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Fun With Real Estate
mood: 
contemplative
contemplativeThese homes are mostly in the Chapel Hill/Cary, NC area. Cary was voted one of the top ten places to live in the U.S. by CNN/Money Magazine last year, so it's not like I've picked BumFuck, NC just to get cheaper house prices in order to show a staggering difference between the Northeast and the South.
We'll start with my favorite because it's one of the more expensive. It's in a new development called Lakestone Village. The website for that is: http://www.lakestonevillage.com/avhomes.h
This is my favorite home.
I'm in love with the shape and the porch. It's very "beachy" looking. It's expensive at $299K when you compare it to the rest of the houses below, and much smaller than the rest, but I just love it. It kills me with cuteness. I can see myself sitting on the porch with a book reading for hours. It's just a friendly looking house, don't you think?
On to the rest:
We'll start from lowest and work our way up.
For $175K, we have this little beauty with four bedrooms:
I liked this one because it's older & it says I'm a Southern home! Look at me and my southerness. I'm not entirely sure what Craig and I would do with 4 bedrooms (the flying squirrel is not getting her own room, no matter what he says), but for $175K, it's fabulous.
Next we have this little stunner for $182K and three bedrooms (I believe):
Again, there's the newness factor. It's not even complete yet. You don't have to worry about replace anything. Everything is new and shiny. There's that huge garage and I'm a sucker for bay windows, I admit it. This style and size seemed to be the standard at this price range as you can see from this other example pricing in at $189K. For me that's the one downfall, I'm not a fan of living in a community where every house looks the exact same. It's a little too Stepford for me.
and this for $204K
If you want to move on up a little more. If you need a little more square footage, we have this house for $219K
Again, basically the same as the others 4 bedrooms (apparently you Southerners like to have a lot of babies). It's pretty difficult to find houses that were not town houses that were under 3 bedrooms and not 40+ year old ranchers. Love the second floor balcony, and I believe this one had more actual property. That's another thing I get hung up on. I don't want to open my blinds and see into my neighbors living room. I don't need 30 acres, but one or two would be nice. I like personal space. With the newer homes personal space seems to not exist (see my favorite house above).
Upwards and onwards to $284K. This is if you really want to pop out the babies like there's no tomorrow.
I liked this one because it reminded me of my grandparents' old house in Roseland. It has that family-charm thing going on. I could see this house in a movie. Doesn't it have that "Father of the Bride" feel to it? Way too big for my purposes, but this house is roughly going for the same price as my mother's three bedroom townhouse in New Jersey. I think she's at $280K right now, just to give you some idea of how NJ home buyers are being hosed.
Now this is where I saw my cute little dream house above so I kind of meandered off my track of finding more homes and set about emailing Craig to see if we could actually look at that house in February when I come visit. To make up for it, I decided to post a house that was on the more expensive side.
For $519,000 this could be yours:
It's big and new and lovely, I'm guessing it's in a super exclusive community for that price. Again, I'm a sucker for porches, but as you can see from the houses above, you can easily find something in the under $250K price range of the same size and around the same age.
And just because who doesn't love looking at million dollar homes, some of the monsters that I found:
For a spare $1.5 Million this little shack could be yours (that's just over $7K a month for mortage, if you're so inclined):
The features are awesome. The kitchens in the million dollar houses always kill me. One of these had an all cherrywood walk-in closet the size of our apartment. I'd have no problem filling that bad boy up (although with that mortage payment, I just might actually have a problem filling it up-I'd be broke!)
Falling in next at a mere $2.2 Million is this wonder. I actually thought it was condos when I looked at the thumbnail. Nope, that's all one house. Insane.
And finally coming in at $2.5 Million (that's $16,000 a month) is this whooper with a pond and Japanese footbridge in the back. It's 4 bedrooms, which surprised me. I thought it would be like 6:
Anyway, that's my little tour of real estate in North Carolina. From the very affordable to the "are you out of your freakin' mind?!" price range.
As you can see there's a ton of new construction going on. I believe I had over 1,000 listings in the town I chose with a price range of $150K-$400K with the vast majority of the houses being built between 2005-2007. This leads to a lot of cookie-cutter style houses as you can see.
Interestingly enough, I was listen to the radio on the way to work last week, and according to Van Lines (the moving company) 66% of all moves that happened in 2006 were moves out of New Jersey with North Carolina being the #1 place the people leaving the state moved to. I'm not sure what this will do to real estate prices or the road rage!
As of now, I know of three different families that have moved to NC. NJ people really are going there in droves.
What really depresses me is that according to salary.com, I would need to make nearly $70,000 living in Boston, Providence or New Haven (a little lower in New Haven) to have the same standard of living as I have in Philadelphia. Considering that grad schools give you about $15,000, I'm going to be living in a cardboard box if I get into the schools in those cities. I didn't think the difference would be so high. I thought a city is a city. And I don't even want to think about living in LA.
Yeah, it really does seem like people are moving down there in droves. I didn't know it was so high until I heard that on the radio. I don't believe I actually know anyone our age that has moved down there recently. A bunch of my older family members are down in Wilmington, but that's just as expensive as NJ because it's so popular.
I don't know how young couples are supposed to do it. I can't even imagine trying to buy something in NJ.
LOL, if you want me to make you feel better, I'll show you pictures of what $300K buys in Los Angeles. It'll make Florida seem like a bargain!
N.
E.
Where.
Ain't happnin.
Even with Craig's salary (his starting salary should pretty much remain standard no matter what part of the country we're in so long as we're in an urban-ish area), we'd have a higher standard of living in NC than we would in Boston or New Haven.
I love CT though. I've always wanted to live there because that's where all of my favorite ice skaters lived. I pictured us being ice skating Connecticut dwellers.
Of course, you'd be close to NYC and Boston, and could shop there. So maybe it wouldn't be so bad in that regard.
Speaking of ice skating and CT, my new house is pretty close to the rink Oksana Baiul practice(s/d) at. I think she helped have it built or something?
So Oksana is no longer at the Oksana Rink? At least I know I can drive around town without having to worry about...you know.
If you have a day where you don't have to do too much, you should hang out at the ISCC rink & watch the senior level skaters. I believe they're still open sessions where anyone can watch. We did that one time, and saw a whole bunch of famous people practicing.
ISCC used to have fabulous skating shows. They don't have a lot of seats, so no matter where your seat was, you were right on the ice. We went up there a few times because the shows were so great, but that stopped after the feud. We always stayed at the Simsbury Inn, it was so cute.