Although I am not planning to actually buy anything for a couple years or so, we went out looking at what a half a million dollars buys you these days in the form of thrashed houses owned by a bank in higher end areas.
I must say i personally like what i saw, but should disclose that my ideal house is the frat house I lived in circa 1983 which was pretty objectively icky. I am hoping I may be able to score something like we saw this weekend for about half this price in a few years.
The first place was way out bylake Skinner near Temecula. 459k, (900k a few years ago) 4.4 acres, 2 houses, one a mobile home, the other a pretty darn ugly 80’s beast. the mobile home had been struck by a falling tree limb and the roof was bashed in on the edge and much of the kitchen destroyed. bet that was noisy. (any ballpark idea how much something like that would cost to fix, or is it just totalled? is there a patchy type job that could be done on the cheap?)
had the best porch possible, which by itself would make me sign up immeidately if they divided the asking price in 2.
The other place was 5 acres in La Cresta with an old house, very very beat up, great views, asking 559k. (was I think 800k) Seems like a great deal compared to where prices have been but when you actually go look at it, and think 559,000 actual dollars, or even 10% of those down, well, I get a little freaked out thinking about all the work that would be needed to make the place seem not like a really beat up old frat house, and how i would probably be busy the rest of my life trying to hold this thing together with duct tape and quikrete.
great views though, and all the houses around it look big and rich. I wonder how big the market will be for pretty beat up houses, especially if cash becomes tight and people dont have extra dough lying aroudn to bring them up to basic standards?
seems like people on this board conjecture that eventually people with “money” will step in and buy houses and rent them or invest in them.. But what if there’s no more, or at least not as many rich people? If the stock market gets real hammered, and real estate gets real hammered, well, most people keep most of their money their. right? people dont just leave money in their savings account? my theory is that maybe extreme fixer-uppers will be seen as worse liabilities than regular houses, as flipping goes out of style, so does the liability attached potentially to buying something with problems and holding onto it.
i could be very wrong.
Although i consider myself highly unemotional about housing and probably would never actually buy anything without this wife and children, there is something about walking around a property with your kids running around it that immediately makes you think, hey, it would be kinda cool to buy the place because we could do _____ over here and we could move ____ over there and before you know it, you’ve got this whole dumb fantasy going around this vacant dump. i wouldnt pay 3 grand a month to live there though or to have the headache I could feel approaching just thinking about owning it. we pay about 1/2 that for a better spot right now. seems wrong to buy the cow when we are getting the milk 1/2 price.
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