would you.....

would you buy a small, so-so looking house in a nicer town or a beautiful excellent condition house in a regular town?

(the small, so-so house in the nicer town is still 20k more than the beautiful excellent condition house in the regular town)

Re: would you.....

I guess the small so-so house in a better town.
Is the house small or the property small? you can always expand if the property is bigger.

Besides they say Location location location.
The house in the better area will always be worth more. Plus if you are planning to have children and send them to public school its probably a better school district.

Re: would you.....

Definitely the smaller home!

Real estate is all about LOCATION!!

For example, there is a house in my town that has been for sale since June. IT's a gorgeous Victorian... 4 bedrooms, MB and en suite with jacuzzi tub, formal dining room, formal LV, den with fireplace, nice kitchen, full finished basement, wonderful wrap around porch. All recently redone. Honestly, it should have sold for asking price the first day of the Open House. Why not? It's one block away from the train station and across the street from a cementary!!!

My RE agent told me of a house he listed at $669 all redone. He showed it to me just to compare to the house I'm buying. The first person to walk in offered them asking price, were pre-approved, etc. Personally, I thought the rooms were too small and it had no CAC for that price. Why did it sell? Yes, all new but on a cul-de-sac.

You can change a house, gut it, build up, out, whatever but you can't change the location!!

Re: would you.....

so-so house in a better town - you can always make it bigger and better when you can afford to!

Re: would you.....

ya know i am going through the same thing right now...

If i stay in the town i am in...i will get that so so house...But good area..

But the more of these houses i go to...i just can't.

Not only are the houses so so but they pretty much have to be gutted...

I just think that is too much...

Too spend the prices of the good town and then have to gut the house....well it would be tooo far in the future for me to be living in a house i am happy with.

I am looking in a more up and comming area that has A LOT of potential...In fact it is turning over as we speak....so i am quite happy with our decision

Re: would you.....

.... uh, just learned that the so-so house has an apartment, so it has lots of potential!... but it really doesn't look very appeasing...
...oy!

Re: would you.....

I guess it would also depend where the so-so house was located in the great town.
In our situation, we wanted to live in Kings Park. The so-so houses in that town in our $$$ range were either next to gas stations or on deadly street corners. In that case, the so-so house in the great town is not worth it. We ended up buying in a less-great town, but one that I think is up and coming... and most importantly we are on a nice quiet street in a friendly neighborhood.. a place where I would feel comfortable raising a child vs. living next to a gas station and never letting my kids outside of the house.

Re: would you.....

We just bought a house in a great neighborhood that needs to be updated.

We planned to just paint and do the floors before we moved in, but somehow now we are in the middle of gutting it!!! We extended our lease in our apt for a month while we do the work. We couldn't be happier!! We LOVE our block!!!

Re: would you.....

Then I would stick with the so-so house. that extra income from the apt. will allow you to renovate faster and/or add extra principle to your mortgage payments so you can pay off your mortgage faster and save thousands of thousands of dollars.

Re: would you.....

We bought a SMALL house on about .21 -.22 (how do I not know this?) acre in East Northport, on a nice block, in a really nice section. It needs work, but mostly cosmetic. Down the road, we will make it bigger.

For us, it was a challenge to find a house that was affordable in a good area. I think we were very lucky - had we not found this house we would have looked in places with lesser school districts, which seemed to be what made the prices lower.