March 13, 2005

Pop Goes the Real Estate $500,000 Challenge

YOU HAVE HALF A MILLION, $500,000, Five-Hundred-Thousand-Dollars cash in hand to buy your home.

Do you:
A. Buy a house outright for $499,000 in the red hot dead center of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California?
B: Buy two thirds of a house for $740,000 in the fabulous and sophisticated community of Redwood City, California?
C. Buy a house outright somewhere on the fringes of Ozark, Missouri?

Whichever house you choose, you will have to live in it for at least five years. Made up your mind? Good. Click "Continued" and see how you'll do.




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Not really surprising at all, is it?

Posted by Vanderleun at March 13, 2005 12:09 AM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Of course the difference is the value of the dirt. When I lived in Los Altos there were dirt lots which were more valuable than lots with houses, because it cost money to demo existing structures before rebuilding :)

Posted by: Ole Eichhorn at March 13, 2006 12:56 AM

At least the Redwood City house has three bedrooms.

Of course, at 950 sq ft, one of them undoubtedly doubles as the living room.

Posted by: Chris of Dangerous Logic at March 13, 2006 9:04 AM

I swear that I cannot resist the temptation to think of California earthquackes as a very good thing.

Posted by: mbowen at March 13, 2006 9:48 AM

If I had $500,000 to work with, I could pay off the mortgage on my North Carolina house, my home equity line of credit, my car loans, my credit cards, and every other debt I have, and still have half the money left over for my children's college education.

Move to California? Not if you offered me $5 million.

Posted by: Pat at March 13, 2006 10:13 AM

I live in SF. My first thought when I saw this post was "You can by a house for $499,000 in Palo Alto?"

Posted by: Janet C at March 13, 2006 11:31 AM

I live in Missouri, and my first thought is that price on the Ozark house is a little high. It must be right outside Branson because you can certainly get a house that big on a lot more land in most of Missouri. We just have tornados instead of earthquakes. I'm in the process of putting the third roof in seven years on my house -- I'm thinking of asking the roofers for a buy three get one free deal next time.

The Midwest gets on my nerves some times (everybody is so freakin' NICE all the time), but I have to admit, I'd never be able to afford my lifestyle back East.

Posted by: Rita Rouvalis at March 13, 2006 6:49 PM