In Palo Alto, CA, $200,000 buys the dog house in the back yard.
Hmm... Maybe I should sell out & head to Tennessee...
(Not quite yet, but maybe in a few years)
Starts out showing austin @ 1,341-square feet for 200k.
then, devil in the details, they list Round Rock-Austin.
Round Rock is an affluent suburb of Austin.
Median household income Round Rock: $69,892
Median household income Austin: $42,689
(approximates - data is from wiki)
so, 200k will buy a ahouse with less sq. ft in Round Rock vs. Austin...go figure.
For $200,000 you could probably buy a city block in Detroit, Gary, IN, south side of Chicago...etc.
We are headed to Dallas area.
2 more years and adios Illinois!
L
Zillow puts my 960 square foot, on 1/10 acre, 85 year old house in Northern California at $600,000.
Thank God for Prop 13 and having lived here 49 years, my property taxes won’t even buy dinner at a three star joint around here.
Here, north of lib Austin, a half million gets you about 1200 sq ft. Our CA imports have never met a tax they didn’t love. Property tax has gone up 10% every year for the past 25 years.
You can buy whole neighborhoods in Detroit for 200k.
4100 sq ft here in north OKC, cost - $240K. Property taxes $3500/yr. Wooded .75 acre lot. We totally remodeled it and it is a beautiful house. I laugh at my east and west coast coworkers that couldn’t buy a 600 sq ft apartment for $240K.
Here is North Florida $250,000 will purchase a 3,071 square foot brick home on 6.72 acres, with four bedrooms, two kitchens, three baths, a great room, and two wells.
You’d be extremely lucky to get that much space in Austin for just 200k.
Maybe 300k.
Maybe.
Phoenix Area: My daughter bought a new build 1400 sq ft home on a small but not ridiculously small lot for about $210,000. She’s WAY OUT in the southeast valley, has a 50 minute or more commute. In order to get a new home in her price range, she couldn’t live in the central part of the Phoenix valley.
It’s a very basic home, has a “great room” instead of a dining room or family/TV room, has a kitchen table nook, two bathrooms and three bedrooms, two car garage, small back patio, base level carpet and floor tile. A few little extras: dual pane windows, extra insulation, high efficiency heat pump, no fireplace, basic granite kitchen counter tops.
Mr. Roo Roo and I live in south Tempe, a more expensive part of Tempe to live in. We’re also located in an area which has the best public school systems in the state. We have 2000 square feet a decent-sized lot, 3 bedrooms, two baths, kitchen nook and formal dining room, large living room and large TV room, fireplace, very nice landscaping, two car garage. We re-did and upgraded the inside of the house with high end cherry cupboards, premium granite, premium fixtures and travertine tile throughout the house and new high end kitchen appliances. A realtor told us our house would sell for between $360k to $370 k.
What I like most about our house is..........it’s been PAID OFF since 2000, WHEE!!!
My daughter just bought 2500 square feet in a very low crime, upper middle class suburb of Fort Worth. $250,000. She and her husband are a bit green though. They probably could have gotten it for a few thousand less,..though it is in a highly desirable location, so maybe not.
COMMENT I POSTED AT TEXAS STATE MONTHLY
Fascinating article. I am a California appraiser who is very familiar with Texas property values and tax rates. May I suggest there is an intervening variable or factor between house size and value per $200,000 priced home. That is property tax rates. This is called Tax Capitalization, which means the higher the property tax rate, the lower the property’s expected market value; and conversely the lower the property tax rate, the higher the expected market value.
California has a typical 1% base property tax rate; Texas has a 2% base rate (plus special district assessments). So the same priced home in a similar neighborhood as in California would sell for less; and vice versa, a similar size home in California home would sell for higher.
Below I have used the online property tax calculator from SmartAsset.com to find the property tax rate and actual-estimated annual property tax in large cities in Texas and California.
El Paso and San Antonio have the lowest property tax rate per $200,000 home and this translates into larger homes (3,334 and 3,249 sq. ft.) than in Fort Worth, Houston, Dallas and Austin (2,199, 2,093 and 1,824 and 1,341 sq. ft. accordingly).
There is no data shown at the SmartAsset.com website for tax rate per home size for California. So I used the Zillow.com website to take a sample of $200,000 priced homes in San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego, to estimate how much floor space $200,000 can buy. There were only 3 homes in San Francisco that sold for $200,000 (although estimated value was $1 to $2 million). There were only 19 homes that sold for $200,000 in San Jose. In Los Angeles and San Diego i calculated the average home size for a $200,000 home from a sample of 50 home sales in each city.
Oddly, the average home sizes for a $200,000 hoe in San Francisco (1,633 sq. ft.) and San Jose (1,526 sq. ft.) were higher than $200,000 homes in LA (1,184 sq. ft.) and San Diego (933 sq. ft.). This can only be explained because San Francisco and San Jose have lower property tax rates ($0.84 to $1.04 per sf) than LA ($1.34) and San Diego ($1.67 per sq. ft).
So tax capitalization (the conversion of higher or lower property taxes into a higher or lower value) does influence the size of home that one can purchase both when comparing homes inside Texas and California and comparing Texas with California.
By the way, El Paso and San Antonio have the lower property taxes per sq. ft. of house size and thus the larger home size for $200,000 priced homes.
TEXAS (Arrayed from lowest to highest property tax per sq. ft. for $200,000 home)
El Paso – Travis County 1.973% $3,946 (3,334 sq.ft.) Tax: $1.18 per sq. ft.
San Antonio – Bexar County 2.097% $4,194 (3,249 sq. ft.) tax: $1.29 per sq. ft.
Fort Worth – Tarrant County 2.321% - $4,642 (2,199 sq. ft.) Tax: $2.11 per sq. ft.
Houston – Harris County 2.259% $4,518 (2,093 sq. ft.) Tax: $2.16 per sq. ft.
Dallas – Dallas County 2.173% $4,346 (1,824 sq. ft.) Tax: $2.38 per sq. ft.
Austin – Travis County 1.973% $3,946 (1,341 sq. ft.) Tax: $2.94 per sq. ft.
CALIFORNIA – Arrayed from lowest to highest property tax per sq. ft. for $200,000 home)
San Francisco - SF County – 0.683% $1,366 (260 sq. ft.) (1,633 sq. ft. avg. 412 sf std. dev. 3 home sample) Tax: $0.84 per sq. ft.
San Jose – Santa Clara Co. – 0.794% $1,588 (376 sq.ft.) (1,526 sq. ft. avg. 350 sf std. dev., 19 home sample) Tax: $1.04 per sq. ft.
Los Angeles – LA County 0.793% $1,586 (501 sq.ft.) (1,184 sq. ft. avg. 735 sf std. dev. 50 home sample) Tax: $1.34 per sq. ft.
San Diego – SD County – 0.781% $1,562 (496 sq.ft.) (933. sq. ft. avg. 373 sf std. dev. 50 home sample) Tax: $1.67 per sq. ft.
Data Source: https://smartasset.com/taxe...