homes in our area is so crazy expensive that we're wondering how anyone ever affords a home. I know that when we were searching for a rental house last year I complained about this, but when we're talking about a house to buy, it's even crazier. No joke, there's nothing under a million dollars that even remotely would work for us. And we're not picky! We're happy to do some renovating ourselves. We're gonna make the kids share bedrooms. We're easy customers. Just not millionaire ones. To give you an example, here are some of the houses we've looked at lately...
This is a small (meaning no office space for us) house on a super busy street that's over 70 years old (without renovations since). The ad says "loads of potential". (translation: needs serious work.) Price: $950,000. But it gets better...
This is a 6000 square foot plot of land. Just land. And if you're not a square footage savvy person (I'm so not), 6000 means that once you put a house on it, you can have a small strip of concrete patio in the back, but not enough room for a yard of any kind. And you could probably shake hands with your neighbor from the upstairs windows. Very small. For just the small plot of land the price... $1.9 million.
This is a tiny, two bedroom, turn of the century house. And I do mean tiny. Get a load of the "master suite" bathroom.
Fancy, no? My guy is not that tall, but even he couldn't fit without bumping a limb on something. Price: $1.5 million
Okay, so I will admit that I might be exaggerating *just* a bit when I say that there is absolutely nothing in reasonable price range for sale in our town. We did find this one that was only $400,000. A steal!
It's a one room "cozy shack" (the listing agent's words, not mine), about 30 miles outside of town, up a one-lane road in the mountains. No heat, no sewer and "possible" running water.
Yeah, I think we're gonna continue renting for quite a while.
~Trigger Happy Halliday
P.S. The first book in my High Heels series, SPYING IN HIGH HEELS, is now FREE at both Amazon.com and iTunes.
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4 comments:
I'm telling you, Gemma, come to my neck of the woods. Here in the belly-button of Illinois $950,000 will buy you a mansion. I'm not kidding. There is a house for sale 4 bed/4 bath, 4,000 sq ft in our historic district - $349,900. I cannot even comprehend paying a million for any of those houses or even that plot of land.
Wow. I'm very glad I live in SC!
I cry when I read things like this. Lol! Seriously, the man has made me stop watching House Hunters becuase I get teary eyed everytime I see what we could buy in another part of the country. We pay a serious premium for sunshine here.
Hi, Gemma! How is it going? I’m sad to hear about your house hunting horror story. A lot of prospective buyers say that house shopping is a haunted house experience for them, especially with their limited resources. But there are also other ways to get the house you want, minus the horror stories. Maybe you can acquire a loan or a mortgage to help you get the house that you want. It’s cheaper than paying rent. [Abdul Jackson]
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