10 ms·

The title here on hackernews is wrong. Given their definition of unaffordable these homes are "unaffordable" for the "average" American in 99% of 575 counties.

• jjkeddo199 3y ago
  Where do you live? How bad is the gun violence? Is it safe for little kids? How far to nearest city of 100k+?
• andrewmcwatters 3y ago
  Interesting. Can you post the street so that I can buy them all right now and flip them? /s
  • jandrese 3y ago
    Just in case people didn't catch the sarcasm. The first three rules of real estate are location, location, location. It's easy to find cheap homes in areas where there are no jobs and no services.
    • xeromal 3y ago
      With remote work, that becomes less of a problem
      • Cthulhu_ 3y ago
        Work is only one part of life though
      • EwanG 3y ago
        Presuming the remote work location has decently fast internet with very good uptime, and the distance to the local health provider who can provide quality care is reasonable. I've found that many inexpensive places are lacking one or both of the above. Not saying remote work doesn't expand the options - just that it isn't a panacea for all the issues that lead to expensive housing.
      • mmcclure 3y ago
        The problem is that remote work is only feasible for a relatively small percentage of jobs. "Where are homes affordable for the HN crowd" is a very different discussion than where are homes affordable for the general population of the US.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • comte7092 3y ago
        Most jobs aren’t full remote, they’re either in person or hybrid. Even during the peak of Covid, a majority of workers weren’t eligible to work from home. Ironically it’s the well off office workers who are most likely to be able to work remote, the exact people who are least impacted by housing prices.
      • res0nat0r 3y ago
        Another thing to consider is that many fully remote people don't want to live in the middle of nowhere or in a dead city with no services. I've been fully remote for 10+ years and still only live in large metro areas mostly because I couldn't handle living in a large house in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and no one to interact with.
      • vkou 3y ago
        It's less of a problem if you're deciding between a tier 1 and a tier 2 city, but it's a massive problem when you're deciding between a tier-anything city, and a 'cardboard box in the middle of the woods, 10 miles off the nearest highway, and 25 miles to the nearest Wal-Mart' that is the upper limit for what you can buy for $5,000.
      • MrDrMcCoy 3y ago
        Not necessarily. Many homes outside metro areas have inadequate network infrastructure. Satellite and dial-up aren't enough for the kind of remote work I do.
        • jandrese 3y ago
          Starlink really expanded the horizon on this however.
• hbrav 3y ago
  That's a shockingly low number. Where do you live?
• vkou 3y ago
  > People might not like hearing it, but homes are in fact affordable if you don't choose to live in an overpopulated metro. The reason the metro is overpopulated is because that's where all the jobs are. Move away from it, and you'll quickly discover that the cheaper homes outside of it are now unaffordable for you, because your wages took a nose dive.
  • antisthenes 3y ago
    Yes, I'm not sure why this axiom needs to be repeated in every HN thread about housing. Housing is priced proportionately higher near populous metro areas because the wages are also proportionately higher. There is no "magic hack" for real estate. You get what you pay for in terms of location and proximity to jobs/schools/social life.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • DSingularity 3y ago
      That’s broad strokes. In most large metros you can live a little further away and have some solid discount and same wages. Better be ready for that commute that starts at 6 am though.
      • antisthenes 3y ago
        > In most large metros you can live a little further away and have some solid discount and same wages. Better be ready for that commute that starts at 6 am though. I mean you just invalidated your own argument with the 2nd part, but sure. Wasting time in a commute negates any discount you might have had.
        • DSingularity 3y ago
          For some people. For others the chance of having a large home for their family makes it worth.
      • 3y ago
• wnevets 3y ago
  > But! there are over 3000 counties in the US. This is not even close to the meaning of "unaffordable in 99% of the nation..." The total number of counties isn't all that important, the number of available homes per county is much more important.
• mwambua 3y ago
  The US also does pretty well compared to other countries: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count... Price to income ratios in my home country are more than double the US's - not to mention the insane interest rates required just to beat inflation.
• idontpost 3y ago
  [dead]
• concordDance 3y ago
  Where on earth is your street?
• mmcclure 3y ago
  I would be interested to see a Zillow link for a "good starter home" that's listing for $5,000. You seem to imply that it's entirely based on personal preference that people live near "overpopulated metros", rather than the reality that people live near cities because that's overwhelmingly where jobs are.
  • MightyBuzzard 3y ago
    [dead]
  • comte7092 3y ago
    Just gotta get a remote job in the six figures, it’s super easy to do. /s
  • jjav 3y ago
    > I would be interested to see a Zillow link for a "good starter home" that's listing for $5,000. I just went to zillow and set up a filter for houses between 5K to 10K in all of the USA. (edit: fixed my filter) While I see some houses in that price range, they are in need of significant rebuild (fire damage, foundation problems, etc). A far stretch from a good started home. If you only have <$10K to buy a house you are unlikely to have money to rebuild it.
• topikk 3y ago
  Please tell me where there are good homes for $5-10K. I live in a LCOL city and a completely clapped out house in a very bad neighborhood is still $100K. There are fewer than 10 houses cheaper than than in my entire city, and they all look like they needed to be torn down long ago. A decent, no-frills or style condo starts north of $200K.
  • MightyBuzzard 3y ago
    [dead]
  • alephnerd 3y ago
    Where are you going to find a home for $5-10k anywhere in most of the world? Even in Kabul - the capital of a pariah state - property is selling for $50-150k [0] [0] - https://maskanyab.af/property-type/houses/ https://maskanyab.af/property-type/houses/
• angarg12 3y ago
  When talking about affordability there is always someone who uses this argument, like everyone can freely move around. I work for a company that forces me to go to the office in a hub city, and I'm in a work visa that doesn't allow me to change employers, so my options are limited. In any event saying "uproot your entire life and move someone cheaper" is a mean non-answer. Is it so unreasonable to ask for affordable housing for most in the biggest population centers?
• DSingularity 3y ago
  Uh what. Please tell me where those houses are. It would be stupid not to buy every one you can find. Even if they were so undesirable — sit on them some years you literally can’t lose.
• freeopinion 3y ago
  A quick browse just showed me that $300K can buy you: - A studio condo in Durango, CO with < 500sqft - A 3-bedroom townhouse in Gooding, ID with ~ 1000 sqft - A 3-bedroom townhouse in Tremonton, UT with ~ 1400 sqft - Nothing in Pullman, WA I don't consider any of those to be overpopulated metro areas. And I do consider $300K to be unaffordable for even above average income starter families. If you move into overpopulated metro areas like Denver, Boise, Salt Lake City, or Seattle, the prices double and more.
• ww520 3y ago
  Yes. 100 times of this. Everyone wants to cramp into SF and bemoans it's unaffordable. But what about where the jobs are! It's clearly unsustainable to cramp all the people in the big cities. Instead of working to spread the jobs out but let's have 100 story buildings. Everyone wants to have their cake and eats it.
• richiebful1 3y ago
  I mean, sure these $10k houses exist in the poorest counties in the country (WV and KY coal fields, Mississippi black belt, etc) but that's not a scalable solution. These counties only have a few hundred houses of excess housing capacity, and very little economic base to keep those houses maintained
• japhib 3y ago
  I'm sorry but I'm tired of hearing "move to South Dakota" as the solution to the housing crisis. > if you don't choose to live in an overpopulated metro oh, you mean where the jobs are? Yeah how selfish of people to want to live where they can find work, or where their family lives, or where they grew up, or where there's a variety of food places and stuff to do. The real problem is zoning. Most of these "overpopulated metro areas" have a pretty low population density because apartments are banned in 99% of the city (due to exclusionary single-family zoning). If townhouses & apartments were actually allowed to be built over the past 50 years in most American cities, there could be easily 3-10x the amount of housing available, reducing sprawl and driving down housing costs. The pendulum is swinging back and zoning is starting to loosen up, but after decades of bad policy, it's going to take a very long time for it to actually make a difference.
• bdcravens 3y ago
  Fifth-wheel trailers typically sell for more $10k. I searched all of Texas, and here's an actual house for sale for less than $10k .... that has fire damage. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/204-E-Wharton-Ave-Electra-TX-76360/78915133_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/204-E-Wharton-Ave-Electra...
• jroseattle 3y ago
  > There are good starter homes on my street that sell for 5-10,000 dollars. While that's a ridiculously low number (something tells me our definitions for "good starter homes" don't align), it's not THAT far off from similar properties in my wife's hometown in the midwest. But let's _also_ talk about aspects of locality that affect quality of life (and along with it, real estate value): - Neighborhood schools: absolute crap. 1/10 on the GreatSchools rating system. - Civic resources (parks, libraries, etc.): none within a short driving distance. Parks not maintained. Libraries closed, partially due to the books they made available (this is one of those areas where books are being banned). - Local employers: forget about it. The local industries and companies that setup shop there left town long ago. Nearest town where you might have a career of some type is about 70 miles away. - Healthcare: some kind of urgent care, but it's of middling-low quality. If you have a semi-serious condition, you've got 100+ miles to anything resembling a hospital. - Crime: exactly what you would expect. There is no opportunity, and people get desperate. Heavy, rural drug addiction. - Population: trending older, as most people are retiring. People of means fled the area due to lack of opportunity. - Transportation: there's a new highway bypass going way outside of town! Oh, but local transportation is entirely unreliable. No buses, taxis, uber, etc. In case you want to just stay inside and not interact with the world, you won't be running with very fast internet access (DSL speeds.) If it's not clear....it's a dying town. It's not part of an overpopulated metro, but that's what you get in this particular neck of the woods.
• jjav 3y ago
  > There are good starter homes on my street that sell for 5-10,000 dollars. Did you leave out a few zeroes or is that per month? If you actually meant 5K-10K, what town do you live in. I'd like to look at those houses.
• BeetleB 3y ago
  > But! there are over 3000 counties in the US. This is not even close to the meaning of "unaffordable in 99% of the nation..." "Data was analyzed for counties with a population of at least 100,000 and at least 50 single-family home and condo sales in the third quarter of 2023." It's not as if they cherry picked the counties to make their case.