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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1761 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 30, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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My immediate question would be 'Why do you need to spend half-a-million on a house?'

If someone handed me half a million dollars, I'd put 400k of that into investment and use the remaining 100k to start building a small home. (I'm already ahead of the curve as I have property to put said house on, but still.)

Besides, even if you did get the money, you're paying property tax, maintenance, insurance, upkeep on a house that costs half a million dollars. Talk about a bad investment.

How, uh, old are you? The median price of homes sold in the US last year is 400k.

I'm not a boomer, if that's what you're asking.

Doing a casual perusal of online available real estate shows prices comfortably in the 150,000 range where I'm at.

Not everyone on the Motte lives in a trendy international cosmopolitan area, you know.

Not everyone on the Motte lives in a trendy international cosmopolitan area, you know.

If you think that you can get anything in a trendy international cosmopolitan area for anything close to 500k...

Again, 400k is the median sale price across the entire country. 500k is, like, 25% "trendier" than the median. It's an absolutely unremarkable price. It's much closer to the norm than the 175k you see in your area.

For what it's worth, it isn't just the trendy international cosmopolitan cities (ie NYC, Chicago and LA) which have insane house prices in the US. I live in Denver (nice city but not really trendy) and we have the same problem.

FWIW, housing is ludicrously expensive in other parts of the world, too.

500k would just about suffice for building a bitch-basic one-family home here.

My immediate question would be 'Why do you need to spend half-a-million on a house?'

...because that's what houses cost???

I open Zillow for my city and I see the following listings:

These aren't McMansions; they are completely normal suburban houses in South Florida.

Even empty lots are going for a quarter mil, not 100k.

There is a reason millenials are waiting for a housing crash before buying our first house.

...because that's what houses cost???

Not where I'm at. I'm seeing houses in subdivisions for as low as 175,000, and that would still be stupidly over-sized for what I'd need.

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