Ever wonder what your house would cost in northern California? Well, last night I happened to catch a snippet of a real estate show called “Sleep On It” that airs on HGTV. (The premise of the show is that potential home buyers stay the night in the houses they are looking at. I didn’t make it that long to see the sleepover.)
They were showing a family that lives in San Jose that wants to move up from a 2 bedroom, 1 bath townhouse to a 3 bedroom, 2 bath single family home. Their budget? Maxing out at $800K.
So the first house they show is 1040 square feet with 3 Bed, 2 Bath, priced at $709,950. To illustrate how inflated the NoCal market is, they compare the home to a similar one in — of all places — Champaign, Illinois (the tenor-voiced announcer says) for only $159,000.
If you truly wanted to get a ballpark figure of what your home would cost in another city, you can plug in the numbers on Coldwell Banker’s Home Price Comparison Index calculator to approximate what your house might cost in 340 markets nationwide. It’s a little outdated, but still fun. For instance, it says that it would cost me almost $300K more to afford my same home in the north Chicago suburb where I grew up.
That’s a chunk of change.
9 responses so far ↓
Jenna // April 14, 2008 at 9:07 am
That is why will be never be able to move out of CU! We have it good here…we almost forget what happens outside our bubble. People laugh when they find out how much our house cost.
In my hometown, many of the houses are near the 1mil mark!
Rayne of Terror // April 14, 2008 at 2:56 pm
And moving from Decatur to the area between BN and CU we were SHOCKED just SHOCKED at how expensive housing is in that corridor.
Leeanthro // April 14, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I HATE the commercial for that show. Great, now I have that song in my head!
One of our friends bought a house in CA for about $500K that would have been $125K or so here. Just crazy!
CU home prices seem lower than in most areas of the country (so I hear from friends who live elsewhere).
mate'man // April 14, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Do you think I could airlift my condo to San Jose?
Lurker :) // April 14, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I don’t know…. The home prices are not bad until you factor in the outrageous property taxes in CU. I feel as if I rent my home from the city & pay a mortgage as well.
M_Six // April 14, 2008 at 9:33 pm
The converter would be better if it went by sq ft instead of value. I ran the value numbers and came up with houses about a $100k more in CT, but way smaller. In other words, my house would definitely be worth more than the ones they compare it to. But like lbotp said, it’s outdated.
We’re pretty much stuck here in Chucktown. Between our salaries (which we couldn’t get back east) and our home, we’d never have the same lifestyle back east. Not even close.
Rayne of Terror // April 15, 2008 at 5:20 am
You should be able to imput bed/bath and sq ft and acres (if you have em) on that site. The comparables it came up with were not really similar.
Vmjess // April 15, 2008 at 7:15 am
I recently found your blog and am loving it. I moved to the c-u area just over a year ago from Northern California- for those ridiculous housing prices you get the added bonus of crappy schools and high crime rates. No thank you. We are loving our new midwestern life!
oobreeze // April 15, 2008 at 7:54 am
ditto, Leanthro. that jingle is killer.
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