Posted on 04/18/2014 5:00:28 PM PDT by proxy_user
With a budget of about $1 million, Patricia Marx began looking for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in Manhattan last fall. She soon realized just how limited her options were.
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As Ms. Marx quickly learned, rising prices and an ongoing scarcity of listings mean that buyers in the million-dollar price range are increasingly out of luck or forced to make major compromises.
Low inventory, high demand and a shift toward larger units in new luxury developments pushed the median sale price for a Manhattan apartment to $972,428 in the first quarter of the year, up 18.5 percent over the same period last year, according to a report by the Douglas Elliman brokerage firm.
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Eventually, Ms. Marx went into contract on a two-bedroom, two-bath with a lovely view in the Sutton Place area that was listed for $995,000. “The apartment is a wreck,” she said, noting a crumbling bathroom, gaping holes covered with blue tarp and a vintage oven. With an impending renovation, she expects to pay at least $1.2 million in all. “I convinced myself I was dealing with play money,” said Ms. Marx, who recently listed her current home, a gracious one-bedroom corner unit on East 88th Street in Carnegie Hill for $975,000. “A million dollars to me still seems like an unfathomable amount of money.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Where was your 8.33 acre lot?
central tx
Is it near Waco, Temple, Austin, the Hill Country? I would love to check for other “lots” like that for sell.
Soylent Greenburg.
About 45 minutes from Austin. Kempner.
Here’s the trick: land with a crappy trailer on it is worse than land with only the improvements.
(Watch the property taxes, though. There’s property tax and the school tax - which can be more than the property tax. It’s so high that I though they were making a mistake. More than $2400 a year on a $100,000 lot - valued at $60,000 according to the tax man. That killed us.)
I like the Horseshoe Bay area. And Fredericksburg is nice as well.....I am even thinking of retiring to that area once Corporate America is done with me.
Property taxes are a bitch in Texas. But when considering moving to other states we compared everything. When you add up sales taxes, personal property taxes, car tags, driver’s license, utilities, and other costs it pretty much is a wash. Then there are some states that have income tax.
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