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Post by tangent on May 14, 2016 12:14:43 GMT
People living in London commute long distances but house prices are high everywhere in the Thames Valley, I believe.
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Post by Christy on May 14, 2016 15:15:28 GMT
I live in a small incorporated town outside of a large city. It's not completely rural, but it's a subdivision in an area that's considered rural. So my house was purchased for $80,000. Tax value was $110,000. It is a pretty large house for my first one; it's called a "split level" house; that is, the front door is on the main floor, and other rooms go either to the left or right. Opposite the main level, you can take a half stair up and a half stair down to reach bedrooms on the top and a basement on the bottom. This is almost exactly my house. Mine is white, the driveway is straight. I have a house on both sides, and this one has a corner lot. My backyard slopes steeply toward a stream bed, and this one has a flat lot. The garden is much more done up in this picture than in mine. Still, you get the idea. 1,350 sq feet, three bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, a half acre lot/garden, fireplace. I looked it up on Zillow to find the lot size and learned that someone misrepresented the sale price by a zero or two; they think I paid over $8 million for it. LOL! I don't know how this compares to other prices and costs of living elsewhere, though.
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Post by juju on May 14, 2016 18:55:48 GMT
A house like that would cost a lot in the UK. Detached houses with surrounding gardens or land are at a premium - that's what comes of being a small island!
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Post by Christy on May 15, 2016 0:42:04 GMT
That would make it difficult, wouldn't it. I forget how being an entire country on an island changes the value of land. This house is a "starter home" in this area because the cost of the land (not in the city) is cheaper and the house was one of many "cookie-cutter" houses in this neighborhood. By that I mean that in this neighborhood, with 20 or so streets, 80% of the houses I've seen are some form of split-level house. Rather than being lovingly built by one company for one family (stick-built), it was more likely some of it was brought out in modular pieces that were put together on the lot, after the cinder block basement was put in.
Even if this house were in the city, the value could suddenly triple, depending on the side of town it was on.
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Post by Mari on May 15, 2016 19:58:09 GMT
Your house would be expensive here too. Large with a lot of land... Having a house built to your specifications is nearly impossible due to building regulations and city scaping and it would be horribly expensive. This is what a typical Dutch house looks like:
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Post by whollygoats on May 15, 2016 22:00:55 GMT
Your house would be expensive here too. Large with a lot of land... Having a house built to your specifications is nearly impossible due to building regulations and city scaping and it would be horribly expensive. This is what a typical Dutch house looks like: That is what we would call a 'row house' in these parts. Common-wall construction. Those kinds of structures, apartment buildings, cluster around the major transit corridors. As one moves away from the corridors, housing tends to change to duplexes, triplexes, or, even more common, single-family houses. The 'standard' lot size is 5,000 square feet, usually as a 50 ft. by 100 ft. lot. Most of the homes in my neighborhood are single-family houses, but most of those are built on lots a mite smaller than the standard....because they were plotted and built upon before the 'standard' was the standard. Part of my street. My neighbor's house. The pressures of population expansion and urban development are inexorably transforming my neighborhood from a single-family housing community to higher density housing...usually three to four story apartments.
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Post by Mari on May 16, 2016 19:20:29 GMT
The houses in your street are for upper middle class to low rich class were they in the Netherlands. I could never afford it, unless I married someone with a better paying job than mine. Combining our salaries we could afford it. It's the sort of house you'd find in villages or in expensive city neighbourhoods. But then:the Netherlands is quite a bit smaller than the US. Land is expensive.
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Post by Mari on May 16, 2016 19:22:19 GMT
By the by: major difference between Dutch houses and American houses: ours are pretty much always made of brick, not wood.
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Post by tangent on May 17, 2016 9:15:31 GMT
Although the UK is a small country, land did not used to be expensive. My first 3-bedroom semi-detached house in 1970 had a fair bit of land (1/9 of an acre) which cost one tenth of the price of the house. Land on which houses could be built cost about £2700 per acre (equivalent to £29000, $42000 per acre today). However, both land and houses themselves have risen enormously in value because of the shortage of land, and I suspect a lot of large land owners and builders have become very rich.
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Post by Mari on May 17, 2016 16:45:42 GMT
There isn't much open land left in the Netherlands, except for the areas in possession of the Dutch nature trust funds, like forests.
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Post by whollygoats on May 30, 2016 19:07:22 GMT
Well...We had been wondering. Now we know....approximately....how much my home might rent for on the open market. A house two blocks (~ 400 ft.) to the west of us, which is an extremely close comparative to my house (I have 1/2 more of a bath), has been listed in the local online rental averts as a three bedroom rental house w/1.5 baths, basement shop and upstairs suite. Here. It was listed at $3,000 per month, plus renter pays most utilities (power, lights, water, sewer). Were I attempting to domicile myself in this market, I could not afford to live in my own neighborhood. It is only because I own my property outright that I can continue to live here.
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Post by tangent on May 30, 2016 21:54:50 GMT
$3000 is huge, that's $36000 a year
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Post by whollygoats on May 31, 2016 0:02:06 GMT
$3000 is huge, that's $36000 a year Inorite... Yes. The US real estate market is obscene. To me, such pricing is a leading indicator on another real estate financing bubble roaring at us. See that light at the end of the tunnel? That is the headlight on the onrushing locomotive engine and the engineer has jumped to save his skin.
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Post by Mari on Jun 1, 2016 16:51:28 GMT
That's... my monthly salary...
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Post by whollygoats on Jun 1, 2016 18:56:08 GMT
Yeah, I know. Before taxes were withheld.
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Post by juju on Jun 1, 2016 21:45:08 GMT
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Post by Kye on Jun 2, 2016 3:14:15 GMT
Wow. I thought Vancouver was bad...
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Post by Christy on Jun 7, 2016 0:18:40 GMT
I do not make even that much in a year, gross, much less net. That's almost half of the principle on my mortgage. Sheesh.
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Post by Christy on Jun 7, 2016 0:21:54 GMT
The US real estate market is obscene. To me, such pricing is a leading indicator on another real estate financing bubble roaring at us. One of the last indicators was that buying a home was more expensive than renting. So, if your neighbor's house is for rent at $3,000/month, but the mortgage would be $2,000/month, then it would be less indicative if it were the other way around.
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Post by tangent on Jun 7, 2016 13:41:41 GMT
If buying a home were more expensive than renting, why would anyone want to be a landlord? He or she could make more money by selling their house and putting the money in a bank.
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Post by Kye on Jun 7, 2016 15:16:23 GMT
I found owning my condo more expensive than renting. That's why I sold my condo.
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Post by JoeP on Jun 7, 2016 15:41:55 GMT
Some expectation of capital gains could offset that.
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Post by Mari on Jun 7, 2016 16:29:30 GMT
For me renting was more expensive than buying my own house. I paid about 800 euros per month for a 1 bedroom appartment, while I now own a complete house for a little bit less per month (getting less every year as I pay back my mortgage.
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Post by juju on Jun 7, 2016 19:02:12 GMT
I found owning my condo more expensive than renting. That's why I sold my condo. Condo = apartment, right?
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Post by Miisa on Jun 7, 2016 21:35:34 GMT
How could owning be more expensive than renting, at least in the long run? If you are paying a mortgage, aren't you paying much of it essentially to yourself, and you will then own the property once it is paid off? If the monthly mortgage payments are higher than rent would be then you are probably trying to pay it off too fast.
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Post by juju on Jun 7, 2016 21:50:01 GMT
Exactly. It's always better to buy if you can, because at least you will own it eventually. Renting is paying someone else's mortgage. Sadly there will be a whole generation of young people who will never be able to buy here in Britain, it's just too expensive.
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Post by Kye on Jun 7, 2016 22:56:14 GMT
I bought my condo (apartment) and the mortgage payments were less than rent, it's true. But it needed a lot of repairs that had to be paid off. I only had one salary and I was supporting the 2 kids living at home. I was putting everything on my line of credit and I knew I didn't have much hope of paying it down, so I sold the condo. Luckily I made a tidy profit. But unless I were sharing expenses, or had a lot more liquid cash than I do I wouldn't buy again. Besides, the market is far, far outside my means now.
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Post by whollygoats on Jun 8, 2016 2:13:59 GMT
I found owning my condo more expensive than renting. That's why I sold my condo. Condo = apartment, right? Wrong. A condominium is owned (or being purchased, complete with mortgage) by the tennant. An apartment is either month to month rent or lease agreement; no equity in the property is retained by the tennant. Condominiums tend to look like most apartments...common-wall construction, multiple-family structures, shared yards, etc...but the tennant is actually accruing equity.
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Post by Kye on Jun 8, 2016 2:39:05 GMT
Here we don't make a huge distinction between apartments and condos. You can buy an apartment also. Condos tend to be newer construction though.
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Post by juju on Jun 8, 2016 6:05:08 GMT
Same here. You can buy or rent an apartment (they're usually called 'flats' here) same as any other property, although they're usually cheaper than houses. We don't have the word condominium.
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