After four and a half years of living in a tiny apartment, I’m ready to get out of here and into a house of some kind. My wife and I have started searching for a home with lots of land and a huge structure to store the 19 or 21 vehicles I have. After some searching, I think I found some budget gearhead heaven, and one property is basically a personal airport complete with a home, two-car garage, hangar, and a landing strip!
As some of you have already noticed, I’m officially married! Sheryl and I tied the knot on October 1 inside of the Experimental Aircraft Association Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. In planning our wedding, we found that EAA was far cheaper than more traditional venues. For the price of $5,000, we rented an entire museum filled with aviation history.
Our guests got to walk around and learn about planes while having some cold snacks. You’ll definitely hear about this venue when the real pictures come in, but if you’re looking for an inexpensive, vehicle-themed wedding venue, consider a museum.
Now that we got that huge event in the books, Sheryl and I are now looking to move out and spread our wings. There’s nothing wrong with my apartment; my rent has gone up just $100 over all of this time, which is rare in my area. It even has semi-modern appliances and enough space to store car and motorcycle parts.
Heck, there’s a whole Honda Spree in my living room!
But things started feeling cramped when Sheryl moved in during 2020. Somehow, it seems like our space got smaller, even though it realistically didn’t. And when I moved in, I had just three cars and two motorcycles. Now I rent out a bunch of spaces in Illinois and one in Wisconsin. So, we’ve definitely grown out of this place. Thankfully, Sheryl and I will soon be in the market for a house, and we’ve started looking at what’s out there.
Amusingly, Sheryl and I have two vastly different desires. I want a place that could conceivably store most of my vehicles, and I’d love for that place to be somewhat secluded, away from a homeowners association. My vision for this is essentially a country home with a massive pole barn. Meanwhile, Sheryl would like a place with a better kitchen than the one we currently have. And she’d like to have a home office, as well as a room just for our little conures.
Thus far, searching for this type of property has been quite fun. As it turns out, there are tons of properties for sale offering outbuildings and extra garages, perfect for storing cars. Some of these properties are quite incredible. Check out this one in East Peoria, Illinois.
It comes with a pond and an artsy home, plus a pole barn that would fit my RTS bus with room to spare. I’d love to sit on the park benches next to the pond and watch the sunset. And for a gearhead, this place is just a lift, a heater, and some shop air away from being perfect. And it’s $324,900, which could be worse! But we can do better.
At some point, my house search gained “airport” as a search term. Now, this was done mainly as a joke, but to my surprise, you can buy entire airports. Most of these things cost in the millions, but there are a few private properties out there with their own landing strips. Here is where we’re finding car nirvana, a carvana, if you will.
Located in Jackson, Michigan about an hour outside of Detroit, sits one awesome property. The listing on Trade-A-Plane starts off by saying that you get a whopping 28 acres. And on that property, you get a four bedroom house with three bathrooms. The house is over 50 years old, and it definitely shows its age. The kitchen could use some updates, as could the exterior.
But this hits the spot for Sheryl. There’s a bedroom for the birds, a bedroom for us, a bedroom for her office, and a bigger kitchen than what we have now.
That’s nice enough, but this property is absolutely perfect for vehicles. First, as aerial views show, the house has a very long drive and tons of land obscured by trees. Not only do you have loads of space for cars, but you can wrench without neighbors staring you down.
Attached to the home is a two-door “oversized” garage. It’s unclear how large that garage is, but it’s at least two cars, probably more. Located behind the house is something special. Built at some point in this house’s past is a 40-foot by 40-foot hangar. That was built to store a plane, which would take off from the property’s own private air strip.
Oh yes, this property comes with a 2,100-foot grass runway. So not only do you have plenty of space for cars, but you have your own personal airport! The seller says that high performance aircraft have used this strip before. I bet it would be perfect for a cool little plane like a Cessna 172. And that’s not all. Since we’re talking about 28 acres here, there’s a wooded area that apparently can be used for hunting and it comes with some frontage on a nearby river.
If you’re not into flying, I see another opportunity for this place. You could probably set up your own personal dirt track or backyard mud pit. Vehicle tracks in satellite photos seem to suggest that may be what this place has been used for in recent times.
Perhaps the biggest surprise to me is that you get all of this for $489,900. Sure, you have to live in cold, rusty Michigan, but there’s so much room for activities! And you’re right by Detroit, where you’ll see all kinds of awesome cars in the summer. If it weren’t for the fact that we’re still waiting a little bit on the money, I’d be telling Sheryl to light up the seller’s phone.
Alternatively, maybe aviation isn’t your thing? There’s another property that’s been pulling on my heart strings. Located in Annawan, Illinois is a property with an unexpected feature. The house is fine, with three bedrooms and a single bath. It would definitely need updates as it doesn’t even have a dishwasher, but the home would definitely work for our needs.
This one is gearhead nirvana, but for different reasons. Walk outside and you’ll spot three outbuildings. The sizes of these buildings isn’t noted. Sadly, we don’t get a peek inside of anything but the home, too. But the outbuildings are all pretty big with large doors. And this property is perhaps even better than the last because it’s even further from civilization.
One of those outbuildings is noted to be a former car body shop and other a garage. Alright, so there’s your workshop right there, plus additional car storage.
But here’s the kicker, apparently you get a 20-unit storage complex with the purchase. Each unit measures in at 10 feet by 20 feet. The seller is renting the units out for income, which is pretty neat. But what I see here is 20 extra covered parking spaces on top of the three other outbuildings. Or you could modify the complex and have yourself a huge warehouse.
Unless you become Ron Dauzet, you’ll never run out of car space! And you get all of it for $355,000.
Sheryl says that she wants to start collecting forgotten front-wheel-drive cars from General Motors. So we definitely want a lot of space. This is another place that I wish we could get right now before someone else does.
I’m really excited for the coming future. Hopefully, I’ll soon be out of this apartment and away from people who like to accuse me of stealing my own cars or of running an illegal car dealership. No, I just have a lot of crapboxes and nowhere to put them! But with an airport or a whole storage complex in our hands, we can have everything under one roof.
Do you know of any cool gearhead properties that won’t require millions of dollars and a kidney? I want to know!
I live in Jackson, Michigan (when I am back in the states, I work overseas and haven’t been back in years) and it’s not a bad place. They close down all the streets downtown a couple times of year for huge car shows with bands, there is a hot air balloon festival every year, it hosts a decent fair, it’s not far from Michigan International Speedway and it’s nicely placed between Ann Arbor and Lansing. There’s quite a bit of history, awesome parks and its relatively quiet place to live. Don’t let the rust and cold drive you away, its nice most of the year.
An image of one of those driveways brought back bad memories of one place we lived. Gravel driveways are where small hardware bits go to die and never be found. Drop just about anything smaller than a wrench and it will vanish without a trace.
Hi, Mercedes. Enjoying all this real estate advice? Sure you are. Now ask us how often we change our oil and what brand we use. Good luck and enjoy your adventures.
Congrats again on the wedding – what a great place to have that event! The fact that someone can rent out the EAA museum for something like that at a reasonable price is by far the most interesting thing I’ve learned today.
It’s been a long time dream of mine to have a house with its own airstrip. The first time I ever saw something like that I was golfing and thought I had hit my ball onto the wrong fairway after an errant drive. Something seemed “off” when I walked out onto the grass strip to try and hit it back to where I was supposed to be. Then I turned around and saw a modest house and fairly large double-hanger. Such a cool setup! Of course, first I need to get the pilot’s license, then an airplane or two, so… there are a few details to work out.
If it’s too difficult to make a go of the airstrip, having a 20-car extra garage would also be sweet. I currently own 3 investment properties. While they’re a huge hassle sometimes, I don’t rent out the garages on the properties and having those few extra storage stalls is really nice.
Are you sure you want to move to Trumpland anyway? The burgeoning war against LGBTQ+ folks by the right is scary as hell. I have a transgender kid and I’m seriously spooked by the current lunacy.
Then again, I’m pretty sure you don’t take no shit from yahoos like that. 🙂
get the one with the airstrip and rent out the strip for people who don’t want to land at other airports for reasons best left unasked
I bought my home earlier this year under a lot of these same specifics. Eventually one (1) ideal example came up and I had to jump and overextend to get it, but I got it. Looks better and better all the time the way interest rates are going this year.
Can confirm one thing already mentioned – you can’t trust listings to properly list the garage space or extra buildings. Mine has a standalone 4+ car garage behind the house that was only visible from street view at one specific spot and in the background of two of the house photos. Realtors just dont seem to understand the draw of something like that to the right buyer, especially in an area where it’s unheard of to have more than a 2-car garage on any house under a million dollars.
This is so weirdly true. The house I live in now had a three-car garage which was the big draw for me in the first place. Imagine how happy I was to learn upon the first visit that there was a 4th garage under the house which wasn’t visible from the street and a 14′ x 40′ shed that used to be a chicken coupe still in nice condition – it was even wired with it’s own box and a 220 outlet! I’ve seen several other listings in the same town completely leave out pole buildings, large sheds, workshops, etc.
Ha! Admit it, Mercedes, you’d be in the pond, watching the sunset.
Problem is, which of these homes has decent, or even functioning internet?
Answer: none. Not a one.
Most of them, even cellular service is questionable. People are quick to forget that by and large, America is extremely rural, and aside from electricity, modernity is limited to indoor plumbing – with a septic system. If you want to run out to get groceries, you’ll need to plan your whole day around the hour or more one-way trip to the store.
And being that kind of disconnected these days is either an expensive luxury or extreme poverty. Nevermind the ‘line goes up’ of real estate and ruinous interest rates currently.
For example: I actually stumbled across the Annawan property myself.
Available broadband service? No. Not “slow.” There is nothing.
ViaSat at ‘up to’ 30Mbps with hard caps or HughesNet at 25Mbps, both with hard caps that won’t even let you install Forza Horizons. (They lie and claim it’s not capped. It’s capped.) To get just 50GB of data at 30Mbps on warm sunny days only, and 300GB maximum before they disconnect you will cost you – I am not joking – $300 PER MONTH. On top of a $500-1000+ setup cost.
For a service that by default hard-caps your streaming to 480p, guarantees no speeds, and doesn’t even guarantee it will function.
But wait! There’s more! If you need healthcare, there’s one part-time urgent care clinic that really would prefer you use ‘telehealth.’ Need groceries? Not getting it in town. No, seriously. There isn’t a grocery store. You’ll need to take the highway about 10 miles west. If they don’t have it, 16 miles. That’s also how far the closest hospital is – 16 miles south. Anything past that and you are going all the way to Moline, a full 40 miles away.
And that, my friends, does not even remotely count as rural. That is ‘rural lite.’ I used to live true rural, and let me tell you. Never again. Not rural lite, and especially not true rural. Especially not if you need health care.
I didn’t know what “true rural” meant until I went on a service trip to deep Appalachia. Most people in this country would not believe the conditions some of their fellow citizens live, work, and die in.
Ding, ding, ding. Nailed exactly where I lived. And I was in what was the nicest part of Appalachia. The only emergency room for over 50 miles in any direction, because it was a company town. When criminal fraud convictions took that company down, took less than a year for that hospital to cut back by more than 75%. If you have a stroke there now, then you die, simple as that. The nearest MRI is over 4 hours away.
And what people do out there can only be called ‘living’ by the standards of a third world country, and even they would look at many of these places with absolute horror.
When you get into some parts of former paper mill territory, you don’t have people driving their 1983 Dodge Ram D100 held together with bailing wire, hope, and expired tags to the grocery store 4 hours away. You have people living in actively collapsing shacks with disconnected electricity subsistence hunting because they literally cannot afford food. Any money they do have has to be saved for bullets, arrows, and wood cutting equipment to try and not freeze to death in winter.
The county I lived in is over 95% white, over 80% GQP registered, and nearly every penny in government revenue comes in from out-of-county no-fault divorce cases these days. And with a poverty level of just $12,140 to $25,100/yr/household, the poverty rate is well over 20%. (Especially as many residents refuse to respond to the census. It’s only gotten worse since I left.) One of the boroughs, the poverty rate for households with children under the age of 6 is over 90% and for adults 18 to 59 it’s over 30%.
Indeed! I forgot to mention the same thing. Most of these rural ‘estates’ have no high-speed internet and barely any cell service, which I soon realized would be a deal breaker for me.
Just look for a decent enough house that’s near civilization and once you’ve solved that, then look for a pole barn/warehouse/etc or lot nearby where you can build a garage/shop. As a bonus, you can drive from your house to your shop and back instead of just walking across your yard. You do like to drive, right?
The town is Blackman, MI north of Jackson. It is covered with V 5G $35 – $50/mo. The property is on Lansing Ave just a mile or two north of I94 and just east of 127. I’ve got a friend outside Metro D also on 5G and they have great service.
lolno.
First of all, Verizon 5G is not ‘broadband’ and it is not ‘high speed’ and it’s only 5G branded. It’s LTE in most of rural Michigan. It also has hard caps that Verizon doesn’t disclose and actually just straight up lies about. You also have to switch all your phones to Verizon to get the $50 a month deal, which is cancer enough.
Hint: yes, I do know somebody in that area.
Oh, and secondly? Verizon Home Internet isn’t available in any Blackman Township zipcode. Not a single one. Which tracks, because there’s no cell service from them there either.
That all depends on where you live. Verizon, like all of the carriers, are spending billions turning up 5G across the country, and of course they are going to do it first in more populated areas. When will it trickle out to more rural areas? When they finish with the areas that will subsidize the expense so they can expand to more areas. Is it going to happen fast? No, not at all, but it will happen, it’s just a matter of time. So what do you do if you’re in an area with little to no established providers? You pay more for whatever option you can get until other options are available.
I think of it the same way I do about when HDTV first came out. I wanted HD channels, but in my little community, the TV stations would be the last to go HD, cable company wasn’t going to carry it, and neither Dish or Directv were carrying anything either. What did I do? Paid more and got a bootleg sat receiver from a Canadian provider who did carry HD networks (I was jut barely in their footprint). Did it cost more? Yes, but that’s what you do when you don’t have many options and you want something. Eventually everything was in HD and I dropped the package because I could get it cheaper locally.
Same thing with internet access, I’m paying more now because I only have one option, but in time I’ll have multiple options at a better price. Now to just live long enough to see it happen.
So if living rural to have space is the primary driver, you accept you might pay more for other services to get what you want.
No cell service and no V 5UWB 5G in Blackman Twp – any zip code? Really?
Starling?
Starlink?
I have one relative that uses starlink, they raved about how it was a vast improvement over whatever satellite service they had.
Argh! Missed this! Hopefully we’ll have notifications soon. 🙂
So, my current living situation is sort of crap, really. When I first moved into my apartment back in 2018, I had reasonably zippy AT&T (well, for the price that I paid). Then I upgraded to faster Xfinity.
Then one day in 2020, a note posted to the building’s message board said that there was utility work happening for a week. Since then, internet has been shoddy in the building, with many people in my building frequently getting outages literally every day. Building management says that there’s no problem. The ISPs say it’s the building. Nobody wants to even troubleshoot.
Eventually, my wife and I got fed up and just tossed a 5G home internet trash can onto our T-Mobile plan. And honestly? It blows my old Xfinity plan out of the water for the same price. Plus, we can take it with us on camping trips for internet on the go.
Interestingly, I’ve been to both Jackson and Annawan and had no problems with my cellular connection. I don’t need the fastest stuff, just enough to upload pictures and stream video. I don’t really game anymore, so meh. And since I’ve spent most of my life at least 2 hours from Chicago, septic is the norm for me. Sheryl’s a farm girl, so this is basically the dream for her.
Healthcare? I already drive over 2 hours to get to my doctor (trans health kinda sucks in Illinois unless you live in Chicago), and the Annawan house would only change that by minutes. The Michigan one would of course require me to get a new doctor.
One thing’s for sure, neither of us want to be in Chicago. What we want to do with our lives comes at odds with that!
Congrats on tying the knot and great thinking on adding “+airport, +hanger” to your search. There’s a small “executive airport” and neighborhood near where I live…the homes have a hanger-garage and backup to a runway. Not everyone there has a plane…they just like the big (attached) hanger. Something like this…
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2814-Air-Park-Dr-Zeeland-MI-49464/333018522_zpid/
One easy way to figure out how big buildings are when it’s not stated in the listing is to look at the property in Google Maps satellite view, and the use the measure feature. It will get you within a few feet and will also show you square feet if you measure all the way around.
If you’re going to get a pole barn to house all of the vehicles, do yourself a favor and make sure you don’t have to pack them like sardines like you do now. Only one of those properties will house all of your vehicles with room to actually access/use/work on them (the last one with the storage unit). That one is likely perfect for your needs other than the lack of trees. The storage income would likely pay the mortgage and then some though so it would be unfortunate to have to give that up to store your cars.
We’ve been looking in Southern Oregon, out by Klamath Falls. There are a lot of smaller 2-5 acre places in the $250‐300,000 range and the occasional farm. The best I found was around 200 acres near Bly with two houses and a bunch of farm buildings for around $400k. You will need to grow something or rent the land for agricultural income but you could run a mini Gambler in your back yard.
Just make sure to put aside plenty of money for propane, septic upkeep, water softeners, well equipment, etc.
Oh, and find an apiarist to set up some hives on your land so you can get agricultural property taxes. That will help pay for the above mentioned items. 🙂
We were recently looking for something similar, but ended up getting just two acres with public water, sewer, and natural gas.
Bold choice on that carpet color, btw. 😀
Around our area some of the most reasonably priced properties for the acreage are old rail line properties. Found one a few weeks back that was 66′ wide and 6300′ deep. She didn’t buy my argument that she wouldn’t hear my car on my private drag strip. All the rail ties and rails were gone but the centre of the property had a nice gravel packed base. House was a bit of a mess though.
Good Lord maybe I should move. $324,000 buys you a 30 year old fixer upper ranch house on a slightly less than full size lot where I live.
Where are you living now? I’m just north of Milwaukee, and my place has a detached garage big enough for 3 cars, and a built in garage big enough for 2, so 5 cars total. This was unheard of, and NOT ADVERTISED.
My advice is reduce the amount of land you’re interested in, because more land, ESPECIALLY MOWED LAND, is a massive, massive, massive time vampire. Picking up sticks, mowing, leaf blowing, it’s just a drag.
My other piece of advice is to use a website that let’s you search listings based on garage size. I used firstweber.com, and if you click advanced in the search, you can sort by 3 car garages, 4 car garage, etc.
But yeah, you could not pay me to own something with the amount of land you’re showing. You’d be mowing for 3+ hours every weekend.
Oh and one other thing, HOAs are bad especially if you’re a gearhead, but that doesn’t mean you need to buy 5+ acres in hte middle of nowhere. I own 1.5 acres, no HOA, have cool neighbors nearby, and I’m close to the interstate if I need to get anywhere. Living in rural middle of nowhere can be especially isolating if you’re LBGT, lots of trump flags outside the metro areas. I’d look for suburbs WITH SPACE, and no HOA. Plenty of people put up extra garages and outbuildings, just have to find them.
I live in the bluest of northern blue states, and Trump won my town in 2016. My neighbors have all sorts of trump flags, ‘blue lives matter’ and other things posted. Every now and then my neighbor’s mail arrives here from organizations looking for donations to fund their campaigns of oppressing women.
I have been here for 8 years and still haven’t spoken to the Trump neighbors. No effort put into avoiding them, we’re very well spaced and there’s a forest between us so I can’t even see that guy’s house most of the year. I’m sure he’d still help me dig out of my driveway if needed, and that’s really all I need from a neighbor. I moved here to be left alone with the wife, the dogs and the barn squirrels.
Yeah but now imagine being a POC or LBGT. Big difference between differing political signs vs how those people treat others different than themselves.
It was assumed that I was a POC when we moved to town. Apparently being of swarthy stock is enough to qualify as other among the trumpites. There are also a lot of LGBT families in town. Everyone in town is either ultra liberal or very old and racist… and the old racists never miss voting day.
I assume they’ll either die or load up their pickup trucks and leave town cursing about taxes soon.
Michigan?! Are you nuts?! You are just inviting David to dump his rusty lot on your doorstep!
My suggestion is look in towns that have an Amtrak stop. Princeton IL has one, is by the highway & has an awesome pie shop.
I was going to suggest they might go in on a property with Dave, but after reading your post I had visions of a giant junkyard and thought better of it
Jackson, Michigan has an Amtrak stop, is near the highway but doesn’t have an awesome pie shop. But has an awesome ice cream parlor.
Tips:
1 As Metal-maru says.. BEWARE Of MAINTENANCE. It’s not just the cost but the time is killer. On the house and buildings: the more bathrooms the more maintenance. Imagine that extra bathroom springing a leak and no one noticing for a couple days. Big rooms are great, but more rooms can mean significantly more windows and doors and stuff. It really can be a drag unless you want your hobby to be upkeep of your buildings. Land maintenance can also be a problem, but if your landscaping is simple and you can afford a good landscape and plowing service it can be OK. Personally, I recommend looking for house with low maintenance exterior and windows and no more bathrooms than you really need.
2 Neighbors… can they hear your toys? The property may be big, but if your garage or other toys are close to the edge and near the neighbors it can still be a big problem. This goes both ways. Imagine the closest neighbor is a drag racer or shooting enthusiast and does these things early in the morning or late in the evening… will it bother you? Will your hobbies bother them? The point is, the layout of the land and buildings matters a lot. I suggest going around and meeting the neighbors before making an offer. You learn a lot about a neighborhood that way.
Sometime in the next decade or so, my partner and I will be looking for similar properties. We own our home right now, it does have a two car garage (I insisted) and sits on maybe a fifth of an acre. A perfect, recently built starter home…getting harder to find around here. But one day when we’ve got more income, we want at least 10 acres. Obviously it must have garage space, we only have three cars now but I want another air-cooled VW at some point for sure. But our other requirement is that the house be invisible from the road, and from any neighbors. I want an acre or two for a yard, and the rest I’ll leave to nature. Always wanted my own little forest. Butttttt I’ve always wanted to have a little dirt track in a field and a couple beaters to send around it…
Congratulations on the wedding!
We’re on the verge of a real estate crash, so you may benefit from waiting a bit if you can. Of course, those prices seem quite reasonable compared to my area. If you’re OK with being ‘underwater’ on paper during the home value trough (you only actually lose money if you sell low), then go for it.
One thing to consider with outbuildings in a wooded area is critters. Field mice and squirrels will find their way in and will try to nest everywhere. They can nibble wires, causing very difficult to track down electrical problems in vehicles. I have a 12 Miata (or 9 regular cars) barn and fighting the critters interferes with the wrenching time I expected.
Not an issue with all the storage in the places you posted, but you will need a few garage spaces for the things you need to maintain the property. At least a lawn tractor, snowblower, chainsaws, maybe a wood chipper, weed trimmer, shovels, mulch, dirt, etc… I probably have 2 cars worth of space devoted to ‘shed’ items. If you have a bigger property that justifies a real tractor (DO IT!!!), the tractor attachments are big and heavy and need someplace to live when not connected to the tractor. They’re rugged, so you probably CAN store them outdoors… but they’re also expensive so you won’t want to leave them outdoors.
Property shopping is fun. Enjoy it, and please keep sharing the interesting listings.
Disagree that we’re on the verge of a widespread real estate market crash. The market is in a short supply situation, and that’s unlikely to change in coming years since high rates discourage building.
This is going to be a period where values stay high while rates keep people that would normally move up or down to suit their desires in their existing homes.
You can disagree, but do you have data to support your assertion?
Spoiler alert: you don’t. Because I have the data that proves the exact opposite.
There is no ‘housing shortage.’ There is a real estate bubble not entirely dissimilar to 2008. Far too many properties bought up by shady REITs and as ‘investment properties.’ Literally the only thing that’s keeping these peak-price purchases afloat is the locked in interest rates and being able to demand whatever rent they want.
The number one real indicator of the market isn’t price or stock either. It’s mortgage originator requirements. Whether the house is $50k or $500k, you need someone to underwrite that loan. Living in it or leasing it out, you still need someone backing that up.
I used to work for an originator. As soon as the profiteering kicked in and BPs started looking like they were going up, they drastically tightened the requirements for borrowers. Shifted credit score bands up significantly, and much higher income requirements.
Same institution that would give me $500k on a handshake in 2021, won’t do $300k without their inspector pulling the place down to the studs and me signing over someone else’s firstborn today. Properties they would greenlight at $600k just 6 months ago, they won’t do $550k on today. Homes that would have sold above asking price before they were even listed (and that is not exaggeration) are now sitting on the market for months.
And the market HAS to crash. It’s either that or give the entire US population a very significant, very real pay raise without increasing home prices. And since that’s not happening? Something has to give. Period. And we already know the boomers who paid $35k for the place insist they’re entitled to $350k+, and the kids making the same per hour as they were are just lazy.
The whole fucking system has just been one bubble inflating after another. 2008 was never a real correction; when it looked like it was going to truly crash to where it should have been, they rushed in with the air compressors. And believe me, you’d much rather house prices crash and force divestment and diversification than the alternatives.
The market is in a short supply situation until the Airbnb landlords start defaulting when nobody has vacation money. That won’t solve the problem entirely but it will be a second kick to the market right after demand dries up at these mortgage rates.
Where is there a short supply right now? I live in an area where there is very little new development and we have more inventory than buyers right now.
In places that have been building like crazy for the last few years, there is an insane amount if inventory vs. the current demand.
This entire bubble was pumped up by near 0% interest, which is long over.
Yes, that’s what the economist from Zillow keeps saying when CNN writes on the topic. The short supply / high prices are caused (or exacerbated) by institutional investors deciding that real estate offered the best returns and getting in. There are absurd amounts of property being held as investments. Once the returns no longer roll in, they will sell off their holdings just as they would stocks.
In a lot of the markets where real estate has been crazy for the last few years (Phoenix, some places in Colorado), supply of available homes has multiplied in recent months with a huge portion of the listings seeing downward price adjustments.
Whenever the housing market doesn’t make sense, we’re headed for a crash. This market hasn’t made sense since the start of the pandemic, where the economy contracted but housing soared. The common explanation was that people were moving from cities to more suburban or rural homes for isolation and because work from home became more common. That explanation only makes sense if urban housing prices and rents fell while rural prices climbed, which hasn’t been the case.
There are two new ~$1 million homes listed for sale on my street right now. The last one on the street at that price sold in a week. These two are comparable and have been sitting for months. There’s a nice house on a side street listed at ~$600k that has been sitting also. A house directly across the street from it comparable in size and condition sold for $750k this spring.
If you’re OK with being ‘underwater’ on paper during the home value trough (you only actually lose money if you sell low), then go for it.
If you know you’re going to be in the home for a decade or more, embrace it. Lower property tax is nice.
I don’t know about Michigan, but towns around here never voluntarily lower property assessments used for taxing.
Can you not request a reassessment?
Yes, but that opens the door to a potentially higher assessment if there have been any improvements.
Hey there! Longtime reader, first time commenter, but my family is from all around the Peoria area and wanted to chime in with my vote for East Peoria. I love the area and really miss going down there since grandparents have all past. The nature out there really is awesome being so close to the IL River and your still only 2 hours from Chicago. The Marshall County airport is a great team too, pancakes and flights on Father’s Day and they worked with my Boy Scout troop with our FFA Young Eagles program. My vote for you would be a house that can see the river in East Peoria for awesome sunsets or a place on Moss Ave in Peoria by the college and then get a piece of land just outside of town for cheap and have Morton Buildings (the next town over) come in and do a sweet garage!
I was the best man in a wedding at the Peterson Auto museum in LA. Awesome venue, and surprisingly affordable. They set up between an original Bugatti, the first civilian Hummer (from Aaahnold, the popemobile, and Ferdinand Marcos’s Mercedes Limo- All the photos were amazing- And how many people could (or want to) say they got married where Biggie got shot.
Be mindful of getting too much acreage. At some point (unless you can ignore most of it), the upkeep on the buildings, driveway, fences, mowing, trees, and a lagoon can be more work than you think. I set up on 50 acres and don’t get as much time in the shop as I like (we have many animals too though).
Good point. I’m sure you’d much rather spend time on your vehicles instead of Hours/Days on a mower. Unless, you are really into agriculture/horticulture.
So much this.
We just purchased our first single-family home (apartments and condos prior) with only .41 acres and it’s way more work than we anticipated. The maintenance of the house, yard upkeep, constant watering (droughty Texas), and a few other things took us by surprise. We’re at least able to let about 1/4 of the land “go wild” in the back yard.
I can’t imagine having a couple dozen acres.
Haha! Our last house 800square meters of land, with a small 90sqm house on it (we were renting) and I hated mowing that lawn – I suspect the owner was just land banking to develop later- we are house hunting at the moment and I’m like nope! No big lawns!!! Enough space for a trampoline for the kids is all I want now!
Yes, but the upside: finding a good, sturdy antique tractor to work on/use to mow all that grass.
I have 1953 Ford Golden Jubliee for mowing. It’s a more reliable then our 2003 Cub cadet.
Simple – don’t do a lawn. Lawn grass is useless other than for looks, it’s wasteful and if kept for good looks, winds up contaminating groundwater; and if you’re out in the boonies anyway, who cares? Save water, have an ecology – just run a brush hog around it 2-3 times a year and call it good. That Jackson property will definitely have deer, probably coyotes, and plenty of other wildlife around. Also, most of lower Michigan is wetland, having been scraped out pretty well by the glaciers. Be sure of your drainage!
I mow because we have a lot of ticks, a lot of deer and a lot of Lyme disease around here. I also briefly had a fox den out back. That’s how I learned that foxes sound like a domestic dispute.
When I lived in Metro Detroit, there was a mixed use house for sale in Hamtramck. It had a 3 or 4 bay garage with pits for oil changes. I was hustling 2-3 part time jobs and having issues making ends meet. I didnt have the money to buy the property and rehab it.
Living in Hamtramck for 5 years was the best decision I ever made for my wallet and the worst decision I ever made for my waistline.
Since I don’t have an office to go to every day my wife and I took the opportunity to get out from the city. For the same monthly price we were paying for a generic neighborhood home we moved to 5 acres in the country. The only thing it doesn’t have is a shop/barn (we both have barn envy) but it’s room for the kids to grow up, plenty of room for the Polaris and minibike we bought the first week and no HOA to complain about my ‘73 D100 out front being inoperable.