Quote:
Originally Posted by kr4l
I honestly have no idea. I just did a quick 30 second MLS search and places came up. Didn't read the descriptions but they weren't 'modern' obviously. But a roof is a roof and people can stop bitxhing about renting. But they'll end up bitcxhing about something else
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Yes, a roof is a roof. There's no denying it. And, to be honest, I prefer older builds simply because you tend to get more square footage for your money. However, with older homes, you're not necessarily looking at *just* $200k or $300k mortage. In the case of those apartments and townhouses, the monthly maintenance fees range anywhere between $200 (freakin' beware of such a low fee) and $1000. For those limited to a mortgage of $300k, an extra $1000 on top of your monthly mortgage payment can be massive. Hell, even the average of $500 can break the bank. On top of that you can almost guarantee that something will need to be fixed or replaced. It might be leaky plumbing, a furnace that's out of date, a water tank that no longer heats, etc., etc. Think of it like buying an older BMW or Mercedes. It might be cheap to buy, but the repair costs can be astronomical if something is broken.
I rent two homes. One is an older build (circa early 80's I believe) on a quarter acre and is worth roughly $300,000, and the other is a new build on 22 acres, worth about $1.5 million. The old build home has been nothing but problems. Within the first few weeks, I had the landlord tear apart half the house to fix a mold problem that was the result of a then-unidentified leaky pipe in the upstairs bathroom. Then there's the issue of a floating neutral in the wiring somewhere. There's a foundation leak that was only discovered once the snow melted this spring. The A/C leaks water, the pump in one of the toilets died a couple days ago, and the kitchen fan literally goes nowhere (it blows straight back into the kitchen.) All these things added up costs tens of thousands of dollars. If I was looking for a place within that budget and bought this house, I'd be out tens of thousands of dollars fixing all the issues. That $300,000 is suddenly closer to $400,000. I'll let you do the monthly mortgage change on that, but it certainly can suddenly switch between affordable and not. That said, even the new build has had problems (leaking waste pipe resulted in the basement being torn apart and redone,) but that's more of an uncommon problem than anything.
My point is that, yes, there are cheap options out there. But just because they're cheap, it doesn't mean they're affordable.