Feel my pain

[briannell]

Actually, you will find homes over 500k in Brentwwod/Oakley now. Antioch homes are now running upwards of 450K. That's not bad for that area 1600 sq. ft across from the Concord Pavillion ran my bro 525K. Can't buy into Clayton, Alamo or Walnut Creek for less than that.

Bozeman still has a "better" way of life and it wont cost you 10k a year to send your kids to a "good" school (Carondelet '92). Monte Vista sucks and the other public high schools can't touch the Montana schools standards. BSHS gives a better education and has higher SAT scores. Although I think it's worth it to get paid less and give your children a better start in life. This from a bay area brat!

[BWahlberg]

Some one earlier mentioned that the Avg. home price in Missoula is 195k. actually our median sales price is something like $172,500. Although that is still very high.

One thing that is happening in Missoula is a lot of growth outside the city limits, so there's less restrictions on the developer. In the next 5 years Lolo (just south of town) will probably be the largest growing area in the county.

[SonomaCat]

Raincat: I somehow missed your post until now... you seem to have a pretty good handle on things down here, especially the last line.

Here's an interesting article -- lots of MT towns mentioned on the cheap side of things. It's kind of a skewed analysis since it doesn't seem to include Manhattan or SF among the most expensive places, although it does include Palo Alto (our suburban neighbor to the south). I suspect the reason for that is that you would be hard pressed to find a 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath house with a family room and a 2 car garage in either NYC or SF. Instead, you'd get something smaller and probably have to pay more.

It does make Great Falls and Billings look attractive, though, from purely an "ability to buy a house" perspective.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/30/real_es ... tm?cnn=yes

[briannell]

we have 2020 sq.ft just north of Seattle, goes for 325K. Looking at buying in Missoula (comparable) neighborhood, still will run you roughly the same amount of money. Although, salaries in Missoula are half of what they are here. Wonder how people afford the homes there. Can't feel bad, this size house runs between 650K - 900K in East Bay area.

[velochat]

I think the last numbers I saw for Bozeman were around $215K for median home price. That sounds about right. I just bought a new condo and know that the typical price for condos (2 bed, 2 bath, single garage) is anywhere from 150K on up. Anything under 160K is extremely rare.