> Could you point me to these plenty cheap areas? I work remotely and may consider moving there.
They are all over. Head over to zillow/redfin (or the corresponding real estate site for your region) to see them. They won't be in the hip city center everyone wants, but choices are plentiful if one is willing to sacrifice a few wishlist items.
"Cheap" is of course relative the the region/country so actual numbers will vary. I'm in California so I can give a California-centric answer.
Browsing zillow I see over 30 condo (and a few house) units for less than 200K in the Sacramento areas (not exactly the boonies, it's the state capital).
In the Fresno area I see around 60 units (many houses) under 200K. Some friends moved to Fresno and they have a very nice place, for pennies on the dollar compared to San Francisco.
For those who don't want a big city, head north of Sacramento towards Oregon and tons of choices to work remote and buy a place cheap.
Mind you, I set the search limit to <200K, but that's extremely cheap by California standards. Even 25 years ago 200K was a cheap house in California. If you increase the search criteria to a more reasonable 300-400K there are way more choices and areas.
> If you dont change any of this, a new "affordable 1br apartment will probably cost 700K.
There are places in California where you can get a single family home, let alone a 1br apartment, for around $200k. Let’s not kid ourselves and substitute California for when we really mean LA or the Bay Area (places where people want to live, as opposed to susanville, where most people don’t want to live).
>Median home price in austin is nearly 600k and in California its 800k,
Compare Austin to somewhere near Freemont or compare TX to CA. Comparing Austin to all of CA is more than a little dishonest since there's a lot of rural nowheres in CA to drag down the average price but the comparison exludes all of Texas's rural nowheres.
>I've been looking to purchase some land just outside the Bay Area to build a small cabin...
You can do this in the Bay Area itself, though in general the closer you want to be to a supermarket, bank, etc. the more you'll pay. If you're west of Palo Alto, Los Altos, Mountain View, Cupertino and cross the 280, you encounter rural areas very quickly. And if you head far enough into the hills, prices begin to fall rapidly relative to flatland prices.
> Martinez homes aren't cheap either, even for the Bay Area - median sale price is almost $800K
I am frequently surprised at how little of a discount there is for living in toxic or extremely unpleasant places in an otherwise expensive area. Over the years I’ve seen many listings for homes nearby to desirable areas but adjacent to superfund sites, directly facing interstate highways or elevated subway tracks, downwind of sewage treatment plants etc, and consistently I feel like the price is nowhere remotely close to cheap enough to justify the downside.
No it's not. That's extremely high even by bay area standards. I'm sure you can find some new luxury apartments that go for that, but that's definitely not the norm.
And note that the US is more than just the bay area.
> most cities in the state are filled with suburbs full of homes now approaching $500k or more.
I still get Zillow emails from my time living in the state. $500k is in the rearview mirror. A lot of new developments in the "nicer" suburbs are hitting the $1MM mark. $500k buys you a new home in the far, far suburbs. $250k gets you a 800 sqft 40s-50s ranch in a "crestfallen" neighborhood (and the price history on Zillow will show it as being sold for $60k 10 years ago).
> $10m is probably best case scenario (after taxes, you can afford a pretty nice place in the Bay Area and have some left over)
That's an extreme overstatement - a 'pretty nice place' in the bay area would cost in the $1M range, maybe $2M if you have a pretty jaded view of 'pretty nice'.
> you just made a million bucks, which will be about 700k after taxes.
More like 500K - 39.6% federal and up to 12% CA state tax.
> while prices are rocketing up in Mountain View and it's getting hard to find a SFH for < $2.7M, even if it's on a tiny 6-8K ft^2 lot.
Well, it's hard to find a home on such a large lot period (size is relative). Newer SFH tend to be built on 2k-3k square feet lot sizes and go for $1.5M to $2M (Mountain View median is $1.8M actually).
Prices generally have been going down in Mountain View (https://www.zillow.com/mountain-view-ca/home-values/) and remain considerably below their mid 2018 peak. (And still remain a bad deal relative to renting, but that's another story)
Not true. I just bought a house in PQ and there's no WAY you can find anything below 650.
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