How's the Housing Market Where You Are?

Definitely not back up to bubble heights, but recovering. To give a real-life example, I paid $340 for my house in 2006, pre-bubble. At it's lowest, it was down to $240. I just signed a P&S for $270, which is really $300 for the buyer because they need to put in a new septic system. The market is hot in that houses are moving quickly (I got 4 offers in a week with two at asking and 1 over asking price) but they still need to be priced to sell. Over-priced houses are sitting on the market for weeks and then are only moving with price drops while a well-priced house will get multiple offers and in some cases, a bidding war. But we're not seeing 2006 prices here yet.

ETA just to give context, my house is 1100 sq ft and 65 years old. Most houses around here are much more expensive and mine is being bought by an investor who will either flip it or do a tear-down and rebuild and then sell. There are a lot being built in the $800K - $1.2M range in my town and very few houses under $400 still left. I've decided that in order to live in a nice house around here, my next husband will need to match or exceed my income...

They are absolutely insane and unreachable where I live. It's nuts! We make damn good money but we're trapped in the house we bought 13 years ago because we can't afford to upgrade which we desperately need to.

I am not actually sure what the per capita median income has to do with home values. My uncle owned a multi million dollar company that is now worth in the billions and he lived in a 100k home in Affton. Most people in our subdivision make over 100k but under a million, except that one guy with the fancy pool, eff him. Our homes are around 250k give or take. I think anyone here could afford more but we don't because we aren't stupid. Like our home will be paid off in three years, you can imagine what we "could" afford with that much equity without raising our payments, but why?

Anyway, we are in a good area in that the prices aren't insane nor are the people living here insane. I have realtors cold calling us and leaving cards all the time. Prices never really dropped her after the bubble because nothing was really overpriced.

What 0bama didn't "fix" it??? :P

Here in DC - it's hit or miss. My particular street, houses are on the market for less than a week. We have an AWESOME location. We don't have turnover that often - this year was different - one neighbor died, one got an unexpected promotion and one had a fire and didn't want to come back after it was fixed.

Other areas? There have been houses that have been on the market for over a month.

Houses here - single family - 3 bed/2.5 baths start at $500K. There's one that has been on the market for about 3 months and is $3.5M. It's a HUGE house (about 10K sq feet, 6 beds, 8 baths and 3 acres of land).

Average income here? Again - it's different based on where you are. Suburbs of DC have an average income of over $100K, some areas slightly higher.

Not enought housing here. It's booming! We have Toyota, State Farm, Liberty Mutual among many others moving HQ here.

Many houses are not hitting the MLS because they sell before its posted at asking price or above. Homes that do hit the market are gone within 2 days.

My neighbor is preparing to sell and they are not putting the home on the market until the home they are building is almost done so they'll have a place to go. Their house will go over a million easily and with people moving from CA its a deal to get a 6000SF house, pool and outdoor living area.

We bought daughters condo in 2013, were in a bidding war with price and only got it because we offered cash and closed within 2 weeks.

We've had offers of cash for our home (rare wooded lot in nice area) and the condo ( gated community, green belt view) but we're not selling right now.

I don't think this will last forever but for now seller's are doing well.

Location is important when selling a house. I live in Portland across the river from Vancouver. Their cost of living is lower than Portland's. Vancouver has always had lower property values. It's common for people working in Oregon buying in Vancouver. I doubt very much that the falling down houses in Vancouver are selling in the million dollar bracket. Unless you see the house the price means nothing.

I know Vancouver has a lot of new construction that sell for a million or more. These houses are huge with high end features. I have relatives living in Vancouver. Their houses are small and cost much less than $500,000. Probably around $300, 000.

So, don't be fooled by a sales report. What some people consider "falling down" that are sold for a million are large and in good repair.

Our market is hot but for the average small house in my neighborhood is still less than a million. Those in a small (2,000 sg feet) are owned by people in the 5 figure income bracket.

Crazy. I'm in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley/Bay Area and the prices are insane. But prices barely went down here, even during the bubble burst, because there is simply too much demand and not nearly enough units, it's nuts. Basically if you own a house you don't sell because there is no where to go :-(

I live in a modest '65 ranch just inside the city of Milwaukee, WI. Neighborhood has more of a "suburb" feel to it, blue collar workers, young families & retirees.

Houses have 3br or 4br with 1.5ba, & ~1200 to 1500sq ft. We paid just over 100K in 2000 for our house, at the peak of the bubble we could've gotten over 175K. Prices crashed with all the foreclosures in our neighborhood - a lot of people bough in our area when prices were high & should not have gotten the financing. Now, we could list our house for 135-140K, but to get that we'd need to put in about 20K (updates, repairs). Houses are listed, but not flying off the shelves - maybe 60 to 90 day list times?

In other areas of WI, it is different stories, and other types of houses move faster (newer, bigger). Also a lot depends on location - we are city of Milwaukee, so not as fast of a sale as the surrounding suburbs. T. :)

We're almost to the point where we can sell our first house to wipe out our current mortgage on our 2nd house.
The first we have rented out for now.
The price hasn't quite come up to pre bubble level but it's slowly getting there.
Even if we sold it now we'd be getting more than we paid for it - we lived there 17 years.

Booming here (DFW area, Texas). In our town houses sell in less than a week. It's crazy!

We're in a seller's market here in Salt Lake City, and prices are finally back to or even a little up from 2008. It does depend on your neighborhood, though. Mine is climbing, but partly because the money is moving in. I live in an area that was full of small 1940's houses on generous lots and old stately trees. More and more of those are being torn down and replaced with McMansions.

ETA: I have to agree with Marda, I'm not seeing what you are talking about with 'falling down' homes. Those get bought up, razed, and turned into eco-housing, condos or revamped entirely for a single-family dwelling and flipped. We bought at the end of the 90s, when you could get a good house in our neighborhood for less than 200K. Most of them on our street now sell in the 350-400+K range. Neighborhood next to us: big houses revamped, can go for up to 800K. This includes all the amenities. The only Million-dollar home I know of recently was a completely redone landmark house and that thing has all the bells and whistles. The neighborhood bought it to keep it from being destroyed and
sold it to a company which would respect the building. Now, completely (and this means everything from a new exterior to 'taken down to the studs' interior) done, it's on the market for 1 mill. Atypical of our area, though.

Skyrocketing stupidly. A lot of people are getting priced out of Portland; there's a lot of new building (condos, mixed-use and mixed housing) going on right now. I'm sure if we sold our house tomorrow we'd get at least 2xs the price originally paid for it, with no extra work done.

Our housing is cheap, even in the affluent areas. Unfortunately our economy is in terrible shape, the city school district is threatening to close all 4 city high schools for lack of money. We own a small business that is holding it's own, but if more people made better money and there were better jobs available, we'd be doing gang busters. Basically there's a huge divide between the rich and the poor here, very little of the middle class left.

Here in Stone Mountain, GA? Five bedroom homes on large lots are starting at $600K. There is one that Tyler and I looked at that is "as is" 7 bedrooms and 6 baths for less than $500K but EVERYTHING needs to be done. The outside walls are up and studs are in place, but it will need drywall and EVERYTHING done.

I have never checked what our average income is here. Why does that matter?

booming. Houses are going under contract within a day or 2 getting full asking price. We sold our house that we bought in 2007 for $176k we sold it this past October for $265, granted we also paid 350k on a house that was about 250k back in 2007. The higher end houses are staying on the market for a while longer but anything under 400k are flying. I thought I was going to be screwed on the old house. We had an 5 year arm and rode out the low interest on it but at one point in time during the bubble no one would refinance us because the market was so low. It was a huge blessing to have the market skyrocket like it has. Im in Castle rock CO.

I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia. New construction is booming around here for million dollar homes as well as upscale carriage homes in the $500,000 range. There are a few homes in my nieghborhood for sale and they seem to take a few months to sell. I think a lot of people prefer new construction or if it is an older home (my home is 14 yo) it must show like a sample house.

I'm in Plainfield IL and we just might be up to our pre-construction 2002 price... yeah, it wasn't even that unreasonable honestly. We bought for $210K and zillow says that it is valued at $215K. I'd be so happy if the houses "under contract" in our subdivision really are selling for what one website says, it would mean that the house prices finally ARE going up.
It is encouraging because 4 yrs ago we wanted to refinance and weren't sure if we could get the appraisal to be over $172K which is what we needed to not have to pay PMI so we didn't bother. We'll have our house paid off in 21 yrs because we've paid extra every month at least.

i would say its still trying to recover. but on the verge of failure.

In my area, around 50K population/suburb/semi-rural area, houses are going for $50-$100 per square foot.

In bigger cities they're going for $75-$150 per square foot.

A friend of mine just bought a very beautiful house with a full basement, over 5000K square feet, on .9 acre, and they paid less than $300K. It's a house built in the early 90's, one owner, and the neighborhood is very nice. Next to homes with multiple floors and marble floor entryways and stuff, not a run of the mill neighborhood. This is a very nice house.

I'm in the city in NorthCenter, and it's fantastic here.
We're in a townhome community, and most of the units in our area are selling in a week or two of being listed.
We also have an older unit in Bucktown that we just listed last week, and it's had several showings. It's a couple of blocks from the 606, and our agent thought it would go quickly. Fingers crossed, but everything else around there - old and new - is under contract quickly.

We've stayed on an upward track the past six years or so, but nothing like the crazy explosion in prices pre-recession. I'm good with the gradual increases over time versus something that can't be sustained. Homes sell within a week, even if they need updating. We're in a good neighborhood with good schools, which means there will always be demand to some degree.