4 ms·

I'm in Colorado and in the Denver area, $600k will get you plenty of house.

by Osiris 5y ago

tristor 5y ago
My concern isn't square footage, it's safety, efficiency, and quality. Please point me to a place in the Denver metro where a properly built high-efficiency house (let's say blower door ACH50 1.5 or lower) can be purchased for $600k. I'll buy today.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  You may want to consider realigning your expectations with reality. The reality is that if you have location flexibility, you can certainly find a nice house at a nice price in the USA. Your expectation that you can find a nice house with bleeding edge environmental efficiency is unrealistic. Maybe it shouldn't be, but that's life. edited to add: the people who are really screwed are the people who need to work in a given location where housing prices are absurdly high and the housing stock is truly garbage. Silicon Valley and such.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    I think there's a huge disconnect between you and the parent's definition of "nice house." Because it's kinda nuts that for $600k you can't buy small exceptionally-constructed house. In this market there is no way to find houses where you pay more to get build quality instead of bigger.
    - tristor 5y ago
      Yes, you understood my point exactly. I would happily pay $850k for a 1800sqft house that is constructed properly with efficiency in mind. I don't want to pay $850k for a trash quality 3500sqft McMansion, but that's what's on offer at that price.
  - tristor 5y ago
    I don't think my expectations are unrealistic, or perhaps it's better to say that our current reality is broken. I actually don't want a large house, it's wasted space that costs more money to build and consumes more environmental resources just to be a bigger pain to clean and maintain. My ideal home is less than 1800sqft, which is smaller than almost all new builds today because home building in the US is optimized on how quickly a house can be constructed and on square footage in the lot space so that they can get the highest ROI for the builder/developer. Upthread somewhere I said my budget was $1.25M and I was having trouble finding houses that are even bordering on acceptable. I don't expect a house to exactly match my wants if it's not custom built for me, which is exactly why I'm resigned to likely needing to custom build (and surprised by how cheap it is compared to buying, when it used to be a luxury). The issue I have, and most people have, is that low-grade cookie cutter homes are MASSIVELY overpriced relative to their actual value as a place to live. Nobody in their right mind would be happy paying $850k+ for a KB Homes "starter home" in a suburb that cost less than $60k in materials to construct and was built to the absolute minimum standards they could get away with.

I'm in Colorado and in the Denver area, $600k will get you plenty of house.

by Osiris 5y ago

I'm in Colorado and in the Denver area, $600k will get you plenty of house.

My concern isn't square footage, it's safety, efficiency, and quality. Please point me to a place in the Denver metro where a properly built high-efficiency house (let's say blower door ACH50 1.5 or lower) can be purchased for $600k. I'll buy today.

KerrAvon 5y ago
You may want to consider realigning your expectations with reality. The reality is that if you have location flexibility, you can certainly find a nice house at a nice price in the USA. Your expectation that you can find a nice house with bleeding edge environmental efficiency is unrealistic. Maybe it shouldn't be, but that's life. edited to add: the people who are really screwed are the people who need to work in a given location where housing prices are absurdly high and the housing stock is truly garbage. Silicon Valley and such.
- Spivak 5y ago
  I think there's a huge disconnect between you and the parent's definition of "nice house." Because it's kinda nuts that for $600k you can't buy small exceptionally-constructed house. In this market there is no way to find houses where you pay more to get build quality instead of bigger.
  - tristor 5y ago
    Yes, you understood my point exactly. I would happily pay $850k for a 1800sqft house that is constructed properly with efficiency in mind. I don't want to pay $850k for a trash quality 3500sqft McMansion, but that's what's on offer at that price.
- tristor 5y ago
  I don't think my expectations are unrealistic, or perhaps it's better to say that our current reality is broken. I actually don't want a large house, it's wasted space that costs more money to build and consumes more environmental resources just to be a bigger pain to clean and maintain. My ideal home is less than 1800sqft, which is smaller than almost all new builds today because home building in the US is optimized on how quickly a house can be constructed and on square footage in the lot space so that they can get the highest ROI for the builder/developer. Upthread somewhere I said my budget was $1.25M and I was having trouble finding houses that are even bordering on acceptable. I don't expect a house to exactly match my wants if it's not custom built for me, which is exactly why I'm resigned to likely needing to custom build (and surprised by how cheap it is compared to buying, when it used to be a luxury). The issue I have, and most people have, is that low-grade cookie cutter homes are MASSIVELY overpriced relative to their actual value as a place to live. Nobody in their right mind would be happy paying $850k+ for a KB Homes "starter home" in a suburb that cost less than $60k in materials to construct and was built to the absolute minimum standards they could get away with.