Woo Hoo! We closed on our home in FL today!!!

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by Need_affordable_home

Have you checked NW PA? Lots of sub $50 houses there. Prices arent as good in the NE PA or at least I havent found any as good. If you are looking for rural, the land should be extremely cheap, anywhere from $1000 to $5000 an acre depending on location, proximity to cities and towns and frontage like being by a nice river, stream or lake Try to find a lot that already has a house on it. It arent cheap to build a house with todays material prices!

Pricing depends on three words: Location, location, and location! If people find one particular area to be attractive and start moving there in droves, housing prices will correspondingly skyrocket to meet the rising demand. At the same time, in areas where nobody wants to live, you'll often have a glut of resales where anxious sellers will take a big hit on their home prices just to get out! In our area, the three real estate "hot spots" have always been the Abingtons (Clarks Summit/Waverly), Back Mountain (Dallas/Shavertown/Harvey's Lake), and Mountain Top (including Nuangola). All three communities have stellar school districts, and all three areas have a lot of that "cookie-cutter" vinyl-sided tract housing that many transplants from NY/NJ seem to wet themselves over! As such, prices in these three areas generally start well into the six-figure range for anything decent
($200,000+). On the other hand, you have communities such as my hometown of Pittston, which has declined in population from 21,000 to 7,700 due to the collapse of the mining industry and severe urban sprawl problems in the surrounding townships that have lured people into new subdivisions and destroyed "Main Street", has many liveable homes for well under $100,000. Why? Nobody in their right mind would want to live in Pittston of all places! Other than the convenience of being midway between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, my hometown just has nothing else going for it, I'm sad to say. This is why I'll be moving to Scranton in the upcoming years, a place where I'll feel more "at home."

As far as regions overall are concerned, the real estate market in NEPA overall is simply "hotter" than it is in NWPA. People from NYC/NJ are flooding into the Poconos and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre; do you think they give a rat's behind about Oil City, Titusville, Punxsutawney, or Corry? They're moving here to be just two hours from their old neighborhoods to keep in touch with friends and family while paying half the price for housing and taxes as they would in North Jersey, NYC, or Long Island. In general, I find it hard to locate decent homes in our area now for under $100,000; just ten years ago that task would have been much easier. Now, it seems as if $150,000 is that magic threshold to purchase a "nice" home in our area---an appreciation of just $50,000 in a decade. Believe me, there's a reason why Oil City isn't a real estate hot spot right now; nobody knows it exists, employers are scarce, the housing stock is largely in need of TLC, and the distance to big-city amenities in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, or Buffalo is quite long. You get what you pay for.

[Need_affordable_home]

Location couldnt be stated enough. I see why NE PA arent cheap. Its next to NJ and not far from NY(including NYC) so I can see a good reason why. You also mentioned lots of good schools and jobs in the vinicity. Pittston isnt as cheap as Oil city but cheap for its NE location. Why not stay in Pittston and just a short commute to the other cities? Youll be selling your house at a loss and paying twice as much for the same house a few miles "closer" to NYC and NJ!

I can live anywhere so why would I want to live in an expensive place that wont benefit me any more than Oil city? The jobs dont matter(self employeed freelance graphics designer) and the crime in Oil city is lower than most places except tiny rural towns. Oil city has enough to do(even has a super walmart!) and its less than an hour and a half drive(73 miles) south to Pittsburgh where I can shop all day or enjoy the amusement parks there.
No one wants Oil city unless they dont have any friends and are self employeed