Incredibly, my parents bought a 3/2 house nowhere special in 1987, and their monthly payment was $773. It wouldn't surprise me if there at people on this thread who are paying $773/month today for a 3/2 house somewhere???
That's in the ballpark of my PI payment on a 2/1 in a less affluent area of Sacramento. Borrowed about $167k on a 30 year fixed at 3.75%. Could easily see that on a 3/2 in a LCOL area.
The PI on my current house is around there. With taxes, insurance, and PMI, I'm only at $1,041/month.
A few houses ago (long story), my PITI was sub $700 month. Purchased in 2013. Purchase price was $88,000. Yearly taxes were sub $1k. Insurance was $600/yr or so. It was a foreclosure but was in good shape. We put around $5,000 into remodeling it, but most of that was our preferences, not necessity. It was 1,600 sq ft, 3 beds, 2.5 baths and even had a small office space. Two car attached garage.
We sold it a few years later for $125,000 or so. Probably worth $135,000 today. Man I miss that house. Probably the dumbest financial mistake I've made in the last decade or so.
Long story short - RE is still cheap in my area. In exchange, you have a bunch of $15/hr jobs. If you can find lucrative employment or profitable self-employmenr, you can really speed up the FI race.
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This sounds a lot like our second home location. You can definitely find 3/2's in that price range still. But you aren't going to be finding a 6 figure job, locally. Only if you can work remotely would it be a great option. Even $15/hr is probably a bit rich for that area. We struggle with the idea of moving our business there sometimes just to take advantage of the super LCOL and even cheaper workforce, which would massively accelerate our savings.