Residential Median Sale Price per Sq Ft

[W2R]

I bought my home in 2002 for $100/square foot, and realistically it has not appreciated much. At that price, it was relatively easy to pay off.

As is true for many women (and some men, too), my house is my "nest" and very, very important to my happiness. I love being able to afford a nice house that I like. When I enter my house, I enter a place that is beautiful to me, a place of comfort and refuge and peace that is mine alone.

To me, the lack of housing affordability in some areas is very unappealing and greatly detracts from the desirability of those areas for me. I want a nice house, I have one here, and living in crummy quarters (or living like a pauper to afford non-crummy quarters) makes no sense for me.

Now, if I could afford a nice house in an area like Honolulu, for example, AND not living like a pauper, I suppose that could be pretty superb. However, if wishes were horses, beggers would ride. Besides, I would miss New Orleans despite all of its (many, huge) faults.

 

[DeborahB]

I can't figure out how to calculate out (or in) the land. But if I take the current market value of our house and divide by the square feet I come up with $90/sq. ft. We have a 3100 sq ft house on .4 of an acre in a nice neighborhood.

The thing I think is worth mentioning is that people in general seem to think that because housing is inexpensive (relatively) so is everything else. Our Kansas City house isn't too expensive (NOT cheap) but the taxes and cost of groceries and so on are very comparable to more expensive parts of the country. You may have to kick out outliers like SF and NYC for that to be true.

Sales and restaurant tax here is generally about 8.5% to over 10%. It's painful And if I had kids, I'd have to move to KS so I could send them to public school because the schools here are bad.

So... there are tradeoffs.

 

[calmloki]

Yesterday we were in Arizona and we tend to look at places. Saw some mighty nice homes in the Carefree area for oh, a few million or 4 times that. They were pretty and you could eat and sleep in them. Also saw a couple stone buildings in Superior right adjacent to a creek - 6 300 sq.ft. rental units and a stone house for $175k. It was also a tad bit rough, but one could both eat and sleep there as well.

 

[Gatordoc50]

Future Home prices Home price data on 384 markets - CNNMoney.com

YMMV

So far, the predictions are completely wrong for South Florida. I think they were assuming home prices wouldn't recover until unemployment improved significantly. But, investors are cleaning up the low end and there seems to be an endless supply of wealthy folks for the high end.

 

[clifp]

Buying in Vegas (where prices were under $<50 sq foot but have now risen considerably)and living in Honolulu where $500-600 is the average, I have been living with this disconnect for the last two years.

Initially I was thinking that everything in Vegas was crazy cheap, but now looking at kitchen remodel that is going to be $50K or more. I am increasingly finding Honolulu prices to be crazy expensive. My god I could practically buy another place in Vegas to remodel a <200 sq foot kitchen

 

[mb]

The Silicon Valley market appears to be heating up and/or recovering depending on how you want to look at it. (The far out suburbs were the areas hit hardest in the down turn. Prices in the "heart" of Silicon Valley held up pretty well.)

A 1960s era tract house near me recently received 20+ offers in a couple of days and sold for about $450/sq ft and about $100k over the original asking price. I think that houses in premium areas, e.g. Woodside, Portola Valley, Atherton, etc, are selling for more than that on a sq ft basis.

This may sound crazy to those in the middle of the country but prices have been crazy here (compared to most of the rest of the country) for decades and of course Silicon Valley and the SF Bay area have some unique characteristics driving those prices.

 

[gardenfun]

Real estate is pretty crazy here in the Bay Area:

Bay Area home prices up 24.6% over 2012 - SFGate

Supply is super low and the buyers are worried prices will go up. And they have.

 

[DeborahB]

Buying in Vegas (where prices were under $<50 sq foot but have now risen considerably)and living in Honolulu where $500-600 is the average, I have been living with this disconnect for the last two years.

Initially I was thinking that everything in Vegas was crazy cheap, but now looking at kitchen remodel that is going to be $50K or more. I am increasingly finding Honolulu prices to be crazy expensive. My god I could practically buy another place in Vegas to remodel a <200 sq foot kitchen

That's a really expensive kitchen remodel - are you sure it's not a rip-off place? Are you ripping the whole thing out? Even so that is expensive. We did some kitchen remodeling a few years ago and we could have ripped the large kitchen out and moved the bathroom too, for that kind of money. We got granite counters put over our hideous 1962 tile - also backsplash...

 

[photoguy]

A neighbors house in San Jose sold for just under 700k (2bed/1bath,1000sf). I'm still scratching my head on this one as it seems to me like it should have gone for closer to 600k.

 

[aaronc879]

A neighbors house in San Jose sold for just under 700k (2bed/1bath,1000sf). I'm still scratching my head on this one as it seems to me like it should have gone for closer to 600k.

I think you accidently added an extra 0 onto your numbers

My 2 bd,1 1/2ba 860sqft condo is worth <$40K. I don't "get" those prices or the incomes that would be required to afford them.

 

[haha]

Micro-Apartments in the Big City: A Trend Builds - Businessweek

This Bloomberg.com article discusses a trend toward very small urban dwellings-like 250 sq. ft. There have been a few built in dense Seattle neighborhoods, but there is also a lot of opposition to them, mostly from people in these neighborhoods who paid a lot more for their places, and also who have concerns about parking and school taxes on these cheaper dwellings.

Ha

 

[photoguy]

Unfortunately no. The house really is 700k = $700,000.

I think this is one of the reasons why people can be making really good wages yet still feel like they are on a hamster wheel.

 

[haha]

Unfortunately no. The house really is 700k = $700,000.

I think this is one of the reasons why people can be making really good wages yet still feel like they are on a hamster wheel.

At what monthly rent would this place find good rental demand?

Ha

 

[clifp]

That's a really expensive kitchen remodel - are you sure it's not a rip-off place? Are you ripping the whole thing out? Even so that is expensive. We did some kitchen remodeling a few years ago and we could have ripped the large kitchen out and moved the bathroom too, for that kind of money. We got granite counters put over our hideous 1962 tile - also backsplash...

Good to know, that is my budget passed on input from my sister who is also starting her kitchen remodel. I don't have a firm estimate so it could be lower. Still 14K for cabinets from either Home Depot or Lowes, 6K for counter top, 3K for appliances. So that is 23K before flooring, light fixtures, upgrading my 1960 electrical, and includes no labor. In general I'm finding it to be at least twice as expensive to do stuff in Honolulu as Vegas.

 

[photoguy]

At what monthly rent would this place find good rental demand?

Ha

I don't have a very good feel for the rental market here. Zillow's rent estimate is $2450 but this seems high to me (of course I haven't looked for a rental for a long time).

A quick look on craigslist has a 2br town home (1000sq ft) close by renting for $2650 so perhaps Zillow's estimate is reasonable.

 

[kramer]

I don't have a very good feel for the rental market here. Zillow's rent estimate is $2450 but this seems high to me (of course I haven't looked for a rental for a long time).

A quick look on craigslist has a 2br town home (1000sq ft) close by renting for $2650 so perhaps Zillow's estimate is reasonable.

Wow, prices must have really gone up. I retired in 2007 (before any sign of a housing crisis) and left the San Jose area. At the time, I was living in a 1 bedroom apartment, maybe 700 square feet, in a great location and good building with good management. Carport for parking. I was walking distance from everything downtown, near Julian and Second Street, a couple of blocks north of St. James Park. I was paying $1000 per month.

 

[Badger]

As we are all aware location is the major factor (all things being equal) in home values. This is not just the city but the neighborhood and even the street. I had some good guidance from my father and listened to him when I bought my house years ago. Location was important enough that I slept on a mattress on the floor and had no furniture for a couple of years so I could buy the house. Furniture came later as I saved the money for it. The older concrete block house is modest, solid, and comfortable yet the lot is worth more than the house. I don't have much faith in Zillow since I know it can sell for a couple of hundred thousand more than what they have determined. I have seen the same time and again on home sales in my area.

Cheers!

 

[haha]

I don't have a very good feel for the rental market here. Zillow's rent estimate is $2450 but this seems high to me (of course I haven't looked for a rental for a long time).

A quick look on craigslist has a 2br town home (1000sq ft) close by renting for $2650 so perhaps Zillow's estimate is reasonable.

Thanks. Thanks. The seems typical of markets where people expect rising prices. Rents are cheap relative to purchasing.

Ha

 

[haha]

Wow, prices must have really gone up. I retired in 2007 (before any sign of a housing crisis) and left the San Jose area. At the time, I was living in a 1 bedroom apartment, maybe 700 square feet, in a great location and good building with good management. Carport for parking. I was walking distance from everything downtown, near Julian and Second Street, a couple of blocks north of St. James Park. I was paying $1000 per month.

This is interesting to me. I always thought that San Jose was a high rent city, 75-100% above Seattle. But in 2007 I moved into an attractive one bedroom apartment in a well managed building in a good Seattle neighborhood with only 500 sq ft, and also paid $1000. This wasn't the cheapest, but it was competitive in the area. Apartments were very hard to find.If rents are OK in this equaiton, here is an interesting article regardig international college students and their problems affording rent.

Squeezed by Soaring Rent, Students Double Up in Apartments…And in Bed | New City Collegian



Ha

 

[Brat]

My daughter lives in the Silicon Valley, as does my niece and the daughter of a friend. If you look at ROI it is cheaper to rent, particularly if you don't intend to stay there more than 20 years. Right now several firms are adding to staff like there is no tomorrow.. high wage jobs (Google, Apple, Face Book and the like) and these employees want to buy a house because that represents 'you have made it'. Everyone wants a house with a yard and their zoning largely dictates that. The only solution is to migrate to higher density.

 

[explanade]

The differences across the country makes you realize that this is a continent-sized nation.

Most countries are at most 2 hours flight from another country and within one time zone. In the US, it takes 6 hours to get from coast to coast.

There's no way there could be evenly distributed real estate prices across such a large land mass.

 

[FIREd]

I can't bring myself to buy a piece of real estate in the Bay Area (on the Peninsula and Marin County in particular). I understand that this area commands a certain premium relative to other parts of the country (great weather, dynamic economy, etc...). But the premium I am being asked to pay is far too high IMO. With all the money sloshing around, valuation has become un-important and I am seeing a lot of stupid prices. I'd rather not participate in the frenzy.

 

[explanade]

My daughter lives in the Silicon Valley, as does my niece and the daughter of a friend. If you look at ROI it is cheaper to rent, particularly if you don't intend to stay there more than 20 years. Right now several firms are adding to staff like there is no tomorrow.. high wage jobs (Google, Apple, Face Book and the like) and these employees want to buy a house because that represents 'you have made it'. Everyone wants a house with a yard and their zoning largely dictates that. The only solution is to migrate to higher density.

You also have a lot of Asian buyers bidding up prices. They cherry-pick the areas with the best schools.

Been like that for awhile, before Hong Kong went to the PRC and a lot of wealthy Hong Kong citizens invested in the US and Canada.