[groar]

i appreciate your input but i know for a fact that many of the places i've seen online are not in slums with horrible schools (of course they're not in fancy towns with fantastic schools either, but a place like torrington or bristol is acceptable to us), and many of them seem to be currently occupied, so.... we'll see.

we live right on the border of the midwest right now and we are moving back to connecticut for a reason. if we have to rent, or live a little further away, that is what we will do. we probably will end up renting for a while unless things really fall into place perfectly. looking at potential jobs in ct, we can potentially make a lot more that we make here, so renting and saving up might end up being the best option (assuming we can get those jobs, i know the job market there is really tough right now).

my mom went and looked in the windows of the norfolk road place and said it looks structurally sound but totally stripped on the inside, and the realtor told me the copper is gone. it also sounds like the land might be basically a giant cliff. the other stuff is something we can deal with, but the land not being usable might be a dealbreaker. we'll see when we check it out next month, if it's still on the market. the neighborhood sounds gorgeous.

[RogerAnthony]

Originally Posted by parentologist

You cannot do it for that price range. 150K, maybe. We buy cruddy properties in New Britain to renovate and rent out, so we do know the market here. Anything you are seeing in that price range will probably be unliveable, possibly have severe structural flaws that make it a tear down, not qualify for any kind of loan, will need 100K of work, and it will STILL be in a slum with horrible schools, and won't sell for what you put into it. If that is all you can afford to spend on housing, you should plan on living in the Midwest, where housing is much cheaper.

Completely untrue. $150,000 is a solid middle-class house in good shape in quite a few towns nowadays. They can get what they want at the price the want in a number of safe towns with decent schools.

[Stratford, Ct. Resident]

Originally Posted by groar

my husband and i are moving back to the northeast from pittsburgh next year in order to be closer to our families.
the kicker is, our budget is only around $75-90k.

Originally Posted by parentologist

You cannot do it for that price range. 150K, maybe. We buy cruddy properties in New Britain to renovate and rent out, so we do know the market here. Anything you are seeing in that price range will probably be unliveable, possibly have severe structural flaws that make it a tear down, not qualify for any kind of loan, will need 100K of work, and it will STILL be in a slum with horrible schools, and won't sell for what you put into it. If that is all you can afford to spend on housing, you should plan on living in the Midwest, where housing is much cheaper.

Originally Posted by RogerAnthony

Completely untrue. $150,000 is a solid middle-class house in good shape in quite a few towns nowadays. They can get what they want at the price the want in a number of safe towns with decent schools.

^^^^^^See OP's budget range.

[groar]

i think he's saying that for $150k you can get better than what we are willing to buy. we are ok with a place that needs rehab. we are ok with a place that is tiny. it's already been established that not all of the places in our price range are total wrecks in horrible slums. i do think that was the case up until a few years ago, but now you can find total wrecks in pretty nice areas, decent houses in slums, and places that are in between in both respects. the latter is what we are hoping to find.

also i upped the budget to $110k later in the thread. it actually made a big difference in what i found.

[RogerAnthony]

Originally Posted by groar

i think he's saying that for $150k you can get better than what we are willing to buy. we are ok with a place that needs rehab. we are ok with a place that is tiny. it's already been established that not all of the places in our price range are total wrecks in horrible slums. i do think that was the case up until a few years ago, but now you can find total wrecks in pretty nice areas, decent houses in slums, and places that are in between in both respects. the latter is what we are hoping to find.

also i upped the budget to $110k later in the thread. it actually made a big difference in what i found.

^^^This

For $150,000 you can find houses that are move-in ready, or close to it. For $110,000 you can find nice houses in decent areas that need some work. Such as the one below.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateand...0_M38935-37216

[goldenage1]

Originally Posted by groar

my mom went and looked in the windows of the norfolk road place and said it looks structurally sound but totally stripped on the inside, and the realtor told me the copper is gone. it also sounds like the land might be basically a giant cliff. the other stuff is something we can deal with, but the land not being usable might be a dealbreaker. we'll see when we check it out next month, if it's still on the market. the neighborhood sounds gorgeous.

The place for $85,000 on Brandy Hill Road really looked liveable, although the panelling was old, and it's close the the road: http://www.realtor.com/realestateand...0_M40662-62262 There was a clearing around the house where you could put in garden. Can your mom look at it?

Torrington is not really a bad town, but it suffers by comparison to the richer towns. If that little house were in Lakeville or Salisbury, it would be marketed as a weekend get-away place to New Yorkers at a much higher price.

Good Luck!

[kidyankee764]

Originally Posted by RogerAnthony

^^^This

For $150,000 you can find houses that are move-in ready, or close to it. For $110,000 you can find nice houses in decent areas that need some work. Such as the one below.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateand...0_M38935-37216

It seems that your definition of "move in ready", "decent" and "needs some work" are far different than mine. YMMV.

[groar]

so torrington is a horrific slum and that house is a wreck that needs $100k in repairs in order to be liveable? ok.

we are fine with a house where we have to make a couple of rooms liveable while the rest of it is a construction zone. that torrington house is well beyond that. i realize that many people want more out of a house but we don't need an immaculate place or a huge place, we don't care if it's dated. we actually like being able to make a place our own. i wouldn't expect people to assume that we want what we want, but i've explained this a bunch already.

our current place was $36k and needed a new roof, a kitchen, and updated electrical service when we got it 5 years ago and i wish we could move it to ct with us!

[groar]

Originally Posted by goldenage1

The place for $85,000 on Brandy Hill Road really looked liveable, although the panelling was old, and it's close the the road: http://www.realtor.com/realestateand...0_M40662-62262 There was a clearing around the house where you could put in garden. Can your mom look at it?

Torrington is not really a bad town, but it suffers by comparison to the richer towns. If that little house were in Lakeville or Salisbury, it would be marketed as a weekend get-away place to New Yorkers at a much higher price.

Good Luck!

we will definitely go look at that if it's still on the market when we're up there. yeah, the paneling in there is terrible but it's fixable. it looks pretty close to the road, which i'm not that into. but it's definitely a possibility, and it's bigger and does look more liveable than the other cabin.

oh also the realtor said that there are no water problems in the norfolk rd house - bone dry basement and the roof and gutters are still ok. so that's a good sign as far as mold and water damage go. she is going to send me pictures of the inside today.

[Stratford, Ct. Resident]

Originally Posted by groar

oh and to narrow things down, these are the towns that seem to have a lot of places in our price range:

meriden
waterbury
torrington
thomaston
winsted
bristol
middletown
plainville
new britain (but my husband says he won't live there!)
beacon falls
naugatuck
plymouth (not terryville though)
new haven (a little far from torrington and the areas where houses are in our range are probably terrible, but we like the city.)

I'd look in the Oakville section of Watertown. Better overall than most of what's on your list. IMHO.