Price for a 1 bedroom CONDO in San Jose, CA? $329,000.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/11578741.htm

SOARING BAY AREA HOME PRICES WORRYING BUYERS AND ECONOMISTS

By John Boudreau

Mercury News

After seven months of searching while home prices climbed ever higher, Jeff Cyr finally made the real estate leap of faith and bought a condo on San Jose's Bascom Avenue for $329,000 -- with an interest-only loan.

The 31-year-old grocery clerk did so knowing he might have pulled the purchase trigger at the peak of a bubble.

New home buyers like Cyr, financially stretched and hoping for the best, are not alone with their worries.

Some economists have watched the soaring home prices with alarm as well, fearful the steep rise could lead to a plunge. They see a combustible mix of low interest rates, easy credit and rising speculation, coupled with a widely held belief among buyers -- especially younger ones -- that real estate values never decline.

[MADem]

1. I've always been a fan of buy low, sell high

And now it is a seller's market. No way would I invest in real estate right now. After the crash, sure!

[barb162]

46. I wonder if there will ever be a crash in that area of the country

Every few years the prices drop there a tiny bit but they pop right back up. Even when the dotcom bust was going on, the prices didn't really tumble there

[MADem]

47. If those tech jobs keep migrating to Bangalore, it will!!!

And guys on guest worker visas, hell, they will sleep eight to a one BR condo, just to save money! Then, due to overcrowding in the condo complex, the tenants will get pissed, and sell, and slowly, surely, the place will become a slum.

[eissa]

2. Home prices are so ridiculous in the Bay Area

that many people end up here in the Central Valley (Modesto, Stockton, Manteca), driving up home prices here to astronomical levels. Even worse, those of us living here in the valley are stuck with low wages, forcing many to forgo the American dream of owning a home and either rent or move away. The average home price in the valley jumped $11,000 in March alone. A basic home now costs about $400,000, with many homes now in the $500-700,000 range. Luckily, we bought ours in 1994 at a very decent $125K -- thank you Clinton!!

[mitchtv]

3. no different than SF, LA ,SD

and almost any desirable place in Ca. I would love to move to LA, but I'll wait the crash is not far away.

[Roland99]

53. Or Seattle, Manhattan, Miami.

[izzybeans]

4. Price of Two Bedroom condo in Edgwater, NJ $825,000

www.foxtons.com search New Jersey/ Bergen and Hudson County

The Pendulum is swinging toward both coasts and probably every non-stagnate urban area in between.

[fooj]

5. Santa Cruz County is a real fun place to purchase a home.

The housing market is insane!!!

Peace.

[flamin lib]

6. 1100 sq ft two bedroom Condo in Dallas/Ft Worth area

is $50,000. 4 BR townhouse, 1700 sq ft with community pool, clubhouse, all exterior maintenance is $90k.

Come on down! Call me when you get here.

[tinrobot]

11. Funny how home prices are so much higher in the blue states

Seems like people REALLY want to move to our neck of the woods.

[Ravenseye]

24. Dallas is Huge though

Like everything else in Texas right?

Dallas is like....like did you ever play SimCity or one of those city building games? Dallas is the flat sandbox mode...All they have there is flat land. The water table is high, so nobody has cellars. They drop concrete and slap up homes faster than you can say "yeehaw". Not even bad quality ones generally.

Problem is they keep expanding out and out and out and out. More highways, more congestion...out and out and out and out.

Next thing you know you have a nice cheap condo but an hour and a half commute through traffic...

and of course you'd be living in texas....ZING

Just kidding...I'd never mess with Texas...ZING

[flamin lib]

27. Yeah, there is a lot of new construction which is killing my

existing home sales. Not that I can't participate in new home sales and bring value to the equation, just most people don't know that go into the transaction without representation.

DFW isn't all flat. I live on a .26 acre lot that is 8' higher on one side than the other. My market area has a lot of interesting terrain but it also has the flat prairie look as well.

You are absolutely correct about the commute though. Lots of the suburbs are strictly bedroom communities.

Anecdote: Young couple moves in across the street. Sold a 900 sq ft condo in LA. Paid cash for the 3/2/2 and took six months off. After six weeks or so they saw a new construction they liked. Sold the first house for a loss and paid cash for the second. All from the proceeds of a 900 sq ft single bedroom condo in LA.

[Ravenseye]

31. Dallas Has Changed So Much

I first moved there in '81. We had a house up in 'far north' Dallas. Where we lived was just south of the expansion line which then was around Campbell road. I'd cross Campbell and it'd just be prairie and home expansion. Now...it's solid homes all the way north through Plano. I remember when the Galleria was built. Now that stretch of the toll road has big building after big building on it. It's like a disease.

About 5 years ago or so i considered a job there in Dallas, but I just couldn't stomach it. The thought of having to go back to using my car constantly bothered me.

[tammywammy]

48. Well, I'm down here in the DFW area

and I'm damn glad I'm not in California. I'm looking for an apartment, and I can find a one bedroom/one bath, 650 sq ft, for between $400-500/month...and I even found one that pays for Heat, A/C, gas and trash for that much a month and it's in a decent area.

:)

[swimmernsecretsea]

15. Damn! I'll be there as soon as I can get my suitcase packed....

Thanks for the tip!

[dcfirefighter]

7. Solution: build more houses

Build mid rises where there were townhouses, tall townhouses where there were short townhouses, short towhnhouses where there were single family houses.

Encourage optimum use of valuable areas by charging property taxes based on land use, rather than building value. Maximise land value (and therefore public revenue) by providing good public infrastructure and services (including parks and greenspaces). This causes intensive development rather than extensive development, leaving urban/rural boundary areas green, rather than developed as far suburbs, which increases food production and natural biodiversity.

All of which results in a lower cost of living, as housing, food, transport, and commuting take up less of our paychecks. A lower cost of living means more of our paycheck gets 1) saved/invested and 2) spent on consumer goods & services, both of which are good for the economy and employment. Alternatively, families could work less and spend more time with their children, decreasing crime and increasing education.

It would be a beneficial cycle, a race to the top, and real human progress.

[Ravenseye]

25. Not possible in all areas

Take Boston for example. Right there in the heart of the city is Brookline but they have I think a 3 story ordinance. Can't build higher than 3 stories.

Other places in town like Back Bay are so expensive people are making a killing, they'd never tear them down.

So what do they do? They build in New Hampshire and people have longer commutes, more cars, more polution, less time at home.

What people need to do is live other places besides New York, Boston, Bay Area, Los Angeles...D.C...Live outside the top markets and prices plumet.

[MADem]

49. I would not want Brookline to get too huge

I like the low way it sits, it looks nice.

What they should do is have some real reliable and PLEASANT commuter rail all the way up to NH, not the lame, begrudging effort that will take you to Lowell. Something that is a joy to board, a joy to ride, comfy, convenient...people would use it gladly, just to get off of friken 93 and 495!

Imagine being able to sip your coffee, eat your bagel, and read the paper enroute to work...a much better way to start the day...and romance often happens in these circumstances...you'd think the family values GOP would be encouraging commuter rail, but NOOOOO....they'd rather shove highway dollars in the pockets of cronies than do something that would actually benefit the people!

[Ravenseye]

55. I couldn't agree more

commuter rail, light rail, maglev high speed rail...that's the future of transportation not 16 lane highways.

[swimmernsecretsea]

8. Hey, tell me about it...

I work on ads for real estate companies for a newspaper in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's impossible what kind of properties are being offered at the prices that are being charged!

There's a new show on HGTV that compares what kind of housing purchase a certain amount of money will get you at different cities throughout the US. The most recent one used $400,000. There wasn't anything you could get! They had to raise the amount to $450,000 instead.

[AlCzervik]

9. My husband works in Cupertino and during the week he lives there

our house is in elk grove, a little south of sacramento. We looked for houses in the sj area and gave up after realizing the $750,000 bought not much and what it did buy needed a wrecking ball. So he continues to live in Cupertino and we live here in Elk Grove.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

16. I remember an article in "Metro" right before the "dot com" downfall...

For non-Bay Area folks, "Metro" is the local community-lifestyle-entertainment paper. It's free and is found at the entrance of many local merchants, from Tower to Starbucks and everything in between.

The article had a photo of what looked like a broken-down tool shed sitting on a dirt lot.

It was a 1-bedroom, beat-to-hell HOUSE in East Palo Alto, listed in the real estate section as a "fixer-upper," with an asking price of $250,000.

VERY shortly after that, the rotted melon caved in and the mass layoffs began.

The ONLY thing that's keeping this valley afloat is real estate speculation. It DAMN SURE isn't the "high paying high tech jobs"...I know people whose workload doubled and tripled after layoffs. The "productivity gains" wage slaves, wishing that they could settle back into a nice, comfortable 60-hour week (those were my "normal" hours when I worked at Cisco, before I joined the other 8500 people off the edge of the layoff cliff).

:grr:

[AlCzervik]

20. yup, my husband is working about 60-70 hours a week

and then when he comes home late Friday night he's exhausted. He's a manafacturing engineer by trade and right now he's in management. Findng jobs in manafacturing is pretty hard unless we want to move to China which we do not want to do so for now we suck it up and try and make the best of it.

[Ravenseye]

21. wrong post place n/t

[Double T]

10. A dot com reality is just around the corner for the over inflated...

...real estate market.

[flamin lib]

12. Yeah, it can't keep going up in the "hot" markets.

I'm in the DFW market and make my living as a sales agent. Glad this market has been stable. Maybe 5% appreciation a year if your property is in the right area. We are approaching a buyer's market for houses between $180 and 300k. For those of you in the "hot" areas that's a 2-4000 sq ft property, all brick, yada-yada-yada. Stuff over $400k is doing OK and stuff under $125 is moving OK.

[LiberallyInclined]

44. that's a pretty long corner-

i've been hearing the same thing for years.

[Bozita]

13. $340,000 for 2br 1500sf condo Gold Coast of Chicago -- 2 years ago

A friend bought it.

[maveric]

14. About the same in San Diego.

Some are more!

[rinsd]

23. Some are alot more...

...depending on where you want to live.

[HockeyMom]

17. Long Island

Range from $120,000/$175,000 (GHETTO - boarded up windows, dogs running loose, etc.) to $200,000/$350,000 (mostly Senior communities or very few and far between) to $350,000/$450,000 AVERAGE, nice place, to the "do you want water views?" $700,000 to $1M Hampton's. This isn't even taking into account the property taxes. In the $200,000 range the property taxes will be in the $3,000+ a year range.

I was looking at condos, but decided to rent for a while. It has gotten to the point where a nice, decent condo will cost you just as much as a house ($350,000+++++).

[HockeyMom]

18. Postcript

I am talking about Suffolk County - 50+ miles east of Manhattan. It gets more and more expensive the closer you get to NYC.

[theboss]

19. I still think we are years away from a crash (if there is one)

Why? People keep moving into the hot markets. DC alone had something like 65,000 new residents last year; most of them white and middle-class. They are going to want to buy homes. So...there you go.

[LiberallyInclined]

43. as fuel prices continue to rise- people will rediscover city living.

sub-urban sprawl is what will be impacted adversley(depending on your point of view)

[Ravenseye]

22. 3 bed 3 full baths in Pittsburgh $86,000

In the process of buying a house here in Pittsburgh. Single Family home, in the city, good low crime neighborhood, 10-15 minutes from Downtown, backs onto a wooded hill so you'd think you're not in the city...3 bedrooms, 3 full baths, working wood fireplace, central air...yadda yadda yadda....$86,000

There are houses in not as nice parts of town for under 50k, still perfectly livable areas though.

400-500k would get you a huge house in the best part of the city, or a practical mansion in the close suburbs living near Teresa Heinz Kerry.

I'm so glad I moved back here. Pittsburgh has avoided most of the housing speculation and boom.

[shanti]

26. dumb, dumb, dumb!

what is the desperation that is forcing these decisions?? if he only waits, he'll get the deal of his lifetime!

[goodboy]

28. There is no housing bubble...there is no housing bubble...there is no

housing bubble..


repeat and fade.

[Tactical Progressive]

29. Jesus, people will pay anything to stay out of a red state!

Those nutcases will be coming with torches and pitchforks before too long.

Real estate 2005: "I'll pay anything for a blue-state condo!!"

[flamin lib]

30. Hey! Hey! Hey! Gimmie a break.

There are some very blue areas even in the State of Denial, uh, I mean Texas. Dallas County, the Houston area, Austin and the valley.

If Dean keeps to his promise to run a 50 state democratic campaign we could make a real comeback. Texas was once solid blue.

[Tactical Progressive]

32. Yeah, but think of how much blue state real estate devaluation

will occur if people think it's safe to move back into the red areas!

It could destroy the economy. This country was built on the polarizing anger of the right wing! ;-)

[flamin lib]

34. Chuckle . . .

Yeah, maybe it is a plot to crash the economies of the blue states. If so it might backfire as rational thinking people move into the red states and begin to outnumber the "others"

[theboss]

33. Of course, that was when Democrats kept down the black folk....

I suppose we could try that approach again......but I wouldn't make Texas my top priority at the moment.

[flamin lib]

36. Oh no, it was much more recent that the Dixiecrats.

The problem with only targeting the "swing" states is that there are fewer and fewer swing states as we surrender to the Republicans. It may take a few election cycles, but we've got to start chipping away at the red areas. Now is a great time to do that with the approval ratings of Republicans at such a low ebb.

Sorry to drag the thread off topic . . .

[geniph]

35. Here's Seattle's prices for a 2 BR condo near downtown:

2 BR, 2 Bath, 1260 SF: $769,000.00

2 BR, 1 Bath, 900 SF: $499,000.00

2 BR, 1 Bath, 900 SF, $450,000.00

Looking for anything under $200,000 anywhere within the Seattle city limits means you're going to get a) a tumbledown shack, b) a dangerous neighborhood and poor schools, c) something about the size of a kids' playhouse, or d) all of the above.

If you answered d) then you're today's big winner!

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

37. A "decent sized" 1 bedroom APARTMENT here is 900 to 1000 SF...

How the HELL do you carve up 900 or 1000 square feet into TWO BEDROOMS?

HALF A MILLION BUCKS for a place 100 SF smaller than the 1-bedroom apartment I lived in two years ago...WOW.

By the way...that apartment complex I lived in, in Santa Clara, was sold to a real estate developer who "converted" it into condos.

PAPER-THIN walls. I could hear someone COUGH...lightly...on the other side of the wall, and the walls were so poorly insulated that you heard ALL running water...your neighbor's toilet flushing, sink, dishwasher, etc. ALL of the "condo upgrades" were cosmetic...new carpet, paint, new kitchen cabinets and appliances, same paper thin walls.

My old apartment sold for somewhere between $275,000 and $300,000.

:shrug:

[geniph]

38. If you want to live in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle,

then you're looking at a minimum of half a million for a condo that isn't crumbling into dust and has one parking space...and most will be under 1000 s.f. For 2.5 million, you can get a very nice two bedroom condo with a deck and a little room to move.

Housing prices in Seattle are beyond insanity.

[LibDemAlways]

39. California real estate prices have gone insane.

Crappy, small old tract houses where I live just north of LA are going for over $600K. Then investors buy them, make cosmetic changes, and resell them for $750K. There is no new construction in the entire area for less than a million. Still many people are staying put because where the hell are they going to go? If they sell and buy something else, their property taxes will shoot through the roof. In my 30 year old tract many original owners are staying until they die. This area is "built out" and our local school district is suffering because enrollment is starting to dwindle. No one can afford to move in and no one can afford to move out. Something's eventually got to give.

[slaveplanet]

40. sheesh-It ain't that the housing is so expensive

It's that the money is so worthless...that is the real problem

[flamin lib]

42. It might be worth considering moving to a "cool" real estate

area. Sell your property, move to somewhere that property values are sane and live on the proceeds until you find a job.

I know that there are other issues involved like spouse's job, family etc but it might be an option.

I have two friends that have move to other countries; one to Grenada and one to Nicaragua. I'm seriously considering moving to Mexico. For the difference in cost of living I can afford to fly my extended family in every few months. Great vacation for them, great lifestyle for me.

[Psst_Im_Not_Here]

41. 4 bedroom 3 bath House 225K in Colorado Springs

Come on out! It's beautiful and we REALLY need more blue staters here!

[Kathy in Cambridge]

45. The one bedroom 767 sq foot condo next door sold for $430K

Cambridge/Boston has a hot condo market-average 1 bed is 350K. Most don't come with parking either. :-(

[kodi]

50. recently, i turned down a $125K job in burbank, ca

i live in the country in georgia, pay $415 rent for a small house on 1.5 acres... and make a whole helluva lot less than $125K a year.

i laughed at the LA human resources manager guy who told me i could find a nice place in the Hills for $5K a month and drive 90 minutes to work each way.

you just have to look at such people and say "what the fuck is wrong with you?"

[n2mark]

51. I have a two bedroom garden home in Phoenix

a $117,000. My yard is large enough for my two dogs to run around, have shade trees and gardening area, my yard is the same size of some of the $200,00 homes being built. - sq. ft. of the house is over 1380. I have a fireplace, two full baths, two car garage, two decent size bedrooms, I mean decent! I love my bathroom large, and a private toilet area. Walk in closet.. it is a great house. I lived in a three bedroom house before this one, my two bedroom is way above the 3 bedroom in space and livability. My current house is much more living friendly.

[Digit]

52. You can get alot for your money in Raleigh

It is the state capitol, and Cary, NC has tons of NY and NJ people moving in. The natives call it Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. Being from the DC area originally, I love the mix of people.

They are desperate for medical personnel down here, with hefty sign on bonuses. Our tech section took a hit in the 90's, but seems to be coming back somewhat.

You can get a two bedroom 2 bath condo for 90K and a decent house for $200K. There is a 4 BR 3 BA home in my neighborhood for $164K. Farther out is less money, of course.

The coast is close for beach trips and the mountains are not far for vacation spots.

I am still active in Real Estate, but my knee problem slows me down somewhat. PM me if you want more information. I will give you the skinny.

[kodi]

54. i was at ncsu '77-85. and even then i watched housing costs sky rocket

my in-laws moved from chicago, and bought a house on the 16th hole of northridge country club, 4,000sq. ft 1 plus acre, and paid less than 125K i got married in their backyard, right next to the course.

today the house is worth $600,000

[David Zephyr]

56. With the Dollar so low, commodities and real estate will only appreciate.

So if you think that real estate, especially that on the coasts, is high, figure in a 40% currency drop and suddenly it isn't that "high" after all.

When your currency is shit, then real property, commodities, oil, ane real estate (all tangibles) will only increase.

I don't think that real estate on the coasts is high, just adjusted.