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Ha ha luxury cars, not hardly. And the price was per each of the current 2. My post was mostly about inflation and repairs. It is interesting to note that only my current non-remarkable vehicles are still on the road, the houses are still standing and inhabited.
I did think back of one house that cost a little less than a car I'd bought about the same time, which was a nearly new 4 door civic. The house was an undervalued hud repo, so it happens. The house I bought a couple years ago was equal in cost to a well equipped camry or accord fresh off the lot - again, the difference is repairs.
This scenario is very easy to imagine. Especially in a rust belt town with older housing stock with some union jobs left. It's likely the low housing costs that allows the worker to buy the luxury truck.
I get the impression the west coast posters have a very hard time imagining the cost of houses in the heartland.
The South can be similar to the Midwest (even within a large metro) - I often see $55k trucks parked outside of dated (but not delapidated) $70k homes. Those same homes were probably worth $35k when the market crashed. For some people the idea of having a fully loaded truck and a house for not much more than 100k is appealing...even if they aren’t truly living the big city life and don’t have McMansion that looks like something off HGTV.
Ha ha luxury cars, not hardly. And the price was per each of the current 2. My post was mostly about inflation and repairs. It is interesting to note that only my current non-remarkable vehicles are still on the road, the houses are still standing and inhabited.
I did think back of one house that cost a little less than a car I'd bought about the same time, which was a nearly new 4 door civic. The house was an undervalued hud repo, so it happens. The house I bought a couple years ago was equal in cost to a well equipped camry or accord fresh off the lot - again, the difference is repairs.
Again, you offer no real information. Are you saying that your house is the same price as the highest priced Honda Civic? which is a Touring model at $26,800. Are you saying your house is less than that price? Please post a picture of your dwelling here on City-Data so all of us can see your great housing that is less than $26k.
Everyone knows that west coasters have high housing prices, but many on the east coast have this problem as well. But in no way that the lower housing prices in the midwest make it "okay" that truck/car prices are more than the houses. Again, that is a rarity that the majority of the US CANNOT enjoy.
Add to that the OP lives in Montgomery Co, PA, so I'm sure he's living in a fantasy world where a house costs less than his car.
Last edited by Universe93B; 10-22-2018 at 07:17 PM..
I keep the classified ads for souvenirs: it was a 1986 Honda with 17k miles for $6995. I put the file for the house in storage as it was long since sold but I recall a price of the house was $6600 in 1988. Clearly undervalued as I sold it 4 yrs later for 24k. I had bought a house that was twice as big in a gentrifying neighborhood for $24,500.
I'm not going to post a photo of my home as I have a C-D stalker who likes to berate me for living below my means. Possibly already knows the exact house but why take chances. The county has it appraised in the 30s and Zillow in the 40s. It's not for sale at any price. Very scenic location but some unkempt houses nearby. I get the impression some people react to unkempt houses the way others react to spiders (or both) - with an irrational fear.
Besides, it's not the one I was referring to that I guessed was the price of a Honda accord. Definitely cheaper than a 4 dr 4wd truck but more than twice as expensive than any car I've owned. It wasn't on Zillow, just had a for sale sign. So I can understand why an outsider doesn't know such bargains exist, though one usually has to pay cash. I'm just surprised at your refusal to accept this. You don't have to drive very far outside Raleigh to see cheap housing. Maybe not commuting distance but an easy day trip.
Quote:
The South can be similar to the Midwest
Yes, there's the heartland and the Bless-your-Heartland.
I don't know Montgomery county, Md. Is that a high priced area?
Oh, and house builder, the place where I live was almost exactly 4 times the price of the car I was driving at the time. Does that help you feel better that all is right in the financial world.
The point of these “costly-truck-cheap-house” anecdotes isn’t to ridicule people who make such consumer decisions (OK, a little bit), but to note how wide is the variation in dwelling-price – as opposed specifically to land-price – from place to place.
That is, get a “spec” set of architectural plans, and a crew to pour the foundation, erect the framing, installed the roof and sheetrock and wiring and so forth. Use identical materials… the same 2x4 studs from Canada, the same drywall from China… according to the exact same plans. The cost of building those houses will vary a bit, depending on local zoning and codes, costs for utility hook-up, environmental impact and so forth. But those variations won’t be say a factor of 4… whereas the market-price of the houses, according to county assessor web-sites, can easily be a factor of 4. The conclusion is that there’s just no business-case for building a house in small-town Ohio, because the cost of the construction will be higher than the market-price. But there’s a fantastic business-case for building the same house in Los Angeles… paying the workers and the materials-suppliers is a only a fraction of market-price of the house, once it hits the real-estate listings. One would think that this would mean a shortage of houses in Ohio, and a glut in Los Angeles… but the reality is entirely the reverse.
Let me give a quantitative illustration. An empty building-lot, zoned for residential construction, might go for $300K in a suburb of Los Angeles. The same lot goes for $30K in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio. OK, no surprise there… supply and demand, right? Now consider the cost of building a house. In Dayton, it might be $150 per square foot. In LA, maybe $200 per square foot. Now go build a 2000 sq foot house. In LA, that costs $400K. In Dayton, $300K. But the house in Dayton, upon being finished, might sell for $200K… land and house… whereas $330K were invested. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, our new house sells for $900K, even though it cost us only $700K (land + house) to build.
Now compare that to the cost of building a Toyota in Japan, or in Kentucky. There will be variations, too… just like with houses. But the Japanese-Toyota won’t sell at the dealership for 4X the price of the Kentuckian Toyota.
In other words, most products are sold for some margin above the cost of making them. If that margin is too high, the products won’t sell, unless it’s a monopoly. And if that margin is too low, there’s no point being in business. The margin varies a bit, from market to market… but only a bit. Well, houses are weird, in that their market-price (again, NOT including the land price!), and hence the margin, is all about location.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,225,683 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HouseBuilder328
Again, you offer no real information. Are you saying that your house is the same price as the highest priced Honda Civic? which is a Touring model at $26,800. Are you saying your house is less than that price? Please post a picture of your dwelling here on City-Data so all of us can see your great housing that is less than $26k.
Everyone knows that west coasters have high housing prices, but many on the east coast have this problem as well. But in no way that the lower housing prices in the midwest make it "okay" that truck/car prices are more than the houses. Again, that is a rarity that the majority of the US CANNOT enjoy.
Add to that the OP lives in Montgomery Co, PA, so I'm sure he's living in a fantasy world where a house costs less than his car.
One thing about a house is that it pretty much lasts 100+ years even without major maintenance. A car will suffer from wear, rust and metal fatigue even if kept garaged and used sparingly.
For comparison purposes, my first new car cost $2,500 in 1974, my first (old fixer) house cost $50,000 in 1978. My current 2017 F150 sticker price was $46,800 (I paid $36k) and my current house is valued at almost $900k (Zillow). It goes back to the value of anything being how badly someone wants it. Every car dealer has hundreds of new and used cars on their lot just sitting there waiting for someone to buy it. New car prices and incentives are set by the manufacturer and do not vary much by region. You can buy one exactly the way you want it no matter where you live. A house, on the other hand, is in much greater demand, therefore higher price where there are good jobs, good schools, nice climate, and other factors affecting the popularity of the place and therefore demand for homes, and the prices. Here where very few build-able lots are available for sale, a minimum 5,000 sf with no utilities (or just electric in this case can go for over 1 million:
One thing about a house is that it pretty much lasts 100+ years even without major maintenance. A car will suffer from wear, rust and metal fatigue even if kept garaged and used sparingly.
It's quite true, that even a gingerly-stored car will deteriorate - let alone one that's stored outdoors, or one that actually gets driven. Houses are more sturdy than cars, but even so, a leaky roof will reduce a typical wood-construction residential house to a pile of detritus, in maybe 20-30 years. A house infested with mold may require remediation at cost exceeding the house's market-price. Likewise with foundation damage.
Many houses in my area were amateurishly built. Residential building-codes didn't become widespread until maybe 50-60 years ago. A farmhouse from 1920 may not be structurally viable, even if its successive owners updated the appliances and slapped on new roofing-shingles every 30 years. Such defects may not be discovered during inspection, and may become apparent only decades after the new owner has bought the place. And yet, the housing-market assumes that everything is fine. There is no 70% discount on that 1920s farm house, vs. a new low-end stick-built house in a development by Ryan Homes.
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Originally Posted by Hemlock140
...It goes back to the value of anything being how badly someone wants it.
...A house, on the other hand, is in much greater demand, therefore higher price where there are good jobs, good schools, nice climate, and other factors affecting the popularity of the place and therefore demand for homes, and the prices.
Thus, my point about the enormous variation in house-prices, from place to place.... but the comparative universality of prices for cars, computers, refrigerators, clothes, food and so forth. In some places, houses are vastly more expensive than the cost of building them; in others, entirely the reverse. How this can be sustainable in a free-market, is beyond me.
One shouldn't cost more than the other according to anything other than the free market and its price discovery. In short, things are worth what people will pay for them.
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