Jim with Bargaineering wrote a great post yesterday about How Much House you can buy with $10,000. This inspired me to see what I can find in my neck of the woods for that price. In an effort to achieve a little bit of anonymity I have chosen to highlight the four major metropolitan areas in my state, not where I live. I would also like to note that in Jim’s article he used the phrase a monster of a home when referring to a 2,500 square foot home. In Knoxville, TN $400k is could get you a 4,000+ sq ft home in a prominent country club setting, My house is over 3000 square feet, of course I didn’t pay anywhere near $400k either. Enough of that though here is what $10,000 will get you in Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis, and Nashville, TN.
Chattanooga, TN
In the nice little city of Chattanooga, home of the ever famous Chattanooga Choo Choo, you can pick up this gem of a house for $8,900. This puppy is located downtown and is a classic case of don’t judge a book by its cover. The outside looks pretty decent but the inside looks like a pack of feral cats had their way with it. $8,900 though is a pretty good steal for this 2 bedroom, 1 bath 952 square foot bungalow. That is like $9.35 per square foot, at that rate $400,000 would get you a 42,780 square foot mansion
Knoxville, TN
This delightful little shanty is going to run you $9,900. Pretty close to that $10k threshold. I was only able to find two properties though between $5,000 and $10,000 in Knoxville so maybe the economy is a little bit better there. Either way this house looks like they kept the feral cats on the outside at least. The carpets, or the angle in the photo anyway, looked clean and the walls looked freshly painted. It is a 2 bedroom, 1 bath at 784 sq ft or $12.63 per sq ft. Again your $400,000 would get you a 31,671 square foot home at that rate.
Memphis, TN
Mmmm Barbecue… There were a ton of listings in Memphis. In fact where I only found two homes in Knoxville between $5k and $10k, I found 64 in Memphis. Guess things are rough in Elvis’ home town. This was the only house with Square footage listed. this 2 bedroom, 1 bath house weighs in at a whopping 1,078 square feet for a meager $8,000. Doing the math that is $7.42 per square foot giving us 53,908 sq ft with our $400k. Damn that is cheap.
Nashville, TN
Oddly enough Nashville was the only location I searched where I was unable to find a single home between $5,000 and $10,000. The best I could do was this little patch of weeds in Nashville. I even expanded my search to include the 20 miles surrounding Nashville and still came up blank. So while housing prices have plummeted around the nation it looks like Nashville might still be a little better off than some other places out there. Either way $10,000 will get you a 40’x100′ lot in Nashville, TN.
So while the economy sucks and the housing market blows, there is still opportunity out there for people willing to pick up some pretty high risk properties, or those who are desperate for a place to live. I hope you enjoyed this low cost housing tour across the state of Tennessee and just remember, cheaper is definitely not always better.
Comments on this entry are closed.