The Expert Podcast

So a lot of the comments we received are for another batch of homes in South Florida near the coast for under $200,000. So we have a good batch today—we have more than four, I think we have five or six. These are all homes in the southeast side of Florida along the Atlantic Ocean. All of these are in seacoast communities. They're not oceanfront houses, obviously, but they're within a 10–15 minute ride of the beach. They're in areas which are up-and-coming—a lot of them are near the Space Coast where the aerospace industry is growing, a lot of good jobs there, some are in more central Florida coast.

The other thing that you're going to find is, in the Florida coast, a lot of the houses are a little smaller. These are originally designed maybe as beach bungalows, as vacation homes, so these houses are going to be smaller than the ones we see—they're going to be closer to a thousand square feet. If you're looking for bigger homes at $200,000, check out some of our other videos. There are many examples where we run houses that are three or four thousand square feet. They're not going to be as close to the water and they may have other disadvantages.

But the point of this is not just to show you, “here's a house you should buy.” It's more about showing you that if you are in a place in your life where having a house that you own for a payment of about $1,000 would be good, here is an example that it exists. The biggest reason that many people don't look at buying a house is they don't think it's possible. They don't think that they can afford the payment. They can afford the down payment.

But in our HomesCheap.com video series, we present houses that are $200,000 or less—meaning that with some of the mortgage programs out there, you could put down two or three or four thousand dollars down payment, have a mortgage payment of $1,000–$1,100 depending on the taxes, and be a homeowner. Now, it may not be your dream house. It may not be something you'll see on HGTV, but that's not the point. The point is to get you out of an apartment where you're throwing money away to a landlord, saving money on rent, you're not paying any more, and getting a house.

So right into it—here's the first one. This is in Fort Pierce, Florida, which is a nice little town just north of the Palm Beaches. This is a smaller house, it's 918 square feet, 2-2, $200,000. I think this is the highest-priced house on our list today. Cute little house set back from the road, nice little front yard, nice little parking area in the front. That’s one example.

Next one is also in Fort Pierce. This one's a tiny bit bigger—960 square feet. It's a 3-1, has a carport, nice little front yard, big palm tree in the front, a couple of smaller little palms. It's got the clamshell hurricane awnings. Again, it's a house at $169,000 that you would have a payment of certainly a thousand bucks for a decent house.

Let's look at a couple more pictures of this one. Same picture—and the guy likes taking this picture. There's—is it the front yard? That's the front yard. There's your carport. It's got some wood ceilings. This house is a little cluttered. I wouldn't put that much furniture into it, but remember, when you move in, this furniture is not going to be there. That's a lot of furniture in that house—oh my goodness.

So this is what holds up people a lot on looking at these HomesCheap.com houses. They look at it like, “That house is ugly,” but when you move in, this is all going to be gone. And anything that's not gone—like the paneling on the walls, the floor, the window treatments—you can change all that. That's what part of owning a house is—you get to change that.

So don't let that throw you off. A lot of times that is what keeps people from making really good financial decisions—they get hung up on the cosmetics. The house is not the end of the world. Also, we don't try to put houses that need a lot of work—we don't put tear-downs. Maybe some minor TLC, but we don't put a lot of fixer-uppers.

Here's one that's in Cocoa, Florida. Cocoa is a great town. Cocoa and Cocoa Beach are really nice communities—small town, good restaurants, good walking areas. This one's bigger—1200 square feet, 3-1. And you know, it's a house on Churchill Drive. Remember, it's not designed for you to buy these particular houses—in fact, by the time you watch this video, these houses might be sold. But it just shows you, in every area of the country, that there are houses for sale well under $200,000 that are livable houses. They're not houses that you need to get a contractor to rebuild the whole thing before you move in.

The other thing is, there's not any part of the country that these houses do not exist. We picked very specifically the Florida East Coast—that's one of the hottest areas of the country. House prices are through the roof. Everybody wants to move there. But we've done this everywhere—within an hour of New York City, we've done a video like this. Southern California, the mountains of Montana—we've done these videos everywhere.

Plus, we've done videos on different types of houses—houses with acreage. If you want five acres, there are houses available for $200,000. You want 3,000 square feet? There's houses available in different parts of the country.

One in—where is this house? This house is in Titusville. Great town. Titusville is where all the aerospace industry is—the rocket industry. This house is just shy of 1,000 square feet. 3-1. $145,000. Do a mortgage calculator on that and you'll see it's about a thousand bucks. Not many good pictures on this house—pretty much the same picture over and over again. Nice parking area in the front. Decent little house.

This house—I like the looks of. This one is in Daytona Beach, well-known area. Right away we can see that it's got some curb appeal. It's got these little balusters, this overhang front porch, hardwood floors, remodeled bathroom—at least here. Kitchen—yeah, it's a little bit weird—the layout, the stove’s over here, sink’s over there. But it’s usable, right? Hardwood floors look like they extend in a lot of places of the house. Decent paint on the walls. It's not tore up like a lot of these houses are. In fact, this one, it looks like it’s move-in ready.

Right as you nitpick anything about these houses that you don't like, biggest question asked is—is it better than living in your apartment? And even if it is slightly better, is it better to have a fixed payment that’s never going to go up versus worrying about your landlord jacking up your rent at the next renewal? And when I say jacking up your rent—that's legitimate. We read a story this morning about how landlords are jacking up rent in Cincinnati, of all places. If rents are going up in Cincinnati, they're going to go up everywhere.

So this is a way you can get into this house. If there's something about it you don't like—“Well, I don't like these wood doors”—well then buy the house and paint them. A can of paint costs 10 bucks. And if you want something different, you can do that—where you can't do it in an apartment.

Next one is a nice stucco house in Palm Bay. Palm Bay is an interesting town as well. It’s a little bit set away. Oh by the way, this last one that we looked at over here—this one was 1200 square feet, 3-2, bigger house. Palm Bay is an interesting town, also in that Space Coast area. This is a 2-1, it's a little more money—$199,000. But this area, you’ll find, is also interesting—it has a lot of hometown feel, character. It is going to be close to a lot of job opportunities.

If you're looking for employment opportunities, you're looking for maybe a change of careers—there’s all kinds of things in Palm Bay. Everything from blue collar to white collar to the aerospace industry to the health care industry. Great town for a job.

And this last one we looked at has a lot of big pros and cons. We saved it for last because for some people, this would be of interest. First of all, you're in West Palm Beach. This is the most center of luxury in the entire South Florida area. Palm Beach is known for its affluence. Now, West Palm Beach is not the same as Palm Beach Island, but it's right over the bridge. So if you're in the Palm Beach area, that’s highly desirable.

This house is very cheap—it's $129,000. However, it's also very small—it’s 700 square feet. But you might be living in an apartment that's a 1-1 that's smaller than 700 square feet. But if you could get into a house for closer to a hundred thousand than it is two, and be a homeowner, and have this little one bedroom—what would that be like? And be in Palm Beach, where the weather's always good, where the beaches are 10 minutes away.

Some of the most expensive houses in the country are on Palm Beach Island—10 minutes over the bridge. There are houses that are a hundred million dollars in Palm Beach. I'm not saying this is a hundred million dollar house. What I'm saying is you're in an area that's desirable enough that people who can spend $100 million on a house will live right near you. So there's something good about the area—the climate, the beaches, the economy, the work opportunities.

So even if you just wanted a place to live for a year or two until you could buy your dream house, or you wanted to save up some cash or do work from home—you buy this house, you spend seven or eight hundred a month on your mortgage payment that’s not going to go up, then you buy another house to live in and rent this one out. This one easily makes money on rent. You rent this house for $1,200 or $1,400 a month all day long—maybe $1,500. And if your mortgage is $1,000 or less, you have $500 a month income for doing nothing.

Again, this idea is not to prove that this one house is the right one for you to buy. There's something about each one of these houses you will not like—guaranteed. The idea is to show that the pathway to real estate ownership exists for everybody everywhere in the country. If the reason you're not owning a home is because you feel like you can't find a house in your price range—the houses exist. Now you may have to make some exceptions to what you want to have in a house.

But if the only reason that you would buy a house is because it’s the perfect dream house, you may be missing opportunities to do something between now and “dream house day.” If dream house day doesn't exist today, then maybe Division Avenue West Palm Beach house is for today—dream house still comes later. Just because you buy something different now doesn't mean you're giving up on your dream. Your dream can happen anytime. In fact, buying a non-dream house now might get you into a dream house faster than just waiting around paying rent to a landlord all the time.

Again, we're not trying to tell you what to do—just giving you examples where these options exist.

In fact, let's look at one more just because we're on a roll. So what if you wanted to live in Fort Lauderdale—one of the hottest South Florida towns halfway between Boca Raton and Palm Beach, and also in the other direction, Miami? You can be in Miami in 20 minutes, you can be in Boca Raton or West Palm Beach in 30 minutes. Fort Lauderdale, which everybody wants to be—this house is $190,000. Is it a small house? Yeah.

Age 64.