Quote Originally Posted by KB3LAZ View Post
Hum..If you do, does that mean the housing costs are uber cheap? Want a new neighbor? Looks like a nice area.
I wouldn't say the housing costs are cheap. I live in an area where there are a lot of upscale homes.

There's a housing development down the road that was built about 2-3 years after we moved to the area. The homes there started at $600,000. The last few sold fetched almost $1M. They have 2 HVAC systems in them because they have something on the order of 5,000+ sq. ft. They look impressive, but the lots aren't very big and the house takes up most of the space. Some of the homes have a nice view of the large shopping mall next door.

At least 2 of the homes on my street went for close to $400,000. They are, however, fairly new. Both are probably less than 15 years old and big. My guess is something on the order of 4,000 sq. ft., maybe a bit more. They are also 2-story homes. Our place is barely 2,000 sq. ft. and is your typical ranch style house.

When we bought the current place, we got it under market value. I believe we paid $215K. We also bought it from the original owner, who happened to be an 80+ year old ham who was looking to unload it fairly quickly. It needed work (still does in some places), the carpets were old, windows needed replacing, etc. There's no central AC system and probably won't be one anytime soon, since the last estimate came in at $14K. At some point, we'll probably replace the electrical panel and do a bit of rewiring. We took out a 15 year mortgage that has a little over 5 years left to go. Once that's done, then we'll get into some of the other stuff we want to do to the place.

Unlike a lot of people these days, we didn't buy the place as an investment. We plan to live here until we die. We don't care if it's not "perfect" or "new". I treat a house as a home to be lived in, not a financial tool. IMHO, too many people treat their houses as the latter. That's probably one of the reasons that so many people have mortgages that are now underwater.

I convinced the XYL to buy the place not for its value, but for the space it provides me to put up antennas. There are no restrictions here, other than whatever the county has in place. If I wanted to put up a tower, I could. Unfortunately, I don't have that kind of money and I can't get it pass the XYL, anyway.