My wife and I are searching around for homes as our deadline is approaching faster then we realized. We wanted to be in a house before our son started school (he just turned 5 and will be in Kindergarten this September).
One of the really frustrating things we are finding though is the prices. Some of these new homes are over $300K and they don’t have any sort of yard with them. The houses themselves are not that great either as they are built largely by unskilled laborers and often in a hurry. Its like paying for a steak and getting a big mac, in my opinion.
The older houses we have found would be great, if they weren’t in the neighborhoods they are in. One house we went and saw look really good, but the house across the street had a lot of shifty looking people coming and going which kind of worried me as the house was also across the street from an elementary school. Its stuff like that make me wonder why he people selling it could get away with asking a quarter million dollars for it (and this was the recently reduced price at that).
I started to wonder why these houses are selling for this much money when they are not at all worth it. I was of the opinion that the sellers are morons; a theory that has yet to be dis-proven. That, and since buildable land is getting scare around here real estate is at a premium.
My wife pointed out that they are probably trying to recoup some of the money lost after that last recession after 9-11 and such. You remember all of those lenders and their 0% down deals? Well thats come round to bite them in the ass so now we are made to suffer their mistakes.
If anyone has any tips on getting into a house in the Portland Metro area (that Portland Oregon, mind), please let me know. Short of winning the lottery, or a good bank heist, I think we’ll be hard pressed to get a house at any rate out here.
-Cheers