My Older House Can Beat Up Your Brand New House

Check out my million dollar home! It has a great view of the lake, I have no yard, it looks just like the neighbor's house and speaking of neighbors I can see him lounging around with no shirt on...Isn't this great?!

I was scanning the local newspaper (more like a newsletter actually) this morning and read an article about how home builders have seen more business than usual in this area in particular. Within the 2 years that we've been here we've certainly seen a lot of development with brand new and overpriced homes. The price range is usually half a million and up. When I drive past some of these homes on my way to work every morning I wonder if theses people know that they're getting suckered. Most of the houses are 10 paces away from each other. You are literally on top of your neighbor.

In the meantime there's a lot of already existing homes for sale around here for 1/3 and 1/4 of the price. Maybe it's just me, but I don't get why someone would spend so much on something that doesn't even have ample land for privacy. Plus there's something about older houses - maybe the charm, the history of it, the way it already has a story and you're adding on to it. Older homes tend to be not made of the cookie cutter models either.

Another thing I gripe about in terms of home ownership is the actual size of houses being built. I understand having large families, I come from one. Still, is all that square footage really necessary? How much of that house will actually be used? We have an 1800 square foot home and it's plenty of space for our family. Sometimes it even seems too much. We do have plans of getting some acreage (5-10 at least acres ) in a few years maybe with an old house that we can work on while we use the current one as a vacation home and a rental when we're not using it (we get a lot of vacationers here). I think those sustainable prefab homes are pretty awesome.

A couple of articles related to the topic:
Home Prices Falling
National Average Home Size Decreasing