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Old 03-25-2018, 12:33 AM
 
10,226 posts, read 7,538,680 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LifeIsGood01 View Post
They are still out there but not in the large metro area where people want to live near, but I'm sure those are disappearing too.

Realtor,com just had this story. https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/...s-blogs_trends

Some of these towns are not going to have the $75K a year jobs that people want, but you can buy a $30k home with 2 people earning minimum wage.
They don't exist much in my area. You have to go to the high crime areas with drug issues to find the fixer upper starter homes (these are the homes the flippers passed up because htey would be hard to sell, and even fixed up wouldn't justify the list price). So they just don't exist here, any more.

Even in a middle class area I was looking in. There were maybe 6 homes for sale. One investor owned them all and had above-market list prices on them. He could afford to sit on them for however long it took to sell. The costs to own them were tax deductible business expenses. He wasn't a flipper. Just an investor from out of town.
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Old 03-25-2018, 05:15 AM
 
24,541 posts, read 18,118,486 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thedwightguy View Post
1500 sq. ft. today is like 2100 sq. ft. yesterday. It's better use of space, usually MORE than one bathroom. It's laid out better. Condos are a more secure way of living. It's a different world. Get used to it.

Earthquake prep. where I am is now standard. We have gone to 2x6 and even 2x8 frame. Where's the rest of N. America? Thinking that hurricane will never happen?? It just hit five staes and most of the Carribean, and those sticks showed these places were not up to snuff in a non-hurricane zone.

If i ever build a three level home it will have an elevator. Standard spine for structural integrity, i.e. earthquake and it's cheap to add when doing a new build. Done.
Some of us choose to live in geologically stable areas.

My house is small even by starter home standards. When I bought it in 2009, the value was 100% in the dirt the house sits on. A more sane person would have torn it down and built a new house but I opted to completely remodel it over four winters when I was living elsewhere. More like reconstruct than remodel. There isn't much of the original house left above the floor joists.

I'm writing this from a townhouse condo at a ski resort I've owned since 1993. The problem with a condo is you cede control to the condo board and votes at the annual owners meeting. This year, it was the swimming pool. The association has a heated outdoor pool only open in the summer. It's a ski resort. I'm not there in the summer. Rather than replace the pool, I'd either fill it in or pay extra for an indoor pool I'd actually use. For 25 years, I've been trying to put a hot tub on the ground floor back deck. Nope. The board doesn't want hot tubs. At a ski resort? Really? I have lots of friends with condos in town who have hot tubs. The list is endless.
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Old 03-25-2018, 04:33 PM
 
Location: Georgia
4,578 posts, read 5,643,202 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GolfingCat View Post
Too many people are buying them up and turning them into rental properties. Greed sucks!
It's not as though people could afford them in the first place. When the market started to tic up in 2010-2012, rentals were SO rare, people were getting insane amounts for shacks. The rental market is leveling out, now because of people who are buying, holding and renting. If you have a young family and are still paying off student loans, graduate school loans, etc., then a starter home is still a ways off -- but you may still be looking for living situations in good school districts with a bit of a yard. Sooner or later, it will level off, too. But right now, housing is a scarce commodity, and prices reflect that.
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Old 03-25-2018, 04:37 PM
 
Location: Georgia
4,578 posts, read 5,643,202 times
Reputation: 15968
Quote:
Originally Posted by LifeIsGood01 View Post
They are still out there but not in the large metro area where people want to live near, but I'm sure those are disappearing too.

Realtor,com just had this story. https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/...s-blogs_trends

Some of these towns are not going to have the $75K a year jobs that people want, but you can buy a $30k home with 2 people earning minimum wage.
We have a saying around here: "Drive 'til you can buy." Everyone wants to live close to downtown/Midtown/Perimeter, or wherever the desirable jobs are. If you want to start at $500K and work your way up for a 2500-3000 sf home in those areas, fine. Most don't. So you start driving to the outskirts. You may find that 4-5 bedroom house with basement and on a 1/2 acre lot for $325,000 -- but your commute is going to eat up literally hours of your day.
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Old 03-25-2018, 05:05 PM
 
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
13,032 posts, read 7,430,344 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Serious Conversation View Post
I read a very similar article in the WSJ this week regarding the shortage of new construction and difficulty for people to get into starter homes.

The underlying problem is that quality jobs are increasingly consolidating into what seems like fewer and fewer metro areas. You have more people chasing fewer homes. That's going to cause supply constraints, and that's ignoring other unfavorable conditions for buyers.

I work in a manufacturing town. Over the years, many of the blue manufacturing jobs have been eliminated, or have been outsourced to contracting agencies, which often pay substantially less and have fewer benefits than a direct hire. Some smaller outfits have relocated HQ from small town Tennessee to larger metro areas like Atlanta. Many white collar jobs are gone too. My aunt worked for one of the major cable companies. The local office's back office functions were moved to either St. Louis, New York, or Charlotte. These aren't high end jobs - it's back office administrative stuff.

There are few decent jobs here outside of education, local government, and the medical systems. Meanwhile, metros like Nashville are just getting hotter and hotter. There was a line of thinking that telecommuting and remote work could ease some strain on the hot areas, allowing employees to work from anywhere, but that hasn't happened. If anything, it's more critical to be in a "hot" area than ever.

What's happening in my local area? Outside of Johnson City, which has a large regional state university and the HQ of the regional health system, housing starts and price increases in most of the nearby cities and counties are tepid. I remember a six month period a couple of years ago (2015 or 2016) where Sullivan County, pop. ~156,000, had zero housing starts in a six month period. It isn't uncommon to see properties languishing on the market for months at a time with no or insignificant price drops.

The local death rate is about 30% higher than the birth rate. We are in a state of natural population decline. To the extent that people are moving to northeast TN, they're largely retirees bringing wealth with them, are not dependent on the local economy, and are moving to Johnson City/Washington County. That's causing rising prices and rents in that area, but those rates of increase are still mild compared to what is seen in most mid-sized metros or larger. The wealth and "new good jobs" are basically going to Johnson City, and the rest of the area is on a slow decline.
this is happening Worldwide.
It's happening in China, Japan and Europe. The country is hollowing-out.
JMO, USA is slightly behind in the hollowing but it's noticeable ...commonly called "Flyover country"
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Old 03-26-2018, 09:59 AM
 
3,205 posts, read 2,612,796 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by marino760 View Post
I'm probably an oddball regarding this but I'd much rather buy that house than pay $700 a month for an apartment. To my eyes, that's a nice house almost move-in ready. It looks well maintained, has a nice fenced yard, clean basement, storage building. I'm not sure what more I would want. Why would I want to rent an apartment with people on all sides of me, no yard when I could live in a house like this for not much more money? Sure there's going to be some maintenance but you also get a tax break and build equity. Remodeling a home like this isn't necessary, it's optional if you want to do it.
I agree 100%. It has charm and character. As long as the electric service is up to code and the drains and faucets all provided the usual services, it looks move-in ready. A starter home shouldn't have to look like the 'after' pictures of a Property Brothers episode.
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Old 03-26-2018, 10:03 AM
 
3,205 posts, read 2,612,796 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CGab View Post
Everyone's idea of a starter home is different however!


We built our starter home. It was in the Chicagoland suburbs, 2,000 sq ft for $268k. Now to most, that probably wouldn't be considered a starter home, but to us it was. We moved 3 years later and built a 3,400 sq ft home for almost double the first homes price.


So IMHO a starter home doesn't necessarily need to be cheap and small, it's what one can afford at the time for their first home with the outlook that one will not live in it forever.
No, you built your FIRST home. You never had a starter home. You didn't need one, you could afford a regular home.
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Old 03-26-2018, 10:39 AM
 
3,205 posts, read 2,612,796 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SWFL_Native View Post
Townhomes and condos are the new starter home. It allows for the maximization of land usage efficiency and has synergies of building costs. Yes there are tradoffs but in the future with population growth and resource scarcity this is what you’ll be seeing more of.
Perhaps in your area, but up here in the rust belt there are plenty of decrepit houses from the 1920's to 1970's in blech neighborhoods for flippers to convert to starter homes. This is much cheaper than town home or condo construction. Land is definitely not at a premium here.
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Old 03-26-2018, 11:16 AM
 
3,205 posts, read 2,612,796 times
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Originally Posted by InchingWest View Post


Many millions of older homes in this country are just going to have to rot. They just aren't salvageable and their location may very well damn them to a slow decay via the elements. It isn't worth the cost of tearing them down if no one's going to move there. And the builders are going to build at whatever price point (aka BIG) gets them the most profit. Heck, in a lot of areas they are told by the local city/county government what they need to build, and many need to build a certain amount of "affordable" units or must build some scheme of "mixed class" housing. I see new communities going up that have an apartment complex on one side, townhomes in the middle, and cookie-cutter SFH's all within sight of each other.
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This is the situation in my county. The two largest cities have spent millions in block grant money seizing and tearing down literally hundreds of decrepit and vacant homes in the last 5 years or so. This began after one of the largest buyers of crap houses passed away with a stable of nearly 100 rental houses that for the most part were beyond redemption.

Unfortunately, all of the houses have been in neighborhoods where building a new home makes no financial sense, unless you are Habitat for Humanity, so it just puts unusable gaps between remaining houses that the cities don't want to maintain.
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Old 04-22-2018, 11:41 PM
 
164 posts, read 118,462 times
Reputation: 335
Sad!
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