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I’m in what most on HN would consider to be a very rural area, with the closest town having a population of 1,000 and a bigger town of 20,000 30 minutes away.

I’m in what most on HN would consider to be a very rural area, with the closest town having a population of 1,000 and a bigger town of 20,000 30 minutes away. Home prices are completely out of whack here too - I would guess they’ve gone up 50% in the past few years. Good luck getting anything like what you want either. I bought my home back in 2011 and my one big thing was that I wanted at least 5 acres, but preferably more. I ended up getting a home in desperate need of updates on 15 acres for 180,000. At the time places fitting that criteria in my budget popped up pretty often. I just did a search in Zillow for anything with more than 5 acres, and all I could find is some farmland, a 40 acre lot that’s mostly swamp for 800,000, and a 12 acre lot that’s somehow split in to 3 pieces for 140,000. Relatively crappy homes in town that were 100k back when I was looking are now north of 250k. Just to compare, my parents bought an amazingly beautiful 60 acre lot back in the late 80s on a truck driver and school bus driver’s salary. They then built a huge brick house on it, though to be fair my dad did a lot of the work himself. My wife and I both have degrees with good paying jobs and there’s no way we’d ever be able to afford anything approaching what they have.

dcchambers 5y ago
It sounds like you're not really buying a house, but you're buying space. Acreage is expensive and it will only get more so because it's literally impossible to create more of it. You can build housing vertically and put them as close together as possible. You can't magically make more land. The vast majority of people won't be buying acres of land. Nor should they, it's not sustainable.
- Auracle 5y ago
  Sure, but there's still plenty of space in the area. We're nowhere close to building vertically. The homes without acreage have all gotten significantly more expensive too. I just looked at a random house in town with a normal sized lot for the area. It's selling for 250k, was last sold in 2020 for 212k, and was sold before that in 2016 for 163k. The listing says it's back on the market with "new kitchen hardware and fresh paint on walls and trim," so no significant updates. A nicer home on the most desired lake in the area - 1.3 million. It last sold in 2007 for 410k. A less nice home on the same lake sold for 730k. In 2011 it sold for 335k. I know all those prices (save the million dollar home) are definitely cheap compared to cities, but the point was that the price increase has been stupid everywhere. There are so few homes on the market in the area it's ridiculous - they're gone instantly.
coward123 5y ago
>Relatively crappy homes in town that were 100k back when I was looking are now north of 250k. We'd need to know more about your area to really assess this... $250K really isn't very much money. In my area, you could afford that house on our minimum wage, even as just a single-income household. In fact, the mortgage on it would be less than our typical area rent. I hear a lot of stories like what you are sharing about the beautiful 60 acres back in the 80s... let's just say that baby boomers for all their complaining about 18% interest rates actually had a whole lot of things working for them that we don't today. Competition is different because capital moves around the world easily.
- Auracle 5y ago
  It's a town of 1,000 where everyone with money lives out of town either on a lake or on a piece of land. Kids that lived in town were looked down upon a bit in school because it usually meant they were poor. That's somewhat changed as that town has had a bit of a resurgence with touristy shops. The biggest lake in the area is a popular tourist destination, and plenty of rich people own "cabins" on other lakes as well. The point was the homes were dirty cheap, and now they're significantly more than what I paid for a much nicer house on what most would consider a ton of land.
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
Why do you want 5 acres? What are you doing with it?
- Auracle 5y ago
  I grew up on 60 acres. My best memories from my childhood are of me exploring our woods with our dogs and I wanted the same for my children. The privacy is nice, too. My wife and I regularly go in our hot tub naked and have only been surprised by a hunter tracking a deer once ;)

dcchambers 5y ago

It sounds like you're not really buying a house, but you're buying space. Acreage is expensive and it will only get more so because it's literally impossible to create more of it. You can build housing vertically and put them as close together as possible. You can't magically make more land. The vast majority of people won't be buying acres of land. Nor should they, it's not sustainable.

Auracle 5y ago
Sure, but there's still plenty of space in the area. We're nowhere close to building vertically. The homes without acreage have all gotten significantly more expensive too. I just looked at a random house in town with a normal sized lot for the area. It's selling for 250k, was last sold in 2020 for 212k, and was sold before that in 2016 for 163k. The listing says it's back on the market with "new kitchen hardware and fresh paint on walls and trim," so no significant updates. A nicer home on the most desired lake in the area - 1.3 million. It last sold in 2007 for 410k. A less nice home on the same lake sold for 730k. In 2011 it sold for 335k. I know all those prices (save the million dollar home) are definitely cheap compared to cities, but the point was that the price increase has been stupid everywhere. There are so few homes on the market in the area it's ridiculous - they're gone instantly.

coward123 5y ago

>Relatively crappy homes in town that were 100k back when I was looking are now north of 250k. We'd need to know more about your area to really assess this... $250K really isn't very much money. In my area, you could afford that house on our minimum wage, even as just a single-income household. In fact, the mortgage on it would be less than our typical area rent. I hear a lot of stories like what you are sharing about the beautiful 60 acres back in the 80s... let's just say that baby boomers for all their complaining about 18% interest rates actually had a whole lot of things working for them that we don't today. Competition is different because capital moves around the world easily.

Auracle 5y ago
It's a town of 1,000 where everyone with money lives out of town either on a lake or on a piece of land. Kids that lived in town were looked down upon a bit in school because it usually meant they were poor. That's somewhat changed as that town has had a bit of a resurgence with touristy shops. The biggest lake in the area is a popular tourist destination, and plenty of rich people own "cabins" on other lakes as well. The point was the homes were dirty cheap, and now they're significantly more than what I paid for a much nicer house on what most would consider a ton of land.

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago

Why do you want 5 acres? What are you doing with it?

Auracle 5y ago
I grew up on 60 acres. My best memories from my childhood are of me exploring our woods with our dogs and I wanted the same for my children. The privacy is nice, too. My wife and I regularly go in our hot tub naked and have only been surprised by a hunter tracking a deer once ;)