I'm confused. This doesn't look like a house but the back of the business. Did I miss something by missing what you said in other posts?

It is for sale in the residential section of the real estate in the area I am looking at. It is zoned residential, not commercial. So, I can spend $300,000 for a garage and Then have to build a house on the lot, or convert this to a house :( Thats how crazy some of the pricing is, even in this economy.

That sounds like a tall order. The construction will cost you a great deal in addition to the $300,000, so couldn't you purchase a house for something over 300 and avoid the stress and risk of construction? Construction costs most often over-run. Have you checked with the city about ordinances which would allow conversion of a garage to a home? There may be special retro-fitting, wiring and plumbing requirements which are prohibitive financially.

Do you have a realtor?

Good luck.

Exactly, I could end up with a $600K house in an alley. Woohoo.

Actually I am looking at habitable places in the same neighborhood that are about the same or *less than this garage. The neighborhood is odd--prices all over the place. There is a lone $6M neo-Palazzo stuck in the middle of it.

We looked at a house last year that was a shell. We had to sign a waiver that if we were injured we wouldnt hold the realtor liable. We looked up how much the current owner had paid. He was asking 100 times what he paid for it five year earlier. Its nutty.

I'm trying to guess how the realty listing read. Fixer-Upper? Lots Of Potential? Spacious Parking? Six-Panel Doors? Clerestory Windows? Well, the good news is that it appears to harbor no meth salesmen.

Yes, you're up against a formidable challenge! I bet you're learning a lot about the various neighborhoods, though, and looking at houses can be so exciting. A little too exciting if you have to sign a waiver before entering the place, though! :)

Hmmm. I would keep looking. Something's bound to come up, but this doesn't really feel like "home" and 300,000 to $600,000 just doesn't seem worth it, unless you have gobs of money to shove at changing this into a home, which doesn't exactly sound like it.

It would make more sense to buy an empty lot somewhere and start anew than with a garage in a less than perfect setting. Keep looking as others have said.

palimpsest- if you don't mind me asking, what city do you lve in? If now which city, what area of the country do you live in?

Come to California and get more of the same. Real estate is still expensive here in the SF Bay Area.

The dog house and real estate it's sitting on is worth $100,000!

I live in Philadelphia, where prices stayed pretty stable--or continued to rise, in some neighborhoods, when the real estate bubble burst. Some prices are falling catastrophically, but they were unrealistic to begin with.

This was a cheap city to live in for a long time (and still is in some regards), but some neighborhoods, or some sellers, are pricing like its 2007. With internet access, it is pretty simple to find out what the last owner paid, or how long someone has owned it. (and by extrapolation, their realism or their greed).

I don't know how to analyze the above property, because it is a single lot (double width on one deed) that is big enough to build a house with modern proportions and get a garage in it. It may be worth its price to the right buyer.

Does this scream "Palimpsest"? The inside is gorgeous check it out on the blog called "All the Best".

I thought of you immediately Pal.

....Jane

{{!gwi}}

Hey! I'm from Philly! Born and raised there, but moved on to other parts of the country. I have lots of sympathy for you on the housing market. To be honest I would say that 40% of the reason for our move to a small town in the midwest was housing prices. (The other 40% I would attribute to commuting time.) My mother's house in Mt Airy, that was in a condition so bad that needed to be gutted, just sold last year for $225,000. Good luck, at least you have the creative ability to look beyond the immediate walls.

Talk to some good architects about ideas on how to transform this to more-residential use (common in cities BTW - all sorts of former factories are now trendy lofts), and if you're not completely smitten with it now, consider waiting to see if the asking price falls further (or better yet, just put in a lowball bid). If real-estate agents and HGTV are to be believed, lots of people can't look beyond clutter and oddly-colored paint, much less how to turn a big garage into a house, so you may be able to score a great deal on a good property and/or location. Without seeing the inside or floorplan, much less the infrastructure (will you need to dig up concrete to install plumbing, electric, and ductwork?), it's hard to know what this renovation would cost. I'm inclined to keep one of the garage doors and use it as a garage, and perhaps make a bay window or separate vertical windows, or just siding/brick/stone, on the other and put a room behind it.

Real estate is still wildly overpriced by every traditional metric in many markets though - it seems a near-certainty another wave of coming foreclosures will drive prices down further until they're at near-2000 prices, so I'm reluctant to buy at all yet unless the price looks seriously appealing.

Wow, palimpsest. I remember when we lived in West Philly (was going to grad school at UPenn), we were looking for houses there or in downtown and we could find fixer three story townhouses (or cute connected homes near Penn) for $50K. One I remember, that would have required a total gut reno but still had heart pine floors, was literally $15K. That was back in the late 90s, say 1998-99...are things so different now? Have all those houses been taken and rebuilt?

I could see that garage being converted into something totally fabulous! But then, I'm weird that way...

I'd love for my next 'house' to be something totally different...

If you understand Philadelphia, you know that it is neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block. The 1990s still had a lot of depressed pricing. I could have bought a 6 bedroom house with beveled glass windows in beautiful, intact 1912 condition for less than $150K in W Phila. (not that I had the money at that time). I did look at a trinity in my current neighborhood in the 1990s for $39K. It was rehabbed (not really well) and would now command 6-7X that?
It is very hard to "trend" whats going on.

I am in a situation now where if I sold and moved out of the city, I would make out well, but if I tried to "move up" in my same neighborhood--I couldn't do it. I am trying to move up by moving to a nice but not so "happening" neighborhood, which mine has kinda become, somehow.

Actually my plan is to move "up" but have less monthly carrying costs. ( I am a cheapskate, deep down )So I have to look at alternatives.

I think the garage could be a great project, but I would love it it it were priced like a garage and not more than some of the houses in the neighborhood.

Thanks for the link to the above pictured house.

Yes, I remember those big old houses in West Philly. We stayed in a very nice B&B that had been made of one that was renovated, when I came down to look at UPenn. They have great potential, but also require great investment. Knob and tube wiring, complete plumbing replacement necessary, lead paint, the whole deal.

The big old houses we saw were kind of hilarious...the whole back half of one house was falling about 6" lower than the front half, and in another one we got locked inside because the lock *fell off* the front door when our realtor tried to open it back up.

Dear Palimpsest!
I can't stand the thought of you in a place you don't love.
That said...I have this dream, which my DH says I can do with my next husband. Since I am planning to keep this one, it will doubtless remain a dream. But it involves taking an old small commercial building...a warehouse or factory...gutting it, and building the living spaces inside around an open courtyard garden with colonnades (think monastery garden), the loading bays or garage doors remade into an entry with wooden doors on the outer wall and iron gates on the inner wall, a retractable glass roof, and a greenhouse and garden terrace on the roof. So like the old Roman city houses, it would be walled and protected on the street, with only high windows, and completely open inside.
There's also the issue of costs.
Ah, well.
In my next life...

Reminds me of this web site on Vancouver housing ... talk about insane prices.

Here is a link that might be useful: Crack Shack or Mansion?