Houses Under Fifty Thousand

Inexpensive Homes : Our Criteria

My wife and I looked at many inexpensive homes as we traveled the country. We have seen houses for sale for $6,000 in Butte, Montana and we watched as the price of a house in Anaconda dropped from $16,900 to $9,900 to $6,000. I'm sure they needed a little work, but we put less than $2000 into fixing up our $17,500-house in Anaconda, and it was very nice when we were done. In any case, the criteria here are not for choosing inexpensive homes, but for choosing towns where you would like to live, that also have cheap houses.

Cheap Houses In Montana

The reason there are so many cheap houses for sale in Butte and Anaconda, is that there aren't many good jobs left. People left the area in the 80's especially, after the mines and smelters closed. This exodus has left one-in-seven "housing units" in Anaconda vacant, according to the U.S. census, which has driven down the prices of homes dramatically. Since both towns still have all the basic amenities, and are slowly recovering, they are great places to retire to or to move to if you have an internet or other non-location-based business. (I personally found jobs in Anaconda easily-but not good ones.)

Inexpensive Homes In Hell

On the other hand, there are towns like the one in South Dakota where we stopped for lunch. The bulletin board had ads for cheap houses placed on it by desperate home-sellers trying not to be the last to leave town, including one for a nice old five-bedroom farmhouse for $11,000. We looked up the deserted street as we ate, and noticed that most of the buildings were boarded-up. This was a town that was clearly dying, and didn't have anything to help revive it. Inexpensive homes are easy to find here, but I wouldn't take one for free.

Buy A Cheap House In Paradise

Maybe paradise is too much to expect if you want to buy a cheap house, but there are many nice towns where real estate prices are low enough to qualify for our web site. So what does a town need in addition to inexpensive homes in order to make our list? Well, the criteria are certainly subjective, but include at least the following:

1. Population between 4,000 and 80,000.
2. A good library.
3. A good grocery store.
4. A movie theater.
5. Cheap houses: at least six for sale under $50,000.

Want to see what we found? Go to the pages, "Where To Find Cheap Homes For Sale," and "More Places To Buy A Cheap House." The latter covers towns where houses are regularly for sale under $30,000. To do your own research, visit the page "Find Your Own Inexpensive Houses." You'll find links to the best places to research towns and to find the prices of homes around the country.

Note: It's great to buy a inexpensive home, but towns with homes under $50,000 are getting harder to find, so we have been researching towns where you can still get a decent home for under $125,000. For information on these places, see the page The Most Affordable Places To Live.