How cheap is the cheapest home for sale in your city/region?

ericbomb@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 150 points –

In Utah County the cheapest "House" for sale is 600 square feet, 2 bed, 1 bath, at $300k.

So at current interest rate it would be $1,800 a month mortgage(assuming you put the 60k down payment! A decent amount more if you do 3% down.)

The cheapest condo/town in utah valley is 205k, 1,100 square feet, on a 400 square foot lot. But due to a $500 HOA fee the monthly cost is still 1,700 a month (assuming 20% down).

With 3.5% down they'd both be closer to 2.1k +PIMI.

So yeah, how is where you live doing?

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I'm in Ashburn, VA. I just looked at Zillow and saw that the cheapest single family home right now is $625k for 2060 sqft. If you have a credit score >719 and put $100k (~16%) down, it's only $4438/month according to their estimates.

So my wife and I live in an apartment with no kids or pets, and we both work a lot... Maybe one day we can afford a townhouse? I just found a decent looking one that's only $450k so $3200/month...

Fairfax isn’t any better. We looked at a 1625sq ft here that sold for $800k. And it was from the 60s and old as hell.

Here in London, you can easily find for £120k a nice 100m² garage without plumbing outside of a busy hospital where passerbys go to smoke and urinate.

I had to laugh at someone in our office who found a listing for a fairly nice house for 20k.

It was indeed a nice house. Unfortunately the listing was for the parking space in front of it.

You wish it was a 100m2 garage for that price!

The cheapest home I could find in my hometown of Vancouver, BC is:

1 bedroom, 1 bath, 696 sq/feet 398,000

Just to point out, everyone else is talking about detached single family homes. The person from Vancouver gave a tiny apartment and it’s still worth nearly half a million.

The cheapest detached home for sale is $1,350,000, and it’s about as far away from downtown you can get while still being in the city of Vancouver.

Vancouver’s housing is out of control.

Has that "absentee owner" law (or whatever the name is) taken effect yet? Do you think it will help?

The current government is trying to add things fairly quickly, the absentee owner law is in effect, and they did just add another 20% 'flipper' tax. As mentioned though, people still own way too many houses. My current landlord owns 7.

To add to this, they’re banning mass AirBNB rentals which should help. But yes, banning ownership of more than 2 properties would surely help most.

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Just wanted to quickly point out - there's likely nothing for 1.35 million in Vancouver. There are in greater Vancouver though.

And yes, 100% out of control.

Yeah, actually found a detached 2 bedroom. It was so far south it was practically on the Fraser River, but still in Vancouver.

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For more fun, calculate how much money you would have to make to meet the rule of having your mortgage only cost 30% of your take home pay!

To buy a home with a 2k mortgage and keep that rule, you'd need a TAKE HOME pay of nearly 80k, so easily needing 6 figures gross pay to afford these two homes while still keeping this rule.

By that calculation I am incredibly lucky (UK home owner). My mortgage is 16% of my take

I'm not saying I would kill to have my mortgage be 16% of my take home pay.

But if the military could guarantee it, id consider it.

155.000€ for new 5 bedroom 200+ m2 duplex in my small town in Spain.

No HOAs! supermarkets and schools are in walking distance ;)

Cheapest is around 30K, but why bother?

Here in a small village in the Netherlands the cheapest is 315k euro for 65m2 and 2 bedrooms

Godverdomme. Right behind my house also Dutch village they built a new building with apartments, 240-270k for 35m2, they're literally shoeboxes.

Like $15k if you want a total gut & remodel

Edit: found one for $10k. Fun. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1205-Mill-St-Pittsburgh-PA-15221/11379395_zpid/?utm_medium=referral

"EXPLORE the UNTAPPED POTENTIAL", I love the agents unyielding optimism.

Does that count though? If it isn’t even legal to live in yet, I think we should add rebuilding costs to be accurate. I could afford that $10,000 with help from the bank, but wouldn’t have the first idea how much it would cost me to make it livable. Can you still get a mortgage or house loans on materials to rebuild?

The OP said "house". Interpret that however you'd like I guess. If you bought this place for $10k in cash, I don't know who exactly would stop you from clearing out a room and living in it while working on it.

You can get a loan for just about anything from the bank. You don't even have to be very specific about what you're using it for. All they care about is credit history, what interest rates they're giving you, length of loan, blahblahblah

Holy shit. How does that have a positive value? Still, Pittsburgh... hm...

Hyup. I was born and raised here, and love the city to death.

Wilkinsburg is a bit of a strange part of town. It's one of a few neighborhoods that have resisted annexation for a century plus. Just look at a map of Pittsburgh and you'll see big empty holes (literally mount Oliver is completely surrounded by the city). This results in some weird circumstances, wilkinsburg has really high taxes, shit schools, and is one of the rougher parts of town.

On the other hand, I love where I'm at in the city, I got a beautiful 1800 sq ft 4BR home built in 1890 along the river. I can see the water from my front stoop. $160k, and I have a few roommates. Currently slowly renovating the place.

It is a bit ironic opening Instagram or something and seeing posts like "omg! Pittsburgh is so affordable, my rent is under $2k!!!" For those shitty "luxury" apartments going in all over the country. Meanwhile, my mortgage is $830 because I bought during covid.

I feel the creep and know the city isn't gonna be affordable forever. Wages are still a bit shit around here.

This is for an area of western, suburban Tokyo. Edit: most are going to be around 1.25+ hours into Shinjuku involving transfers and up to a 20 minute walk to the nearest station.

In USD terms, around $76,000. 52.x square meters 3 rooms, bath, dining+kitchen (so one room is presumably getting used as the living room). Another few hundred a year in maintenance/condo fees. But it's in a building from 1976 which is before the latest major earthquake law revision and I would absolutely not live there (property can appreciate in Japan, but houses are not seen as investments and lose value really quickly).

Poking around, there are freestanding houses as well in that range, but they cannot be rebuilt so you're stuck with the existing structure (I don't know to what degree one could legally "Ship of Theseus" the thing; interior renovation is fine). This is mostly due to a change in law requiring at least a 4-meter-wide (IIRC) road connecting to the property (and mostly for emergency services access). You can buy these on the cheap but it's because they're not a long-term solution and you'll be stuck holding the bag on worthless land to all except maybe a neighbor who might want to buy it (but if it's for sale now, they don't).

There are actually a surprising number of buildings after 1981 (latest major earthquake law revision, basically required for mortgage + insurance), but a lot of them are in areas with heavy restrictions (landscape laws, height laws, aviation laws (I have no idea what that one means; maybe it's in a flight path (noisy) or has some additional height/light restrictions?)), etc.

The search site I used doesn't have any good way of searching for used homes without restrictions built after 1981 for comparison and I got tired of clicking.

Prices jump a lot within a 20-minute walk of the closest station; most people don't want to live further.

Poking around, there are freestanding houses as well in that range, but they cannot be rebuilt so you're stuck with the existing structure

Could you link an example or something on whatever Japanese zillow is? Because this seems absolutely intriguing to me, if only to see what it looks like.

Suumo.jp Is probably the most popular.

Thanks for the link, definitely an interesting time browsing. And sorry to keep bothering you about Japanese real estate, I'm sure you have more interesting things to think about, but looking at it, the offerings on the "under 20 million yen" page just seem absurdly too good to be true. Like, looking at something like This, 1100 square feet, seemingly fairly recent renovations and built in '94, parking for 3 cars, and only 35 minute walk from the station, yet it's listed for 11.7 million yen/78k usd? Like, from an American perspective, it looks like some Craigslist scam to get your banking info. Is there something getting lost in between cultures? Is the Japanese market really just that much cheaper?

Most people would consider a house that's 30-40 years old at end-of-life. There are likely restrictions on the property about rebuilding or something as well; that's usually the only time you see stuff that cheap.

35 minutes to the station is too far for most people as well (prices drop as soon as you hit 20, typically).

You wouldn't have central heat/air (not a thing here), the insulation is probably very little, etc. That's all still just normal here.

Most people would consider a house that's 30-40 years old at end-of-life

That's pretty interesting to me. The house I grew up in was built in the late 50s, as was the entire neighborhood, making it just under 40 years old by the time I was born, and it's still there today, with the only major renovations being redoing the flooring and replacing appliances.

Is the shorter lifespan more of just a cultural thing, or is it a matter of how housing is built? Because I can certainly see the pricing if it's the latter and it's nearing the point of requiring major maintenance.

Post-war housing shortage led to tons of homes being slapped up quickly to deal with civilian homeless, returning soldiers/prisoners, and US troops. There were basically no standards (there were an absurd amount of homeless due to the firebombings and such) or building codes. Codes got stronger, but many houses were still poor quality (and burnt down often). Bonus fact: this is one reason there are such monocultures of certain trees in Japan; clear-cut to provide lumber and replanted with fast-growing trees for more lumber.

Secondarily, families were (and many still are) multi-generational. So, when a parent retires, the next generation will often take over and often knock down and rebuild. That's becoming less of thing, but it still exists.

Finally, especially when there were few/no regulations, things burnt down a lot, particularly during winter (heating) and when an earthquake would strike. Better standards now, but this was true for quite a while.

So, generally, treat any home/condo you buy as a depreciating asset. The land may increase in value depending upon where it is. In rare cases, the building may as well, but I wouldn't count on it.

That's at least a very TL;DR version based on what I know. There may be more that I don't know as well.

600 square feet? What do you do with all the space? I can't even conceive of having such a large house.

The house I live in is about the cheapest in my area that has an actual land deed. So it's an effective minimum for a house in my city -- smaller houses can't get land deeds, so you can't properly buy them. It costs about the equivalent of USD 150k.

I live in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The median salary is not so high here. So correcting for cost of living, that's 'something like' the equivalent 600k in the USA.

The other catch is that the house is 2.3 meters wide and maybe 9 meters long (including the walls). That's about 225 square freedom units. No yard in the front or back. Typically 2-3 families would live in a house like this, but it's just my wife and I, because I need half the space for my business. My previous residence was smaller, about 2 meters by 4.5 meters. The roof fell on me once, but otherwise it was quite acceptable. That cost about USD 5k to build (building only -- not land price), but you can't legally buy or sell it.

Home ownership is basically impossible here except through inheritance, or owning a successful business (which is quite a battle in a cost-driven market). Even then, most families get a small room, with no ownership paperwork or land deed -- the theoretical value of these is about 60k USD based on the rent vs. value of other buildings. So, equivalent to ~240k in the USA.

The other other catch is that bank interest rates are very high -- and unless you are already rich, chances are you cannot get a loan. So typically buying a home is done in cash. Some people who work at big companies with upper middle class salaries have been able to get loans in recent times too.

Off in the countryside, you can still get a decent plot of empty land for ~30k USD and build your own home (10k to 200k depending on whether it's a hut or a villa). However, there are basically zero employment opportunities out there, and you're far from advanced hospitals and so on. Basic services are available, roads and power are OK, and it's quite lovely. If you're in good health, know how to catch fish, and speak Vietnamese, it's actually a pretty good good life.

Anyway there are many things about life here that are really great (I mean, I chose to immigrate), but the path to home ownership is brutal. I thought it was brutal in North America but really I had no idea.

600 squared freedoms are 55 communists squared, in case anyone else from the civilised world was wondering. So not very big.

I have yet to meet a square communist!

I tried:

I tried

Wow. To be fair, most of the communists I know are less handsome than that. They look like maybe... somewhat better than average middle-aged people? They also only occasionally stare off to the horizon, far ahead and slightly to the left, with appropriate literature held tightly against their chests :P

I like that black shirt, I'd buy that in a second. We get some really nice propaganda posters here, but often the message is less dramatic than the artwork. Usually it's stuff like 'don't drink and drive', 'try to eat less salt', and 'spitting in public is gross, stop doing it please'. Once I could read them, I discovered most of them were... surprisingly wholesome :D

$200,000 for a 1 Bed 1 Bath with an hour and a half commute to the city. It's a unit, so probably has a bunch of other fees attached for upkeep but they aren't listed. Area is far away from necessary services, highly car dependent and notoriously crime ridden. The unit is run down and requires renovations.

Double that for a 2 Bed 1 Bath in a similar area.

This housing crisis won't change until we start to move into politician's lawns and garages.

$229k NZD for a 2 bed, 1 bath 80sqm slumlord rental in a shit neighbourhood in Christchurch, New Zealand

315k GBP for a 2br 'period property' (aka a disgusting dilapidated horder house with the energy efficiency of a tent)

Figure in another 100k and a year to fix it, due to how UK contractors work.

Does energy efficiency make a big difference in the UK? I was under the belief yall had a pretty tame climate. In Arizona it's not uncommon to have days around 45 degrees for months so I know the efficiency really matters.

Its all relative really, because we don't experience extreme temperatures the smaller variations in temperature make a bigger difference to us. It might get up to 25 degrees on a typical summer day and as cold as -10 in winter, but the difference between a day for shorts and a day for a jumper could be only 3 or so degrees

Totally and the cost of gas or electricity could be higher and that makes it a bigger impact.

My house is a small two story granny cottage with a total floor area of 90sqm (1000sqf) though the upstairs have a low ceiling so the "true" floor are is closer to 60sqm (650sqm). The plot is 1000sqm (10500sqf) and has an additional building with a sauna and a small workshop space. It's located about 10km (6 miles) from the city centre on a residential neighbourhood in Finland. It's one of the major cities in the country. I paid about 105k€ for it which means 450€/month

I don't really understand the question. We have a few "houses" you can buy that would need a lot of work (to be livable for most people), that are also probably in high-crime areas (because of the price), that are available cheap.

You can buy a 1/1 in Montgomery, Alabama, downtown, on a 3,000 sq.ft. lot, for $4,000.00 total. 4k, that's it. You can buy a 4/2 for $9,000.00. 9k, that's all. And there's more than one available. Come on down!

Great. Just remember that having to deal with the Alabama Supreme Court carries an additional cost.

There's a reason for everything. But Montgomery, Alabama is a bargain housing-wise. You can get a real decent home for 100-150k no problem, and a gem for a bit more. The city has history (a lot not positive for white people) and a newly reelected black Democrat mayor who is pursuing rejuvenation. Some cool things are happening.

I understand the history and cost-related benefits to home buying. I just couldn't live in that kind of conservative political climate.

For a “cheap “ suburb of Boston

  • $580k for 1,038 sq ft 2 br on a 5,000 sq ft lot. The homes on this area were originally built as summer cottages so they’re going to be expensive to heat. Of 12 single family homes for sale, 7 are over $1M and one is in a different town
  • $265k for a 1 br condo, 579 sq ft. The only feature listed is “private entrance”. Second cheapest is a new townhouse for $1.5M

There are houses in my town that have sold in the last 12 months for less than $100,000.
These don't include the shacks that are falling apart that sell for $30,000.

This one was bought, fixed up, and is currently listed for $132,000.

"fixed"

I said "fixed up" meaning up-fitted as opposed to "repaired".

If you want to get to repairing things you can buy a house here for under $40k.

4.5 Rooms, 95 square meter apartment, 1‘315‘000 CHF.

Edit: Rotkreuz, Zug, Switzerland

With a quick search on Zillow for Lincoln, Nebraska (~300k pop college town), cheapest I can find is $90k for a 1 bed/1 bath 500 sqft condo. $100k for a 1 bed/1 bath 500 sqft house, though technically that's a foreclosure so you might not consider that to count. The cheapest normal house for sale that I can find is $110k for a 2 bed, 1 bath 1500 sqft house. It's an older home, but actually a pretty decent location (close-ish to downtown).

Excluding mobile homes, you can get a 318 square foot studio in downtown San Diego for only $180,000! Not including the $770/mo HOA fee. I like that the listing includes a lot size of 1.2 acres, as if you get the whole city block to yourself.

What is this HOA fee! Are they giving you a car after 5 years? /s

The cheapest one is apparently in the town next door. It's a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 984 square foot single family home built in 1955, on a third-of-an-acre lot with no HOA.

All the pictures are of the outside only, so I'm assuming the inside is pure shit. However, I also have to assume it's some kind of liveable shit, because the places that aren't liveable generally have to list as "0 bedrooms".

It's $60,000, in south/central New Jersey. Or $665 per month, which includes 30 year mortgage as well as property taxes.

(£1 gbp = $1.27 usd = €1.17 eur)

Cheapest land - £15,000 (0.56 acres)

Cheapest "house" - £50,000 - The dwellinghouse may be suitable for renovation or as a building site for a new property

Cheapest livable house - £85,000 - looks like it was lived in at least.

Cheapest flat - £85,000 (1 bed)

Church - £100,000 - The adjacent cemetery is not included in the sale.

Definitely under 50K (USD), but that's because I live in the sticks.

The cheapest livable in Paris, FR would be a 35m2 with two rooms, a kitchen and a tiny basement room for 30k€. It’s actually sold by the courts in April in an auction after being seized for whatever reason and I currently wonder whether I should make an offer for it as it’s so dirt cheap and I could pay it cash.

That's stupidly cheap, especially for a city like Paris. In Swiss cities single outdoor parking spaces go for 30k. Not in the centre though.

I know, I’m Swiss and now I live in a country where no one bats an eye when I say I buy studio flats for when my kids will be students and want to live in the city and in the meantime rent them out. The 30k is the auction starting point. But if I could grab it for less than 60k and the have a cost total of 90k max with reno works, that would be splendid.

Do it!

It’s never go for 30k. I need to calculate how much I can offer for it considering they’ll probably be other people interested and works to be done.

$80k cad - 3 bedroom and 1 bath. Probably needs a good cleaning and upgrade. Bus stop close by. Not so good area but it's ok.

$70k in my area in NC. It's a lovely 2bd/1ba, and can keep the rain off your head (mostly). It totally wouldn't be condemned if actually inspected.

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Saw a listing for a house which has had a fire and all the copper pipes stolen being sold as is for 300K in a really gritty location in the city.

According to Zillow, a 3 bed 2 bath with 800 monthly HOA fees for 465k.

800$ per month for HOA is insane.

Agreed.

I don't want an HOA at all, let alone pay what SHOULD be the entirety of a monthly payment to them, on top of a mortgage that is going to be 3 times as much as the HOA fee.

When I was little (just 29) you would hear a price like that for the mini mansions up on the hill.

I can't imagine how absurd it seems for people old enough that they bought their first home for 20k back in the 70s.

Oh fun. $330k for a 500sqft shack that is partially collapsed. The only info on the listing states the lot will need to be scraped, so basically that is the cost of an empty lot.

Going out a bit further, you can find a couple of houses around $350k that are liveable. They are 700-900 sqft and 0-2 bedrooms.

Not answering the question really, but it prompted me to check out property prices in my home town in New Zealand - small town near a small city in the south. Example: 3br "character" wooden villa on a small section, NZ$700k (US$434k, £350k). I had heard about the explosion in NZ house prices, but that really took me aback. The house I live in now, 3br mid-terrace with garden in a similar sized Scottish town, would sell for about £250k. Even that seems crazy expensive, but at least it's within half an hour of a fantastic city.

(The estate agent's website lists previous sale prices, it shows the kiwi horror story: 2022: $570k; 2019: $430k; 2011: $271k; 1988: $52k; 1984: $26k.)

in saigon you can pitch a hammock for $0

if you are Vietnamese, sometimes you can apply for some free farm land

There's 41 houses/duplexes for sale in my city at or under $50k. The lowest are listed at $5,000 but someone could probably buy it for less. The city also provides $20,000 in money to fix up any of the houses they own.

20k. I live in a shit hole

At least it's an affordable shithole!

Exactly lol. That's why currently stuck commuting a bit more than 3 hours a day round trip to work smh

Feel your pain. Did the same thing for about a decade and it wasn't awesome. At the end of it I felt like all I did was commute, work, commute, and repeat the next day. Barely saw my family. Hope it gets better for you though!

38 m^2, 2 rooms, 1 bathroom, 169000 € in a rural part of a bigger city in Western Germany.

That's an exception, though. The house is a bit weird since it apparently stands next to a church in the backyard of some other building...

The church bells' relentless ringing, calling for the children of the area to come to the priest's most loving care, probably drives down the price a lot

Genève (Geneva), Switzerland

Cheapest apartment is 38m², 2 rooms, 570'000 CHF (646'000 USD)

That's very cheap. It's a shitty flat but livable if need be.

https://www.immoscout24.ch/buy/4000814125

Cheapest house is 240m², 6 rooms, 2'950'000 CHF (3'347'000 USD)

https://www.immoscout24.ch/buy/4000610532

That's cheap???

Dear heavens, I didn't realize some places were that rough.

Welcome to Switzerland

Why is it so expensive?

Very small country, growing population, generally wealthy

Is $60k USD about what the average income is? That is what google told me.

I don't know the average, but the median household income is 10'114 CHF (11'480 USD) per month, so 121'386 CHF (137'800 USD) per year.

Lithuania, Telšiai county

14000 Euros

4 rooms

66 square metres

25 ars of land

Photograph for the curious

Link for even more curious

That sounds cheap as an American! Is it affordable with how much money Lithuainians make?

An average salary is 1250 euros, so it would be possible to save up enough in 3-5 years. Or save enough for a downpayment. However, a house like that would take twice the amount or more to become livable and the location is not the best.

A more decent home would cost between 50-100K, also possible on a mortgage with a decent salary, but not that cheap.

Houses next to big cities can get more expensive, but so do the salaries. Most city people don't live in houses though, they go for apartments. Some of them are renovated. Mixed use buildings are also common.

Does HOA mow your lawn, make you food and drive you anywhere?

Just a couple of years ago I found two houses on Zillow going for $65,000 in Cleveland. A front house/back house situation.

When you say front house / back house is that like a duplex?

Two separate houses on the same lot, one is in the backyard of the other.

Oh that's odd.

Out of curiosity I Googled the term "backhouse" and apparently it wasn't that unusual around the early 1900's. They still exist but most people are unaware because they are out of sight unless the front house gets torn down, even then it just looks like a house with a big front yard. Growing up in the burbs I never saw one. In the early 80's lots of my friends rented them because it was cheap

I bought my 3BR 1bath SFH, west side of Chicago, for $61K... kinda. To be actually livable it needed another $21K in immediate repairs (electric, plumbing, HVAC).

Luckily I refinanced right before inflation went crazy, so my total mortgage + escrow is $945/mo.

We also looked at a 3-flat building for $2K, but it had a $10K lien on it and all the copper had been stripped, sooooo

439k, 3 bed , 2 bath.

It gets cheaper, but they are mobile homes and restricted to 55+

Damn, I didn't realize I just wasted 45 minutes. No definitive answer, but it seems €30-40k for something that should be repaired, but could be barely lived in.

The absolutely cheapest I found was €17,000 with no photos from indoors, only with description saying it is not suitable for living in the current condition...

Same here, but on top of that there are some unfinished 100-200+m2 houses that come with acres of land.

$70k USD - 3 bed, 2.5 bath, 1400sq ft., 0.3 acre lot, two stories and a detached garage. The interior needs plenty of non-cosmetic work (e.g. - new flooring)

$75k USD - 2 bed, 1 bath, 800sq ft., 0.15 acre lot; newly redone floors, electric and paint.

After that, there's about 10 more in the 125-150K range.

There's no houses that small for sale near me, but the cheapest livable house is about 3x that size, 4br, 2ba, for $150,000, but it's a townhome. If you want a single family you're looking at about $200,000. Central Pennsylvania, USA

Holy shit. I thought the $650 included HOA fees. That's literally JUST the HOA fees. My mortgage on a $300k house is only $300 more than that. Though, I do have a 3% loan. Not getting that again.

Trailer parks saw how much money normal land lords were making, and were like "What's stopping up from raising rent for no reason as well?"

It's actually far worse than that. Trailer park Millionaires is a report from 9 years ago following wealthy investors who were buying up trailer parks so they could Jack up rent. Investors specifically targeted sex offenders, convicted felons, and other desparate tennants, so they could mercilessly exploit them since they truly had no place else to go.

The investors were also trained to exploit families, since more members in the household means more potential workers, and that means they'll be more likely to tolerate a rent hike.

Oh well isn't that swell, add on some of those people probably have loans for their mobile homes and can't afford to move them, and we get what we have.

In the city at large, I see the cheapest apartment 750sq feet for 18k but you can be sure the whole building is falling down; cheapest empty lot $30k 2,500 sq feet (so maybe do-able if you can build up 2-3 stories, since you aren't actually allowed to build out to the edges of the lot).

Cheapest actual detached house in my 'inside the city, close to work and everything' neighborhood is an eye watering $440k and 1,500 sq feet, cheapest for sale apartment 700 sq ft $140k.

Most EXPENSIVE house in my neighborhood $2,250,000, and most expensive house listed in the whole city, add another zero to that price.

Handful of townhouses for sale. Cheapest is $225k for 2 beds/1 bath, 1100 sq.ft. The others for sale are about 20k more expensive and are bigger (and there are some that are $$$).

One of the older (60s?) homes in the area is for sale $525k. It's 3 bed/3 baths, 2100 sq.ft. and an ingroind heated pool and half an acre. This is far too cheap for the area so it might be a divorce or something.

Most lots go for about 400k and other houses are 600k. This is in one of the big upper middle class suburbs in the Midwest

Legal or illegal? Legal is around 220k in local currency, illegal is 80k. Divide that by 5 to get the approximate price in dollars

In Tuscaloosa, AL it looks like the cheapest is $99k, with a fair few under $200k. Granted they are in rough shape but they are here and somewhat affordable.

A tiny 2 bed house that is in poor condition is about £55,000

When I search in a 30KM radius, the cheapest house starts at 140K euros. You only get 19m² (204 sq ft) so it's like just one room? But for 150K you can get a 55m² (592 sq ft) house that's probably a bathroom, livingroom and bedroom.

Per square feet actually more expensive, but houses in the Netherlands aren't that big anyway.

110.000€, 1942 - fit for demolition, 3 room/88 sqm, no heating, 780 sqm 'savage' garden.