House hunting, pt 1 of a million
First off, lemme tellya, TBO and I wouldn't even be thinking about buying a house if it weren't for my loving mother, who has graciously been giving us some overly generous "presents", so if we do end up finding a "place of our own" to live in, it is all due to her. So, thanks, mom!
As many of you probably know, the real estate market is tanking. While that is horrible for a lot of people out there, for whom I do indeed feel bad, I have to admit that it is great news for those of us in the lucky position of being able to afford to buy a house for the first time. In southern California, and more specifically Los Angeles County, though, "tanking" takes on a special meaning. That meaning is, prices are falling, but nowhere near catastrophic amounts. I've been tracking the real estate classifieds in the LA Times since last July, and it looks like houses are dropping in price about 20%, to where a house that would have sold for $500K last summer might be going for $400K at this point, and that could be overstating the drop.
Trust me on this, at $400K in the SF Valley, TBO and I are really at the bottom of the market, too. We looked at a place last weekend that had just been reduced to $350K from $400K, and it showed. It was a stone's throw from the 405 freeway (not a good place to be--it was loud!), and the floor plan was almost perversely created to make its 1581 square feet look as small as possible. It wasn't quite the definition of a "fixer-upper", but it was close--the yard was in terrible shape, and there didn't even seem to be the hookups necessary to put a washer/dryer in!
This was the cheapest house given our search parameters by far; most everything else is going for $400K and up to $450K, which is just about out of our mortgage comfort zone. Everyone says to be patient, that things are just starting to fall, but I have my doubts. The most likely scenario, imho, is that the number of our choices at this price range are going to increase, but the quality won't improve that much. The real collapse in SoCal is happening at the fringes, where people making a lot less than we are moved in the 1990s. I can see houses in San Bernardino and Riverside dropping 50% or more in value, because there are so many drawbacks to living in those areas, at least for people who work in this area. That commute would be horrendous and the smog and oppressive heat would pall. Most families only moved out that way because the price of houses in LA County is so far out of bounds that those were the only affordable places to find. What middle class family, of any size, can afford the payments on $600K, let alone the $700K that was the median cost of a house last year in Glendale, for chrissakes?! That's crazy.
TBO and I realize that whatever we find, we are going to be spending a whole lot of time, energy, and money over the next bunch o' years fixing it up. And probably not to improve its value, necessarily, but simply to make it livable for us. I foresee tearing walls down, landscaping, and installing fixtures and appliances in my future, which actually sounds kinda fun, since we can create our own living space instead of merely inheriting someone else's version of what is "nice". That part will be exciting despite the hard work.
Now if I could just find someone to do it for me for free.
; )
As many of you probably know, the real estate market is tanking. While that is horrible for a lot of people out there, for whom I do indeed feel bad, I have to admit that it is great news for those of us in the lucky position of being able to afford to buy a house for the first time. In southern California, and more specifically Los Angeles County, though, "tanking" takes on a special meaning. That meaning is, prices are falling, but nowhere near catastrophic amounts. I've been tracking the real estate classifieds in the LA Times since last July, and it looks like houses are dropping in price about 20%, to where a house that would have sold for $500K last summer might be going for $400K at this point, and that could be overstating the drop.
Trust me on this, at $400K in the SF Valley, TBO and I are really at the bottom of the market, too. We looked at a place last weekend that had just been reduced to $350K from $400K, and it showed. It was a stone's throw from the 405 freeway (not a good place to be--it was loud!), and the floor plan was almost perversely created to make its 1581 square feet look as small as possible. It wasn't quite the definition of a "fixer-upper", but it was close--the yard was in terrible shape, and there didn't even seem to be the hookups necessary to put a washer/dryer in!
This was the cheapest house given our search parameters by far; most everything else is going for $400K and up to $450K, which is just about out of our mortgage comfort zone. Everyone says to be patient, that things are just starting to fall, but I have my doubts. The most likely scenario, imho, is that the number of our choices at this price range are going to increase, but the quality won't improve that much. The real collapse in SoCal is happening at the fringes, where people making a lot less than we are moved in the 1990s. I can see houses in San Bernardino and Riverside dropping 50% or more in value, because there are so many drawbacks to living in those areas, at least for people who work in this area. That commute would be horrendous and the smog and oppressive heat would pall. Most families only moved out that way because the price of houses in LA County is so far out of bounds that those were the only affordable places to find. What middle class family, of any size, can afford the payments on $600K, let alone the $700K that was the median cost of a house last year in Glendale, for chrissakes?! That's crazy.
TBO and I realize that whatever we find, we are going to be spending a whole lot of time, energy, and money over the next bunch o' years fixing it up. And probably not to improve its value, necessarily, but simply to make it livable for us. I foresee tearing walls down, landscaping, and installing fixtures and appliances in my future, which actually sounds kinda fun, since we can create our own living space instead of merely inheriting someone else's version of what is "nice". That part will be exciting despite the hard work.
Now if I could just find someone to do it for me for free.
; )
posted by bryduck at 8:43 AM
1 Comments:
I'll totally tear down some walls for you gratis! In fact, why have partitions at all? We can make that 1,581-square-foot house livable for you—every last inch of it. Hold on, lemme go get a sledge hammer.
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