Originally Posted by
Shawn Pixley
Dan, I feel for you. I have followed the other thread without commenting. I'd like to suggest some things.
The question you may need to ask is, "how scarce is what I would like relative to the general market?" If the house and property that you are looking for are common, you have a reasonable chance of finding one for a reasonable price. If, on the other hand, you are are looking for a property that is a fraction of 1% of the general market, you will be looking forever and still not finding it at a reasonable price.
While at the end of the day you'll write one check for a house and the land it sits on, when shopping for houses knowing the fundamentals of land valuation can help you to determine whether what you are looking for is viable or not. For instance, in my neighborhood a 3,500 square foot lot goes for $750 without a building. (No, I didn't pay near that). For several of the first generation houses from the sixties, the houses are actually liability relative to the land value (the 1000 sf house and land going for less than $750K. If I wanted any property of an acre or more in size, I would need to move 20 miles further away from where I live (I am already 20 miles from my employer).
Everything in real estate is about location and timing. Property in rural Iowa has a very different value than land in Southern California. Cheap land in Iowa doesn't help me much. An just because I would like a 4,000 sf house on the beach in Malibu for under a million dollars, doesn't mean I could ever find it. When I am looking for land / buildings for my job, I have found that a comprehensive understanding of the market (commercial real estate for my job) can help you detemine whether what you are looking for is viable in the area you are considering.
We looked for 3 years to find the house we are in now. It was very frustrating. We toured probably 100 homes before getting this one. Was the house perfect? No. But is satisfied enough of the criteria that we bought it. A week doesn't go by without someone encouraging us to sell our house and move to a bigger, more expensive one. I am not interested in that at all.
Good luck in the search. I am pulling for you.