Yep.

You can order Amoral albums from here (US; a great place) and here (FIN).

My condo is 700 square feet and my mortgage is $267 per month. The condo fee (water, sewer, trash) is $128 per month. The electricity bill averages $55 per month.

My total cost of 'just living' is $450 per month.

Contrast this to the cost of my car.

My car payment is $318, insurance is $85, and gas is about $90 per month.

My car costs about $490 per month, which is higher than my cost of owning a condo.

I found my condo using the internet and I was the first one there. It was a steal. It's very hard to find condos for less than $60,000 in this area, but I got one for $43,500. The woman that lived here was a flight attendant and she had to move 'right away'.

Jodo that is an AMAZING deal on the condo.  Crossing my fingers that someday I can find something similar.  Actually I've always kind of had a dream of living on the edge of a forest preserve out a little away from civilization, so theoretically that isolation would drive down the price.  Maybe.  We'll see!

Where do you live? My friend in Boston is looking for a condo now. Prices have gone down, so he's looking to keep things under $300,000. Of course, it depends where you're living, namely how close to the T stop. Still, I would say $300,000 is about average for anywhere within Boston/Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington etc.

cheers,

-avatar!

I tend to think that living near a forest preserve rather defeats the purpose of having a preserve
There's far too much urban sprawl as is. Forest preserves, National Parks, all those awesome stuff... they get FAR too little funding and are tiny as is, not to mention the fact that many of them are being ruined. Conservation is a sorry state all over the world...

-avatar!

avatar!, I agree with you on most of your points.  I guess saying ON a forest preserve was a bit misleading.  One of my relatives used to have a small house on a large plot of land in Michigan, out in the countryside in an area where there were a lot of preserves and state parks.  It was away from the typical urban sprawl, and aside from a few dotted private properties, none of the land was for sale.  It was secluded enough that she'd have deer walking around behind the house fairly frequently.  It was just really nice and serene.  That's the kind of thing I'd like - just to be near and have access to a natural environment.  Growing up my favorite book was My Side of the Mountain, which might explain some things. 

Anyway, after three years of living in rural Japan surrounded by woods, fields, and mountains, the suburbs of Chicago are very, very choking to me.

I live near St. Louis in a place called 'North County'. It is cheaper than the West and South counties. I could afford to live in the East County as well, but my goal in life is not to see how many stray bullets can lodge in my body.

  I would have to rob a bank and win the lottery to afford paying back a $300,000 loan. That's just some crazy money. For that kind of money, I had better get a private jet, a private cook, and 25 acres (at least).

In Minneapolis, it's essentially impossible to find a house or condo under $200,000 unless (a) it's really small (maybe 500 square feet), (b) it's in a terrible neighborhood, (c) the place should be condemned, or (d) some combination of the above.

When my girlfriend and I were looking at places to move to earlier this month, we saw a condo that was close to downtown, which the owner was looking to sell or to rent.  The sale price was $349,900 for a 1600 square-foot condo.  For a downtown condo, that's not so bad, but what really had me in shock were the association fees ($512 per month) and  taxes (about $5,000 per year).  So, if you bought the place, you would be out about $1,000 per month every month BEFORE YOU EVEN START PAYING YOUR MORTGAGE.  Even if you had the place completely paid off, you would still have to pay $1,000 per month to live there.  That was insane.

Try living in Ireland. Minimum these days for a place to live in Dublin is like €400k. For a half decent house in a decent area you're looking at €750k. In a good area, a million or above. For a plain old house. Not some fancy mansion.

Worst part is, over the last 10 years, banks have been giving mortgages to anyone, forgetting about the old requirements, which meant that the house prices shot up and many people now owe far more than they can possibly pay off. People with really good jobs are barely able to scrape by at the end of each month. Whereas people who got in just before that period are laughing.

And the rest of us (I'm in this bunch) who don't actually own a place to live are in the position where there is no way we'll ever afford it.

Personally, I'm hoping for a good plague. It will reduce demand and prices will plummet. That or I'll move to a country that actually works.

Hahahahaha! Don't forget what that would do for traffic, karaoke lists (much less wait time to sing) and the GameFAQs message boards. I'm with you, man.

Absolutely. It's hard to see a down side.

.

My cousin from Richmond, VA came to visit in Dec. and he was shocked when he saw how large my condo was. He rents an apartment for $600 per month and it is smaller than my condo. I even have a washer/dryer room (those appliances were included), which is generally not located within individual apartments.

   I don't understand how many people are going to be able to retire. The cost of living is enough to use all of the available money every month and even create debt.

I haven't lived in the same house (or state) as my parents since I moved to Atlanta for college at 17 and then to Seattle for my job two years later, which makes it about four months short of ten years. I got a pretty good job straight out of college, so it hasn't been a huge burden for me, especially since the California state income tax would have negated most of my savings from living with my parents anyway.

Carl:
Actually, wages nowadays are about as high as they've ever been in inflation-adjusted terms, especially for women. It's not that people can't afford to buy the things they used to--it's that they buy things they didn't before, most notably bigger houses and apartments.