[quote=bearishgurl][quote=Jazzman] . . . Soon we’re off to France and will be buying a beautiful stone farmhouse. The total tally will be our budget for California. Yep, two homes, in two of the most beautiful regions of the world for the price of one nothing-out-of-the ordinary single family home in southern California.
[quote=Jazzman]Now I love California and the people, so don’t get me wrong here, but they think they’ve got it right, and when it comes to home prices …well, they haven’t! According to a survey reported on NBC tonight, CA is the worst run state in the country. Now I don’t know about that, but I do know value when I see it.[/quote]
Jazzman, you had the opportunity to at least purchase a similar home to the your first link right here in CA for a comparable price (except its wood shingle is no longer insurable in CA). It may not have been hundreds of years old (not sure of the age of the one in your link) but like spdrun posted, there ARE homes like this in the US. The second and third link are a bit unusual. There ARE many stone and rock houses in TX, OK and AR, mostly 1600-1900 sf, which would cost about $180K to $220K today. Many of them are situated either lakefront (with a boat dock) or within blocks of a lake. The vast majority of them are owned as vacation homes by city dwellers (workers) who often move into them when they retire. They are mostly fully furnished down the last detail and almost never rented out.
Jazzman, it appears that you only “shopped” in some of CA’s most prestigious communities (mostly coastal) in which you “expected” to make a “killer deal.”
Even after reviewing these posts, I still feel like you may have “overshopped” and “overthought” your retirement home purchase up and down the state and so ended up talking yourself out of buying in CA for no other reason other than you were “tired” (and also got “distracted” by the “doomsayers” on the MSM).
Why am I now bringing back up the issue of “overthinking” as it applies to RE purchases? Because I believe it is very possible the OP here has done the same thing while shopping for a home for more than a year (albeit on a much shorter leash than Jazzman due to job constraints and available resources).
I’m unfamiliar with Europe but just trying to make a true apples-to-apples comparison of those listings in France to CA listings in the same price range. Since it doesn’t look like there are any jobs for miles around ANY of those listings, they should be comped to inland rural and semi-rural areas in CA, IMO. I just don’t think CA prices are that bad today for what you get, where the property is located and the fact that CA actually has “potable water” available everywhere and a very good infrastructure in comparison to other states.
When all is said and done, Jazzman will likely have spent $750K – $1M on RE but was “unable” to make a deal on a suitable retirement property for himself and his spouse in CA while diligently shopping between 2010 and 2012. There’s nothing wrong with having two homes, distant and diverse from one another. But I still feel he could have done the same thing in CA (condo near beach plus large Lake Tahoe cabin) or fixer mini-estate outside of Ojai, SLO, Napa or Sonoma (likely larger but as a comparable to listing #1 in France).
Thanks for sharing with us the listings in France, Jazzman. They are very interesting.[/quote]
BG, you just can’t compare. Old homes are not sold on a sq ft basis, and you are comparing prices using a devalued dollar so it’s academic. Also, you simply cannot find these kinds of homes in the US, and you really need to go there to understand that. Just look at the pictures! The closest I came to finding similar was Montecito, but there are faux Tudors, or homes reminiscent of turreted chateaux, and are new(er) constructions, probably wooden, and they sell for multiple times the price. The very fact that the owners wanted something that mimics European history and tastes says it all don’t you think? Now, here’s the thing. Many Americans recognize this and buy in Europe, France where ever. The logic goes why pay millions for a Picasso copy, when you can have the original at a fraction of the price.
I grant you, these can seem largely pointless arguments/comparisons when framed in the bigger picture, such as job opportunities, earnings potential, language barriers, home and family ties etc. The point of them is to create an awareness about how you place a value on what is your biggest financial liability, your home. And do you tolerate external factors that create huge problems, because they can be conveniently forgotten with the passage of time. Psychological bubbles, beget economic bubbles and denial of that dooms history to repeat itself.
