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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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.
Around 50000$ equivalent.
I’m in a tiny industrial town in western norway, and there’s this one house that nobody wants to buy because “fixer upper” would be understatement of the year. The price tag is mostly based on the property, whereas the house itself needs ro be removed.
(£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.
Here in a small village in the Netherlands the cheapest is 315k euro for 65m2 and 2 bedrooms
Well, there goes my dream retirement plan.
Godverdomme. Right behind my house also Dutch village they built a new building with apartments, 240-270k for 35m2, they’re literally shoeboxes.
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
Bay Area… Don’t even want to check, too depressing
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
Regional Australia.
$250k will get you a 90s apartment or a shitbox in bumsville.
Avg wage is about $80k.
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.
You wish it was a 100m2 garage for that price!
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.
sounds right, sounds sadly right
Too fucking expensive for me, that’s how much.
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.
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).
Not long ago, 40-50k, now 90-100k.
$229,000 for 53 sqm (571 sqft)
Definitely under 50K (USD), but that’s because I live in the sticks.
