So I tried to find a home in Kansas

[mikec4193]

Hi Rat Rod Family

I took a month and went out to North East Kansas (Topeka area) to try and find a small house with a big shop to purchase...I was looking for something less than hour from the son and his family (they are in Lawrence).

There was nothing available that I could afford. I have saved up over 200k for this and to my surprise the housing market in that area is dried up.

This would be seasonal place to go when the upstate NY winters get cold...I even had room mate lined up (my nephew) who moved there last August in hopes I would find something for us to share.


I put a bid in on one place for $5k over list price and got over bid and it was a 2 bedroom on a slab with one bathroom...and it needed a ton of work...smelled like dirty wet animals too inside...

Any else out there in Rat Rod land looking at real estate and wondering what the heck is going on?

MikeC

 

[Old Iron]

Not lookin for a place but 3 years ago built a new house. Shortly after that the market went stupid crazy.
We kept seeing places around us going for $500,000 or more.

 

[bob w]

Most of the houses around me start at $650,000. (Not mine though.) Until a year ago they lasted a day or two on the market. Prices have come down a little but nobody is selling.

My brother lives in Eudora, KS. Nice country around there. Close to Lawrence.

 

[redidbull]

In CT as Covid raged people were fleeing the big cities and the prices were crazy. Most went for more than asking for months. We have been looking in places within 2 to 3 hours from us and there is pretty much nothing worth the ask. Jim

 

[05snopro440]

We bought ours for 10K under asking the first day it was listed, during the Covid acreage craze. It's worth more now but prices are slowly returning to earth. We bought ours knowing we would want it to be our lifelong home so we were less worried about the exact dollar value, but we got good value.

I couldn't imagine a small place with a shop for $200K-ish. Acreages where we are go from High 500's and up. There's a place down the road from us, two big shops and an average house on 92 acres of "future development land" (low land with a creek that floods every spring) for $4.4M.

 

[smallfoot]

Ya'll think it's high, you should see what it's going for down here.
I've been on this place which is 2 lots with 13 acres total since 1990s and last year I managed to get the 12 acres next door. I don't care what it's value is at the moment because it's like mentioned before, it's my forever place. I'll leave it to my heirs to make their mint if they choose.

 

[forbigpicture]

Ya'll think it's high, you should see what it's going for down here.

Yeah smalls I think I missed the boat to buy something down there the year I came and visited with you...even then I thought it was high, now everything I looked at then is at least double ....

 

[offroadrolls]

Boy do I have a story. We bought our little piece of paradise on 10 acres in 1995 for 260k. Over the years I've remodeled every room in the place as well as doing an addition and a basement apartment. We just listed it in December for 2.8m. (Steamboat's the next Aspen or so they say) If things go as planned, after 29 Winters, as much as I love to ski, I won't be here next Winter, we're cashing out! We just bought a place in AZ on 20 acres for 1/3 the money.

 

[smallfoot]

^^^[cl[cl[cl^^^

 

[05snopro440]

Boy do I have a story. We bought our little piece of paradise on 10 acres in 1995 for 260k. Over the years I've remodeled every room in the place as well as doing an addition and a basement apartment. We just listed it in December for 2.8m. (Steamboat's the next Aspen or so they say) If things go as planned, after 29 Winters, as much as I love to ski, I won't be here next Winter, we're cashing out! We just bought a place in AZ on 20 acres for 1/3 the money.

I hope that works out for you!

 

[lazarat]

The housing market is out of control, tricky.

in 2014, our previous home, which was once a working class area, exploded in demand because it became...whats the word that begins with G....oh yes! "Trendy". (look up Wilton Manors Fl, and you will get the idea)

At the same time, when we cashed out and sold, and because inventory was still so high with a lot of foreclosures in the little rural town we decided to move to, we did well with our historic fixer upper little bungalow on one third acre, now worth over 4 times what we invested.


...and I am busy, when not working on a jalopy, to keep the curb appeal.

I am throwing some good luck your way...
.
.

 

[offroadrolls]

I hope that works out for you!

Thanks Snopro, me too. It's like hitting the lottery without having a clue.

 

[Tripper]

I'm an old retired realtor & have seen prices climb like krazy over the years. Land prices have tripled to quadrupled here in Central Texas over the last 10 years! We moved from the big city to the boonies 10 years ago & wish we had done it 10 years before that!

BoB

 

[05snopro440]

We're 2 miles out of an urban centre with a population of about 72K, the entire county including the urban centre is about 100K people. The opposite side of the urban centre is adjacent to the big city (1M people), about 10 minutes away. We were told that the value of bare land in our subdivision is about 80% of the price we paid for our property, and with proximity to everything it will just keep going up. We're fortunate that where we are there can't really be further development, it's all acreages already. I'm curious to see how things change in the next 30 years all around us, though.