Sounds like a high end neighborhood to me! My ex girlfriend bought a house while I was living with her in a middle of the road neighborhood in Phoenix for around 200k. Are property values very high in the Seattle area?

Well, Higher than a desert, anyway. P)

Anyone of you want to marry me?

If you find something with more than 500 sq. ft. for less than US$50k in Rio, it's probably very badly built.

Detroit is famous for having ridiculous home prices. (In the last few years.)

I'm in Seattle, in a middle-of-the-road neighborhood. You MIGHT be able to find a house here for $500k... but twice that is not unusual. And there are much, much, MUCH more expensive neighborhoods.

(There was a slip - a space to dock a houseboat... not even the boat, just the space - on the north end of Lake Union for $160k the last time I was looking. Then you have to buy the boat.)

Sounds like a high end neighborhood to me! My ex girlfriend bought a house while I was living with her in a middle of the road neighborhood in Phoenix for around 200k. Are property values very high in the Seattle area?

Pretty high, yeah. Nothing like San Francisco or New York, but steep.

We bought our house in 2012 - the rest of the country was still in the slump, but Seattle was already well on its way back. I guess that's what happens when there are lots of jobs...

From what I've heard, the entire west coast is rising pretty fast these days. Vancouver is now the most expensive city in Canada (in terms of property values), and San Francisco is becoming even harder to live in than New York for many people. Great job markets (relative to the rest of the country) and beautiful landscapes at work, I'm sure :)

Anyone of you want to marry me?

If you find something with more than 500 sq. ft. for less than US$50k in Rio, it's probably very badly built.

Detroit is famous for having ridiculous home prices. (In the last few years.)

I'm in Seattle, in a middle-of-the-road neighborhood. You MIGHT be able to find a house here for $500k... but twice that is not unusual. And there are much, much, MUCH more expensive neighborhoods.

(There was a slip - a space to dock a houseboat... not even the boat, just the space - on the north end of Lake Union for $160k the last time I was looking. Then you have to buy the boat.)

Sounds like a high end neighborhood to me! My ex girlfriend bought a house while I was living with her in a middle of the road neighborhood in Phoenix for around 200k. Are property values very high in the Seattle area?

Pretty high, yeah. Nothing like San Francisco or New York, but steep.

We bought our house in 2012 - the rest of the country was still in the slump, but Seattle was already well on its way back. I guess that's what happens when there are lots of jobs...

Anyone of you want to marry me?

If you find something with more than 500 sq. ft. for less than US$50k in Rio, it's probably very badly built.

Detroit is famous for having ridiculous home prices. (In the last few years.)

I'm in Seattle, in a middle-of-the-road neighborhood. You MIGHT be able to find a house here for $500k... but twice that is not unusual. And there are much, much, MUCH more expensive neighborhoods.

(There was a slip - a space to dock a houseboat... not even the boat, just the space - on the north end of Lake Union for $160k the last time I was looking. Then you have to buy the boat.)

Sounds like a high end neighborhood to me! My ex girlfriend bought a house while I was living with her in a middle of the road neighborhood in Phoenix for around 200k. Are property values very high in the Seattle area?

Anyone of you want to marry me?

If you find something with more than 500 sq. ft. for less than US$50k in Rio, it's probably very badly built.

Detroit is famous for having ridiculous home prices. (In the last few years.)

I'm in Seattle, in a middle-of-the-road neighborhood. You MIGHT be able to find a house here for $500k... but twice that is not unusual. And there are much, much, MUCH more expensive neighborhoods.

(There was a slip - a space to dock a houseboat... not even the boat, just the space - on the north end of Lake Union for $160k the last time I was looking. Then you have to buy the boat.)

If you find something with more than 500 sq. ft. for less than US$50k in Rio, it's probably very badly built.

We've made one of those enormous random jumps in topic from the Gjallataur to houses.

I'm in over my head!

Now it's hard to find a decent house for less than $10k here.

For a more direct comparison, my apartment is a 2 bedroom of similar square footage and costs me $500 a month with no lease. I live on a small lake and a golf course is across the street. I live in Oakland County, apparently the 61st richest county in the country.

Here's the thing...the auto market going really hit us hard. We have enough industry and suppliers to do fine, we're still rich as fuck, and the Detroit/Windsor crossing is the most valuable (in terms of goods crossing the border) in the world, but when I was a kid, basically everyone worked for the big 3. There was a graph in the Detroit News this week about the UAW's Detroit membership and it's down ninety percent since I've been alive.

We still have so many auto workers that they only bother advertising the employee price of cars on TV, but it's not the same.

At the same time, the housing market crash demolished the housing prices, and without the auto industry for middle class families to fall back on, many went into default.

The only places that haven't had their real estate values completely destroyed are the fabulously rich neighbourhoods and the gentrifying neighbourhoods in downtown Detroit.

O_o

*searches how to get a Green Card*

One day a couple years ago, a man walks through the front door and makes a line straight for a pair of Trussart Guitars hanging on our front wall.

"What are these?" He says. I tell him a little about the maker and what the guitars are like.

"What do they cost?"

I say "The one on the left is thirty-two ninety-nine, the one on the right is thirty-eight seventy-nine".

"... I'll take both" he replies.

I go through the usual routine. I have him play both guitars to see if he likes the setups. I change the strings and make some adjustments to suit his playstyle. I get the cases, polish them up and get them tucked away, ready to go.

I bring him to the counter to do up the paperwork. Get all his info, throw in some accessories. I read him the total price and ask him how he would like to pay.

"... What did you say?" He asks.

"That'll be $8111.14 after tax".

A look of horror comes across his face. Turns out when I said "thirty-two ninety-nine" and "thirty-eight seventy-nine" he thought I was saying $32.99 and $38.79.

I've learned to be more specific since then.

Then I saw THAT'S THE PRICE IF I GIVE HIM MY OWN FLYING V! IT COSTS ANOTHER THOUSAND POUNDS IF HE SUPPLIES THE GUITAR!!

HOLY MOLY I CAN BUY A HOUSE IN PONTIAC PLUS A PONTIAC CAR FOR THAT MONEY!

No thanks, dude. Maybe if I become a dentist or a dot com millionaire.

Holy cow that is metal. I want that. I hope it costs less than $70.

lol

(I know you were joking. FWIW, at today's exchange rate, that's $2650 or so.)