Same House – Way Different Prices

It is one of our favorite recommendations – if you want to get a good deal in retirement real estate, stay away from the coasts. The 2008 Coldwell Banker Home Price Comparison Index provides a pretty good illustration of the theory. The real estate brokerage firm makes an annual comparison of similar homes in 315 U.S. markets. It wasn’t a big surprise that La Jolla, CA – where the sample home cost over $1.8 million – was at the top of the list. Want to buy the same house cheaper – move to Sioux City, Iowa, where you can buy it for $133k.

Elsewhere in California it is easy to spend money too – the test house in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara would cost you $1.65MM and $1.6MM respectively. The second most expensive city in the country is Greenwich CT ($1,787,000). The test house in the HPCI Index has 2,200-sf, four-bedrooms, and 2 1/2 baths.

Elsewhere in real estate, this week’s news was unrelentingly bad. In almost every market, prices are off and sales are down. Prices in Las Vegas are off 30% from August 2007. The only ray of good news we have seen is lucky Aspen Colorado, where prices just keep going up.