Gettin Your Moneys Worth !!!!!!

Daily Real Estate News October 15, 2008

Cities Where Your Dollar Goes Furthest Money goes further some places in the United States than it does in others.Housing, in particular, has remained most affordable in the South and the Midwest. That’s because of less stringent building, an abundance of land and growing populations in the South, says Daniel McCue, a research analyst at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.To determine the cities that offer the best quality of life for the least amount of money, Forbes magazine calculated the ratios between a city’s median home price and its median household income. It also factored in projected job growth. And it compared median income to Moody’s Economy.com’s cost of living index.Here are the 10 cities that it found to offer the best value, and the cities that it believes offers the worst value.Cities Where Residents Get the Most for Their Money
Austin, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
Indianapolis, Ind.
Houston, Texas
Charlotte, N.C.
Columbus, Ohio
Dallas
Minneapolis/St. Paul
Denver
Portland, Ore.Cities Where Residents Get the Least for Their Money
Los Angeles
Providence, R.I.
New Orleans
Philadelphia
Cleveland
New York
Milwaukee, Wisc.
St. Louis, Mo.
Washington, D.C.
Sacramento, Calif.Source: Forbes, Abha Bhattarai (10/10/2008)

Home Getting Smaller Again ?

Homes Sizes Shrink to Lure Buyers.

Home builders are reducing the size and options available to appeal to buyers with less money to spend and who are facing a harder time getting financing.Los Angeles-based KB Homes had shrunk its homes from 3,400 square feet, selling for $450,000, to 2,400 square feet selling for $300,000 to appeal to buyers. Now, it's shrinking its homes yet again--1,230 square feet priced at about $200,000Other builders, including Warmington Homes and John Laing Homes, have taken similar approaches.“We're getting back to more the way things were historically, kind of undoing the excesses, not just from a price perspective but home size and (fewer amenities)," says Nishu Sood, a Deutsche Bank analyst.The new KB Homes aren’t just smaller, they are more efficiently designed, says Steve Ruffner, president of KB Home's Southern California Coastal Division. "You could have a three-bedroom, 2,500 square-foot single-story home and all you had was wide hallways and bigger rooms. It wasn't really giving [buyers] the utility," Ruffner says.Source: The Associated Press, Alex Veiga (10/10/08)