DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Here's how much home $300,000 will buy you in every US state

Yea this isn't surprising. I have a closing date on the 31st for a townhome we purchased. straight up suburbia/HOA living for 150k. Was preapproved for about 415k, but there's absolutely zero point in needing anything close to that in ohio.

but 415k in cali, DC, miami, or NYC would've gotten me a 1 bedroom apartment living next to some sexual predator in the hood.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/apos-much-home-300-000-142725326.html

Depending on where you live, a $300,000 home looks very different. In Ohio, for instance, that amount will buy you well over 3,000 square feet, but in Hawaii, it will only get you about 625 square feet.

That's according to a new report from personal finance site GOBankingRates, which looked at median property listing prices on Zillow to calculate how much home you can buy for $300,000 in every U.S. state.

Here are the states where you'll get the most and least bang for your buck:

Read on to see how far you can get with $300,000 in every U.S. state. States are listed in descending order of square footage of home.

Indiana

Median price per square foot: $86

$300,000 buys you: 3,478 square feet

Mississippi

Median price per square foot: $88

$300,000 buys you: 3,402 square feet

Arkansas

Price per square foot: $88

$300,000 buys you: 3,390 square feet

Ohio

Median price per square foot: $89

$300,000 buys you: 3,366 square feet

West Virginia

Median price per square foot: $89

$300,000 buys you: 3,360 square feet

Alabama

Median price per square foot: $92

$300,000 buys you: 3,256 square feet

Oklahoma

Median price per square foot: $94

$300,000 buys you: 3,175 square feet

Kansas

Median price per square foot: $98

$300,000 buys you: 3,053 square feet

Missouri

Median price per square foot: $98

$300,000 buys you: 3,051 square feet

Georgia

Median price per square foot: $99

$300,000 buys you: 3,020 square feet

Kentucky

Median price per square foot: $100

$300,000 buys you: 2,988 square feet

Tennessee

Median price per square foot: $105

$300,000 buys you: 2,865 square feet

Michigan

Median price per square foot: $106

$300,000 buys you: 2,838 square feet


Pennsylvania

Median price per square foot: $111

$300,000 buys you: 2,702 square feet

Louisiana

Median price per square foot: $111

$300,000 buys you: 2,692 square feet

South Carolina

Median price per square foot: $113

$300,000 buys you: 2,664 square feet

New Mexico

Median price per square foot: $114

$300,000 buys you: 2,622 square feet

Texas

Median price per square foot: $115

$300,000 buys you: 2,616 square feet

Nebraska

Median price per square foot: $117

$300,000 buys you: 2,566 square feet

North Carolina

Median price per square foot: $117

$300,000 buys you: 2,558 square feet

Iowa

Median price per square foot: $119

$300,000 buys you: 2,520 square feet

Wisconsin

Median price per square foot: $120

$300,000 buys you: 2,499 square feet

Idaho

Median price per square foot: $129

$300,000 buys you: 2,323 square feet

Illinois

Median price per square foot: $130

$300,000 buys you: 2,305 square feet

South Dakota

Median price per square foot: $133

$300,000 buys you: 2,262 square feet

Delaware

Median price per square foot: $135

$300,000 buys you: 2,214 square feet

Nevada

Median price per square foot: $138

$300,000 buys you: 2,171 square feet

Arizona

Median price per square foot: $140

$300,000 buys you: 2,139 square feet

Vermont

Median price per square foot: $142

$300,000 buys you: 2,111 square feet

Virginia

Median price per square foot: $145

$300,000 buys you: 2,071 square feet

Wyoming

Median price per square foot: $146

$300,000 buys you: 2,053 square feet

New Hampshire

Median price per square foot: $149

$300,000 buys you: 2,007 square feet

Maine

Median price per square foot: $150

$300,000 buys you: 2,002 square feet

Florida

Median price per square foot: $155

$300,000 buys you: 1,931 square feet

North Dakota

Median price per square foot: $156

$300,000 buys you: 1,921 square feet

Minnesota

Median price per square foot: $160

$300,000 buys you: 1,873 square feet

Utah

Median price per square foot: $162

$300,000 buys you: 1,854 square feet

New Jersey

Median price per square foot: $163

$300,000 buys you: 1,839 square feet

Connecticut

Median price per square foot: $164

$300,000 buys you: 1,827 square feet

Maryland

Median price per square foot: $165

$300,000 buys you: 1,816 square feet

Alaska

Median price per square foot: $166

$300,000 buys you: 1,812 square feet

Montana

Median price per square foot: $169

$300,000 buys you: 1,779 square feet

Washington

Median price per square foot: $177

$300,000 buys you: 1,694 square feet

New York

Median price per square foot: $180

$300,000 buys you: 1,664 square feet

Rhode Island

Median price per square foot: $184

$300,000 buys you: 1,634 square feet

Oregon

Median price per square foot: $189

$300,000 buys you: 1,588 square feet

Colorado

Median price per square foot: $204

$300,000 buys you: 1,471 square feet

Massachusetts

Median price per square foot: $226

$300,000 buys you: 1,327 square feet

California

Median price per square foot: $281

$300,000 buys you: 1,066 square feet

Hawaii

Median price per square foot: $480

$300,000 buys you: 625 square feet

Washington, D.C.

Median price per square foot: $497

$300,000 buys you: 603 square feet

Sounds about right. My house is worth about $200-210sqft. In Portland if you don't have at least $250,000 you better be a contractor cause you've got a fixer on your hands.

Good for you!

Just because you (anyone) is "approved" is no reason to spend it all.

We have 2 acres, 2400 sq. ft house with 2 1/2 car garage, a 30x80 pole barn, a pond. Country living at it's finest. Probably 600 acres of field and woods behind me.

(now, if country living isn't your thing, this matters not)

House not far from us is for sale. My wife is gaga over it. Nice house. 2 story, brick, with a finished basement - walk out basement to a pool. 10 acres of ground, pole barn, etc.

Wife keeps asking if we can buy it. My response is: For what? Sooga will be gone in 2 1/2 years. That leaves you and me. Why would we need a 5 bedroom house?

Why would we want to clean a house like that? Why would be want to mow 10 acres of ground? (minus the house, and pool). (current owners have part of it as pasture for their horses. We don't have horses)

Anyway, good move on your part.

Bro I would've been the same way.

Your son already bounced out, and your daughter is about to be on her own as well.

There's really zero point of buying that house unless you planned on giving it to one of your kids' kids, so I feel you on not buying that.

And if you really wanted, couldn't you just go ahead and build the pool in your own yard? I mean you got two acres.

And if the question isn't too invasive, how much did you purchase your current crib? Since it's in the rural area, I can't imagine it being expensive, relatively speaking.

Bro could you imagine how much your current spot would cost in Cali? Lol yikes.

Damn you know what 250k can get here? I might be able to get a spot on MTV cribs.

You also have to take into account where in the state you live. Where my wife and I live in Connecticut is outrageously expensive.

I've been secretly looking for jobs in her industry in Cleveland, but it's hard because her field is very particular. My mom would move back to Ohio and we could go too. That's one of the biggest parts keeping us here in Southwest CT, family.

I'd just have to convince her on the Cleveland Suburb Area. But if we had a job picked out and went and looked at homes, she'd see how much better value we could get

Well, it kind of floored my wife when I said rather than going bigger, I'd prefer to downsize.

However, for my work, I do need a shop.

Pool? No. COULD we? Well, with the pond, it would be kind of a stretch, room wise, unless we wanted it in the front yard. But again, who wants a pool? Upkeep, etc, especially when the kids are gone or about gone.

A wise old man once told me, about a pool: "The time when you would use it is when your kids are young, and you can't afford it. When you can afford it, your kids won't use it." That was my dad.

I know too many people that put in a pool, in ground or above ground, and after 10 years or so just had them filled in or removed. I've been to too many homes where the pool never gets "opened".

Price of our home? It's tough, real tough, to compare it to other places, so the purchase price doesn't mean much. Cost of living varies from state to state, county to county, city to rural, etc.

We bought it for $150,000. What is it worth today? I have no clue. I can't imagine it has gone down. The tax appraisers tell me that.

Paved the stone drive. Replaced all the windows on the main floor. Tore off the cedar siding and put vinyl siding on. Before we moved in, I completely gutted the kitchen of the old cabinets, orange countertops, and the wood burning stove and brick "heat wall" that was there. Yeah, in the kitchen.

But, a city person/urban person wouldn't necessarily care for a property like this, just as I wouldn't care for living in even the nicest city/urban areas.

Everything is relative - to where you live, that is.

I love working in Toledo. Those customers about drop when I tell them what the price for doing my job would be. "What??? How can you do it for that low of an amount? Had company X here yesterday and they were almost twice as much as you."

Uh, I don't live in high dollar country.

Just one more reason why Ohio rocks.

My house is a 1380 sq.ft, 2 story home, with a 2 car garage, in a nice, quiet neighborhood with a lot of older people, and a lot of families. I paid $50K, 10 years ago.

I have to laugh when I stumble across a show where the people are looking for a home, with a $500K budget, and they can get a 750 sq ft dump in an "up and coming" neighborhood. (which means it ain't there yet) lol

I saw another one where they had a guy from Warren, and he bought a nice little house for $45,000 that was nicer than some quarter million dollar homes. lol

Here's what you could buy in the city I live for $300K:

Link

(For those that don't want to click, there are two empty lots and one house that is not supposed to be there.)

J/C

I love that Alaska cost of living. A $300K dollar home in Alaska is like a $135K in Parma, Ohio.

I've joked around with my girlfriend that when we get this placed paid off in 10 to 12 years we should sell it and go buy three houses in Ohio with the cash....but then we'd have to live in Ohio. (Sorry. Not meant to offend. I lived in Ohio for 28 years. That was long enough.)
When I purchased my first home in Portland my family asked what I paid for it. I had to preface my answer with an explaination of the difference in cost of housing out here. The money we spent was minor as far as the Portland market was concerned and that the money only afforded us 3 beds, two baths, on 0.14 acre. Back home in NW Ohio that kind of money would buy acreage and many beds and baths.
I now live in a modest 2 bed, one bath, on .41 acre. Still worth more than my two siblings homes combined but not necessarily nicer. It's all about the market. I have 100' tall fir and cedar trees on my land and a view of an 11,000' tall mountain (when I'm on my roof). The coast and mountains within a short drive. They live in the rust belt.

Of course housing prices vary widely in-state too.

I bet you get a lot more house for the dollar in Steubenville, OH vs. Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Shaker has a ridiculous amount of property tax. Same with beachwood

Well hope to close ( in two weeks )on a home I just built in the small town of Elkin NC.. about 1500 sq. with four acres , City water / Sewer and a year round creek for $178.000 .. Been a long time gettin here !

quote above by swish:

"Shaker has a ridiculous amount of property tax. Same with beachwood."

Property tax is an amazing concept.

Sure we own our houses. Unless you don't pay the property tax.

My last house was ~ $5,000/year.

That's $100/week. Property tax. Nothing else.

For the privilege of getting to live in that house.

They certainly arent talking about Manhattan you cant give a median price for New York state. Well you can but it is a useless stat. Same goes for every state, but I think the differences in New York might be some of the greatest.

Median price per square foot ni Manhattan: $1600

Here in downtown Chicago, we're renting our 1-bedroom loft-style condo for $1800/month and it's 695 sq feet. We could sell it for $290k.

Parking spots selling for $30-35k too.

It all depends on where you live. Mine (west suburbs) is 1460 sq feet and I had a tentative offer of 425k on it a few months ago which is $291/sq ft. I was looking in SE Portland and houses were $350-425/sq ft unless I went to FoPo where it was $275-350/sq ft. There were 7 houses under $500k in a 4000-5000 square block area (all but 1 of the 7 were dumps). Pearl district are $400-600/sq ft or more.

It is getting to the absurd point in PDX in my opinion. Annual increases in housing prices of 5-15% depending on where you live, with salaries not increasing at a rate anywhere near that.

I moved to Milwaukie, Clackamas County, to get away from the direct Portland market for that reason.

Man... Maybe I should move back to Ohio....

There's plenty of places in Ohio, or anywhere in the country, where $300K doesn't get you much.

It's all about location, school systems, communities, etc...

I can think of quite a few areas in northeast ohio where $300k doesn't go too far.

In the end, a lot depends on personal preferences and expectations on what each individual considers desirable to their goals.

Not to sound like a schmuck, but there are areas in northeast ohio where you could offer me a $150k house for free and I would have zero desire to live or raise my family in that area.

This is what $300k gets you in San Diego these days:

My brother bought a huge piece of property about 12 years or so ago. He had a house about 2 minutes from mine.

He almost completely paid off both the house and the property. he then decided to build a house on his property. (which was his plan all along) He was worried that he would never get rid of his old house. It was a huge house, but had a miniature back yard. He put it on the market, and some rental company offered him far more than he ever hoped to get. He wanted to list it for $25,000 just to get rid of it, but his agent told him that no one would be able to get a mortgage for that amount, so she had it listed at $40 grand. He received numerous offers, 1 over list, and he jumped on it. lol

Anyway, IIRC, the property he bought was around $30,000, (and it's a huge piece of land) and he had a house built there for around $100,000.

Ohio

Median price per square foot: $89

$300,000 buys you: 3,366 square feet


LOL That won't get you that here in the small town I live in, population of about 1600. We have 2300 sq.ft. homes going for $400,000. Recently a 1450 sq.ft. home built in 1994 went for $185,000.

If you want to go a little over budget here is a almost 5500 square Foot house in my neck of the woods.

https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/34802272_zpid/250000-350000_price/933-1307_mp/pricea_sort/41.162501,-80.620595,41.005164,-80.851307_rect/11_zm/3_p/

5500sqft?!
Sounds like too many bathrooms to clean, too much dusting, too much vacuuming...etc.
I'll keep my 1174sqft. Cheap to heat and easy to clean. But then it's just me, my girlfriend, and our pets. To each their own though.

We live in NW Portland. The only reason why we live in NW Portland is because we moved from London, which is insanely expensive. In our 20s we bought a tiny dump of an apartment, fixed it and sold it and were able to move up the ladder and buy a tiny Victorian house. So, when we returned to the US we sold our 1000 sq.ft. attached Victorian and bought a house in a nice part of Portland. However, our house is not a typical NW Portland house...it dates from 1905 and has been modified a lot over the decades (i.e. it doesn't look its age). It was also a fixer when we bought it (just replaced all its plumbing after patching 100+ year old leaking steel for years). The eccentric lady we bought from had cats and pot bellied pigs so, it didn't show well and it was dated inside. We, however, saw its potential and got a great price as it had been on the market for a year or so. It is also the smallest and oldest house on our block - we don't even have a garage but, we do have a 3 car driveway. That is fine for us as it is considerably bigger than our London house, it isn't attached to neighbors on either side and even without a garage we still have our own parking "slab", which we certainly didn't have in London.

We are pretty sure we could sell today and make some money on it even if the buyers tore it down and built new on it. Location, location, location and good schools always help with appreciation. But, where then do you go? There was a saying we used in London..."once you move out of London you can't move back in". Sadly, in Portland that too is becoming true. Once you move out of Multnomah County it is nigh impossible to return. BUT, with the rising taxes and water bill (yes, in a rainy city we pay more tax on our water than Las Vegas!) one feels the city is almost pushing folks like us out.

I have toyed with looking at what one could buy in Cleveland for what we believe we could sell our place for in Portland. Lakewood, Ohio City, Rocky River, Garfield/Cleveland Hts etc. But, I don't think I could sell my wife on moving to Cleveland. Also, my son has one more year in high school and all the colleges/uni's he is looking at are in the PNW from Northern Cali to Seattle. I think we are all pretty settled here. Portland was once the cheapest of the west coast cities, and it probably still is but, with so many people moving here and all the development it has grown too fast for many folks. Traffic, rent and house prices have definitely gone up in comparison to wages. Seattle, however, is even pricier (and far worse traffic!).

I'm working hard on selling the wife to get us out of ridiculously expensive CT and over to one of those towns. She'd like to go back to the midwest, but she'd rather return to Chicago. Chicago, I love, but with my job, it's very helpful having my mother close, and I love living near my parents because I'm an only child.

They'd be willing to move to Cleveland, but not Chicago. So now, I just have to keep on trying to sell my wife on cleveland. Maybe I can make sleep background music that says "Move to Cleveland" and put it on repeat or something

Yeah, unincorporated Washington County isn't much better than Multnomah. I moved back to be somewhat close to Nike, the commute home to Hawthorne was 45-90 minutes and I was sick of it. Working from home it doesn't matter anymore where I live. I could move to Hillsboro or Aloha, but I don't really want to be farther from the city or airport. I've been rethinking selling and just moving back to Ohio, but one of my executives wants me to move down by our offices in the Bay area. That'd take move expenses and a 20%+ salary increase

The house we sold and moved out of last month had 1200 sqft just in the basement.

Sometimes when there is virtually nothing else on TV, my wife and I will watch shows like Flip or Flop..

I am constantly amazed at how much homes go for in california.

I remember seeing a home that was, well frankly, it was a POS. I wouldn't hit a dog in the butt with it.

400K before Rehab., Sold 625K after rehab after 155k in rehab dollars

This house was about 1600 SF. No garage, did have a carport, virtually no yard.

I don't have exact stats here for Aurora, Ohio but every once in a while, I get on Zillow or Realtor.com and just check things out.

There is a home in Aurora that if I wanted to buy, this would be it. Asking 575k. 3700 SF, 3 car garage, First Floor Master Suite. Three Bedrooms and 2 baths up. 1/2 bath on the first, Full bath in the finished basement. All that sitting on 1.99 acres in a beautiful development.

Probably can get it for around 550K (guess)

Absolutely beautiful home.

If it sells for full asking, that's about 155.00 per SF.

I suspect it will end up at 95SF.. Just a guess of course.

Yet no matter how big and fancy that house in Aurora is it'll never be as close to the beach as the one in California. Nor will the weather be as nice. The mountains as close...
The value isn't in the homes in California. It's held in the quality of life/lifestyle/surroundings.

I kinda wonder if the numbers they give on those shows are true, or 'edited for television'.

We'll never have to deal with the san Andreas Fault, we really don't need to worry about a tsunami, the state of ohio isn't Broke and has never had to pay their state employees with vouchers.

So, around here, it's the Quality of life, the safety of life and by the way, we aren't afraid of snow or rain.

So there

They never have to run for cover when a tornado siren goes off. Scrape windows and warm their cars in the morning. Have a closet full of heavy coats and boots. Get carried away by mosquitoes in the evenings. Or drip with sweat while sitting still because of God awful humidity.
So there.
Ultimately it's all a personal choice. I got fed up with my list above of reasons to not live in the Midwest. I also didn't want to deal with some of the negatives California presents. So I chose Oregon. To each their own.

You and I have lived here a long time, you longer than me....we are now seeing California move up to Oregon and bringing with it those negatives (traffic, ridiculous property/rent prices, neighborhoods losing their identity, local shops closing due to rent increases or old buildings being bought, torn down and another modern block of apartments in its place). Sadly, those once cool, individual and unique areas like Division, Alberta, Mississippi & Williams are now all looking like they were cut from the same cookie cutter.

Welp, that's a big hit to my future plans of moving to Arizona.

You do understand that I'm mostly just pulling your leg right?

California has it's good things and bad things. But those are based solely on ones personal preferences.

My Wife and I want to move to Florida. We don't want to be here but because of elderly Mom's, we must remain here.

Maybe someday, I'll actually get to live my dream and move to Florida.

Wait, you cite the San Andreas fault as one negative against living in Cali.....what about hurricanes or worse, rising sea levels in Florida?

Guess you missed the part where I was pulling his leg... Geez, get a grip LOL