Of that 76, quite a few listings are "We will build this home on the land you provide and develop". That home price is $170k+... plus land, plus city connections / development, plus landscaping, plus appliances, etc.
I would have thought Zillow would filter out the "homes" that are just ads by contractors.
SwordGuy, you make an excellent argument to people to look around to buy less home, and save a lot of money by doing so. Example, you second Bremerton "house" is actually a 25 year old mobile home. What's wrong with saving money by living in an older mobile home that is fixed up nicely?
I think pulling from Zillow and insisting that these homes are available is a bit delusional, and your valid points are getting knocked down because of that.
There absolutely are incorrectly coded items on Zillow. No contest. Gobs of them.
I'm not insisting that **ALL** the listings on Zillow are worthwhile. No one should walk away from this discussion believing that Zillow is 100% accurate.
It is **more** accurate for sold data than it is on "for sale" data. So, let's make some assumptions on the data quality and what that means.
Please note that I'm discussing actual transfers of property, not offers for sale in the next section. It's an important distinction.
I posted a link for a search for 1+ bedroom, 1+ bathroom living quarters that were sold in the last year, from $50k to $200k in price.
Over 1800 showed up as having been sold.
Let's suppose that Zillow's data quality on those sales and that property is inaccurate on the order of 50%.
That's right, we're assuming that 50% of the items in that search criteria don't really qualify.
So, instead of over 1800 qualified properties sold in the last year, that would get us down to 900.
You only need one home to live in. Those looking for a home in the Seattle area could have been one of those 900 buyers.
Let's assume the data is 75% inaccurate. Now we're down to only 450 qualifying properties that were sold in the last year.
Again, you only need one home to live in. You'll have to work harder or be a mite luckier than for 900, but 450 buyers did it. Why not one of us?
Now let's talk about the "for sale" portion. There are inaccuracies there, too.
I've slogged thru hundreds of properties online in my area and realized that a goodly number of them are miscoded and aren't of interest. Some of them look good (or at least plausible) online so I go look at them in person. I've walked away from scores of properties that either didn't measure up to the online description or the online description was too useless to be sure one way or the other.
And yet I've still bought 9 distressed homes for below market value. It was work to find them. Two of them I was particularly interested in took several years each. I found more than 9 that would be suitable, but sometimes I got outbid, sometimes I didn't have the money to buy all I found.
There are documented real estate searching techniques that real estate investors use to find properties to at below market. Will they work for every single person in every single market at every single point in time? HELL NO!
The one thing I can absolutely guarantee is that if you don't try using them they won't work for you.
The Real Estate and Landlording sub-forum has a sticky-thread with books and websites to read. Your local library will probably have some of them.
With time and persistence, and possibly a touch of luck, folks might find much more affordable living quarters. There will be trade-offs that will be fine for some and not for others. Okey-dokey.
I'll close with an observation on the nature of this discussion. The objections to even trying this bear a whole lot of resemblance to those folks who refuse to try FIRE principles. Think about it.
Maybe someone is right about their specific real estate market. Maybe it won't work in (fill in the blank real estate market name here) at (fill in the time period here). Could be. Then again, it might.
For someone motivated enough by the chance to save tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, I say it's worth a try. You might look at hundreds of properties online and scores in person before you find a property that's right for you -- and you still might be outbid. Then again, you might not be outbid and save a bundle.
If nothing else, it might save you a bit on one of those expensive properties. After you look at a four dozen houses that need work you start to learn what to look for and what it would cost to fix it. That's useful knowledge!
That knowledge might also help a friend or family member in a more suitable market save a bundle. That's good too.