What this doesn't show you is that in smaller cities in the US you can get a 4 bedroom 3 bath large home starting at $160k

we lived in nyc in queens, we sold a 1280 sq ft 3 bedroom home for 890 thousand, we retired to the georgia mountains and bought a 3800 sq ft home with 5 bedrooms,5 baths, with mountain views on 2 and a half acres for 320 thousand-location is everything

To summarize: **$500K house in the South** Damn, that’s a mansion! **$500K house in NYC** Damn, that’s a closet!

In the U.S. kitchens are often a major selling point for a house. They'll almost always have multiple countertops, an island or peninsula, and some less formal eating space. As others have said, it would've been nice if he'd compared with some smaller cities, or with suburban or rural areas around those cities. You can get even more bang for your buck if you don't mind driving into town.

We just moved to Iowa and bought a 0.5 acre farm house for $135K. The same thing in Oregon, where we moved from, would be $500K or more. It's all location and cost of living.

Us regular people don't live like that. 😂

Haha the houston house you freaked out about isnt even as nice as what you can get for 500k where i live. A house like that. Plus land and woods to go along with it

The island in New York is governors Island, it's basically a huge park

In New Hampshire that’ll get you land with a house, garage, and a barn. And I mean A LOT of land.

I live in Houston. I've been house hunting and it's true that a house like the one in the video goes for about $500k. However, it's out in the suburbs. A house like that would be more expensive the closer you get to downtown (still way cheaper than other cities though). However, many Houston suburbs are incredibly nice with great amenities for the residents. I think the areas themselves like the Woodlands and Katy would blow you away with how pretty it is with all of the lakes and upkeep. These communities look like resorts. The drawback is that if you work downtown, you have to drive a half hour or more to get to work.

I would imagine that rooftop garden and kids play structure are common areas for all tenants who live in that apartment building.

I just moved from LA to Dallas. I got a house that is almost twice as big, with a pool and an acre of land, for 75% of the price of my small house in California with no pool and a tiny yard.

In my state and rural areas you could buy at least 10 acres of land and a split level house with 2 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms, a very nice kitchen and dining area as well as living room, finished basement, and attached 2 car garage for the 500k. Seriously this dude's video you are reacting to should've considered other states and rural/suburb areas.

"It's so tall and thin, it would be really easy to just..." -realizes he's talking about New York-

I would buy 100 acres out west with great views, no neighbors and a simple little house.

Two things to keep in mind. 1. If it is expensive it is usually because people want to live there. I think that's what the "location, location, location," thing boils down to. That house built on the Houston swamp might be under 2 feet or more of water every time a hurricane blows through. The NV house might require $2k air conditioning per month in summer to keep you alive. 2. Often the McMansions are built to look good long enough to sell them, but have bad bones. I've seen them eventually partially collapse into the ground because they were built on construction debris and/or bulldozed trees that rotted away under the house. Figuratively speaking, they're often nicely painted cardboard boxes. A possible 3rd point is loans for them may essentially be scams. Maybe that was fixed after 2008, I don't know. Possible 4th, is there a neighborhood association or home owners association that you have to join? If so count that as a strike against the place. It often means that for some reason the local governments wouldn't have approved of building in the area. It can mean that the developer and neighbors see the house, not as a home, but only as an investment. In that case you might run into dictator types who will force you to have a grass lawn of a certain species and keep it cut to within 1/4" of 3" tall. They'll actually patrol the neighborhood measuring grass and hit you with a fine if yours is 3.5" tall. That's no way to live. Generally if an area or building style is being promoted as cool and trendy, avoid it because there is a good chance it is crap. If I were buying a house, I'd start by picking out several areas around the US I like. Then I would download FEMA and other other maps and eliminate areas especially prone to natural disasters. Then look for neighborhoods where people definitely have enough money to move away if they want, but they stay for a long time. (That doesn't mean rich necessarily, just that they aren't stuck there) Buy a used house that was built when the other houses were built. If it is quite old, be cautious about the wiring, asbestos, plumbing and etc. If it was remodelled make sure the work was done properly. If it was remodeled recently, beware of flippers who may be trying to profit by selling it for much more than they invested in cosmetic changes. Without the real estate agent around, go talk to all of the neighbors you can find. Do they know of problems with the house or area. Are they happy? Could you get along with them?

Can't wait for you to see America in person.

In the States, we would describe your house as a "shotgun style" where the rooms are all aligned front to back for the most part (although typically just a single-story) since you could stand in the front doorway and shoot straight through the back door. A very American description for a home design lol

Keep in mind that the UK and New York are islands, while the US covers much of a continent, and is bigger than Europe. Outside top cities, space is plentiful. And Vegas is crime ridden, while large parts of Houston (IDK that specific house) are built on terrain not suitable for building where homes tend to get destroyed by floods yearly.

Where I live, central Georgia, my house is probably valued around 250k. The house itself is 2400 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, on 1.5 acres of land and a 45' by 20' steel building with concrete floors and a car lift. The closest grocery store is 5 minutes away and the population of the county is around 620k people. Moderate crime and award winning schools. It's really a pretty good area if you're looking to move somewhere with moderate climate and good job opportunities. That house in Houston is twice the price with less than half the lot space and looks mostly for show and not made to last.

After checking out housing prices in my area a few days ago, prices have really skyrocketed. It's unfortunate as this was a very low cost of living state because really, it is nothing special, but now it seems even here you need a minimum 350-450k for a good home in the suburbs that's still nothing like this Houston house, and any decent house is probably like 250k, and that doesn't count the updates/renovations you'd have to do or land. The problem is the median wages for the area have not kept up, so younger or single people cannot afford those prices without over-leveraging. I bought in 2018 & the value has gone up 40%, but so did everything else. It's ridiculous.

Watching videos like this make me realize how little I value living in the middle of a large city. I'll drive an hour if I want to visit the cities downtown. Also that Houston house looks a lot like the ones I've been to in the suburbs above Atlanta and they were less than $500K. No doubt because they're in the suburbs, but still.

“Earthy tones” Shows a completely white interior

In all of the 1 bedroom condo units shown in cities, I would say the minimum condo monthly fees are $1000 a month. That covers the usual things like security, landscaping and common space maintenance, and general maintenance escrow fees for major upkeep. So it’s 500k plus condo fees. Where I live, if you want a spot in the underground garage, that’s another $450 a month.

Don't move to California or Nevada they don't have enough water for every person.

Houston is very affordable and the houses are huge. I just moved to Houston from Minneapolis, purchased a 5 year-old home in very nice north suburb neighborhood for $485K, The home has 4300 sqft, 5 bdr, 3.5 baths, 3 car garage. And no state income tax in Texas!!!

I don’t know if anyone has already said this, but in the last house in Houston the “double door oven” would be set into the wall. What you were looking at was the stove top/cook top. The cabinets underneath are just for storage.

I live in Houston. My best friend and his wife just bought a house that looks very similar to the house at 11:00 and they paid $450,000. Both of them are teachers. New York, LA and San Francisco are overrated as fuck.

🤣 apparently I have a mansion 😁 I'm in Kansas city and have a 750k 75 acre farm. 😉

They didn't even touch the cheap parts of the country. There are places where you could buy property measured in miles for $500k. Where I live a couple years ago, before prices jumped way up, there were properties around here with their own airport for about that much.

You have to remember that in Vegas they’re looking at a water shortage situation that’s just starting and not going away anytime soon. The best area to look into for value and quality of life would probably be Iowa, or depending on how much you can endure the cold, an upper Midwest state, I.e. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan (depending on the area) if you’re serious check out the Des Moines metro area, some of the best neighborhoods in the country are right there and are relatively very affordable.

1:25 the top penthouse suite of that building that you're talking about is currently on the market for 170 million dollars. :-)

It’s all about the cost of living and location, when it comes to real estate 🏡 in America’s states. Most of Alabama would be comparable to the Houston and Las Vegas homes. Usually located outside of the actual city limits “outskirts of town”.

That Sky Scraper at the beginning is the smallest square foot per floor in the world. I believe it's referred to as the "Micro Tower". When I was in NYC two years ago it was under construction and it had me wondering about it's size. Then recently I saw a article about it, I guess it took quite a bit of engineering so it could handle strong winds.

Don't feel bad where I live in Toronto $500k USD also gets you nothing lol. That's like $625k CAD which in Toronto you can just forget about buying anything within 10 km of the city. You could get a 1 bedroom condo maybe in lower income parts of Etobicoke or Scarborough which are both 30-45 mins (depending where) away by transit from the city center but it won't be in a nice area so you're probably better off renting somewhere else until you have enough for a down payment on $800k condo in a nicer area or small home in surrounding area an hour out like Richmond Hill or Pickering. Very similar to NY prices.

Open-plan houses have been the norm for fifty years. The kitchen, dining room, and living room are one room. The kitchen is often in an alcove or around a corner, or just a counter separates it from the dining room. We still say"dining room" and "living room" even though it's only part of a room. People like this plan because the cook can participate in the conversation and watch their children. Most conversation happens around the kitchen nowadays. The bedrooms are on shorter hallways than before, sometimes just a stepping place with three doors around it. One uncommon design is the "great room". The living/dining/kitchen is larger, and all other rooms lead to it. The gigantic room impresses visitors, and residents can waft in luxury. The tradeoff is more noise and less privacy, and no side room like a den or family room. I've only seen this kind of house once, and I suspect its popularity has peaked.

Texas is relatively flat so sprawling out is cheap and easy with new housing constantly being developed for every price range with the majority being low density detached single family homes, a two-car garage with a reasonably sized backyard. Basements are very rare. Dallas/Ft. Worth is a massive sprawl of 6.5 million people. Houston is similar. Austin and San Antonio are slowing growing into each other. The majority of the population of Texas lives in the eastern half. Hot and muggy in the summer yes but very mild winters ... Air Conditioning is your friend. You will need a car but fuel is cheap because much of it is refined on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Houston has both hurricanes and tornadoes. Re building a home in Houston is kinda like rebuilding your house on rail road tracks

For comparison, I have a 3bed 2 bath, 1500 sg ft bungalow in Austin, TX; 5 miles south of downtown and my house is currently valued at 485K. We have a 1/5 of an acre.

When I was a kid my parents sold our 3 bed house in Oregon for $130k and bought a house in South Dakota with 3 bedrooms, 3 barns, and 17 acres for $35k

Luka, you gotta understand that the US coasts are the most expensive... Most places inland, with the exception of Chicago and Atlanta, are cheaper usually, by far. Midwest and southerm cities are usually less expensive

Luka: This is such a weird building Me: It's the only symmetrical one...It's the only normal one

You have to keep in mind natural disasters. I live in western North Carolina- no hurricanes no tornadoes no floods no wildfires

One thing is that these desert cities and newer cities out west are incorporated differently than the old coastal ones. Basically, what I mean is that you can't have a nice house like the Houston and Vegas ones _in_ Boston or Miami or Atlanta because those cities just aren't as big--for instance Miami is 36sq. m. and Houston is 640. It's not really even that the cities are bigger in any meaningful way, just that the suburban areas of Atlanta, Boston, Miami etc. are incorporated as separate towns or cities while in places like San Diego or Houston many of the suburbs are just part of the city and the city is ten times the size of an eastern one. You could find a nice house on the outskirts of what most would consider Miami or Boston, it would just technically be in Hialeah or Brookline, for instance.

I think the biggest concern about picking a home in the US is that it has to be close to where you WORK. That's the big thing. That Las Vegas home sure looks mouth-watering to most people (although the bedroom is tiny considering how good the rest of the house is), but what exactly are the job environments in the city? If the house itself is upscale and you can't find an upscale job, you are setting yourself up for failure. The only exception I can see is that you've saved up a good chunk of money in NY or California, so you can manage to pay the 500K in full while having another 500K or more in the bank as savings for early semi-retirement, THEN you can just move to Las Vegas in that home and apply for whatever casual job you please.

Lav Luka RE "Houston House" -- The double door oven is in the tall cabinet at the (left) end of the counter (Video Time Code 11:45) when facing the cook-top. To the right is the Sub Zero(R) fridge (closest appliance on screen), which is likely more than double that of most UK fridges. Below the cook-top (VTC 12:24) is cabinet space, where you would likely keep commonly used pots and pans stored. Looking at the island (VTC 12:32) you can see the dishwasher just to the left of the large "farm sink." All the appliances in the "Houston house" kitchen have stainless steel surfaces. Our washer and dryer's in the US are (typically) are located in a separate room of their own, elsewhere in the house.

At 12:36 the ovens are in back where the counter ends. They're on the wall like refrigerator doors, one oven on top of the other. In the 1920s large families needed several ovens, and in the 1970s some houses had two ovens stacked like this. When microwaves appeared they replaced the second oven, and houses with only one oven added a microwave. Since he said "double oven", the top oven may be a convection oven rather than a microwave, or maybe it can do both. You would not say "double oven" for an oven+microwave because every recent house/apartment has a microwave.

In Houston and Vegas you can get pretty much the same houses but on 1-5 acres of land, so your neighbors are not 4 metres away from your home, one after the other after the other.

Little surprised that they didn’t say anything about Chicago. 500,000 can get you a wide range of different properties here. Whether it be an apartment in the city or a bigger house in a suburb.

At 1:15... I just watched a YT video about that building. Think the video was named the most expensive apartment in America. It is the entire top floor of a 96 floor building, over 1,000ft. tall, over 8,000 sq. ft. of space and is on the market for $169 Million.

That New York City skyscraper you were wondering about has the most expensive condo in the world for sale at the moment. There's a video on KZfaq about it.

None of this impresses me. Give me $500,000 and I'm buying a large property, put a tiny home or cabin on it, preferably in the woods, where my nearest neighbor is 20 minutes away. ❤❤

We are buying a new build in Las Vegas for $440,000 and it has 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms with rv parking in a gated community. The market here is crazy right now. Our home has already increased in value before they even broke ground.

432,000 (and I'm rounding up here lol) is the population of the city I live in. And the province I live in (in eastern Canada) has a population of less then 1,000,000. I couldn't even begin to imagine living in a city with 8,000,000 people! 😬

The island at the off of Manhattan towards the beginning of the video is Governors Island. I don't know if people actually live there, but they have parks, eateries, art galleries, a large, outdoor concert venue where they have music festivals, and other arts and entertainment stuff.

Homes like the Houston one are called Mc Mansions..so many of them ..whole neighborhoods of them

Southwest is by far the best value. I live in AZ and like Houston and Vegas you can get a nice 4 bedroom home with a pool and a two car garage for 500k

Home prices are usually higher in more densely-populated areas or where there's less land available. So in places such as New York, Los Angeles, or Seattle, where there's a lot of people or a lot of lakes, mountains, and federal property - there's less space available for housing.

That was a cabinet under the stovetop, the double ovens were on the far side of the kitchen, you can see them in the stovetop scene at the far end.

That first building is 432 park, on what's known as Billionaire's row. It has an $132 million dollar apartment inside if you're interested.

A reasonably sized house, a dependable used car (Subaru), second go at college. The rest I'd give to my parents.

Near me in the greater Boston, MA area is a house, quite literally a converted 1-car garage, with a 2nd floor loft (big enough for a queen size bed, but angled/low ceiling, and small basement cellar. Was listed for 400k. Convenient location- it’s situated on the highway on-ramp (2-way street right there though)! ☺️

I had to stop when he was touring L.A. it appeared he was only targeting the biggest cities. It would make more sense to compare a city center to a more rural area in the same state.

They missed a Little House on the Prairie. Here in Kansas City (I choose the Kansas side) 500k will get you a sweet lake house.

That tall building in Manhattan has a video up showing off the most expensive penthouse for sale right now. $169,000,000.

That tall, skinny building on the South side of Central Park in New York City is 432 Park Avenue. It's just a very very expensive condo building. We're talking 185 sq meter/2000 sq ft apartments overlooking Central Park. It is the lux of lux in NYC.

12:17 the double oven is at the far left end of the counter across from the little tree.

Yeah vegas is cheap as hell. Because why would you wanna live there lol. The ‘fun stuff’ is insanely crowded all year long, you can’t go ANYWHERE without coming home reeking of cigarettes, you can’t have grass, and summer can get over 120 degrees. Sometimes it stays 100+ all night long

I think you were asking about Roosevelt Island. It has quite a history and great views of Manhattan. There’s a big Cornell University tech complex there and a nice little community. That narrow building is 432 Park Avenue.

It always blows my mind when I see how little you get in some places for so much. My husband and I paid $240,000 in northern Ohio. 2 1/2 acres, whole separate apartment OVER the garage (what is often called a mother in law apartment - actually bought the house for that feature, we moved his mom in with us until we couldn't care for her anymore. But that separate has a full bath, full kitchen, living/dining room area and bedroom.), 2 full bathroom in main part of the house, 3 bedrooms, large kitchen, basement and 2 attached sunrooms (top and bottom floors). On top of THAT, we also got for our cash: woodworking barn with an upstairs full studio I work in, a covered patio and deck (plus small fish pond) an outdoor woodshed and massive gardens. All in amazing and updated shape. And that woodshed? It's because the house came with a full house woodburner in the basement, on top of the small woodstove on the first floor AND a fireplace with blower attachment that means any of the one of the three can heat the whole house. (Not including the oil furnace that is also available...) Toss in dozens of other features and I just can't wrap my head over how much we get verses what small amounts other places get. It's not even like we are out in the middle of nowhere. Yes, it's the country. But 8 min to the closest decent sized town, and about 25 min either direction to 3 large ones and a college town. Close enough to do what we want, but far enough out it's quiet and little light pollution. With so many people choosing/having to work from home, those town/city houses are already slashing their prices in an effort to keep people from just getting out of dodge. I don't think they will be able to slash those costs enough to stop the exodus. Every single time I watch a video like this I am reminded at how insanely lucky and blessed my husband and I are.

That building is apartments the top floors $135,000,000.oo each is one floor.

Swell Entertainment has a video about that crazy tall building at the beginning. Something like “I never knew I could hate a building so much”. It was really interesting.

good luck getting anything anywhere in my entire state for $500,000. that $1,000,000+ median price in Manhattan city is the median price in the whole state of Hawai'i. my home is a just a typical looking home on the mainland, about the square footage of that Vegas home, but with rising prices here, my home is getting close to $1,500,000. it's really ridiculous how much homes cost here...but you should see our grocery prices, $10 for a gallon of milk and $5 for a dozen eggs. yeah, I love living here but it's not easy to move here from the mainland.

In the Houston house, the ovens were on the wall to the left of the stove tops. Those two stainless steel/black doors on top of each other.

That weird building in NYC has floors that are completely empty in order to increase the height they could build. (NYC has rules about air rights) the empty floors also allow wind to blow thru so the building sways less.

We live on the Colorado Front Range (east of the Rockies: Denver Boulder, etc) in a 4 bedroom, 4 bath(2 full+ 1/2 & 3/4), 2,901 sqft home. Bought @ 370k three years ago and is now worth 550k+ estimate. Prices out here are skyrocketing.

Las Vegas is very unaffordable to locals now due to massive migration form multiple states with bit money dragging prices up like crazy.

@Lav Luka Homes in the US are on average 3.2x larger than UK homes. So yes more than triple the size!! My home has easy access to both Chicago and Milwaukee here in the US state of Wisconsin. My home has 2,300 sq, ft. of space and is a single floor ranch style home. I have not one, but two garages that can fit 4 cars between both of them. My house has 1.4 acres of land. My town has lots of shopping, restaurants, and museums. The total market rate of my home is just a little over $300,000 right now. 🙂

Kind of annoying that they only looked at property in some of the biggest cities in the country. Why not show us property in South Bend, Indiana, or Asheville, Tennessee?

No, nobody lives on Governors Island, the little island you noticed at 2:01. It's mostly used as a small slice of nature in the big city, for events and even camping.

My last apartment had a galley style kitchen. Literally everything was against one wall opposite a blank wall. I really disliked it. Now, I have one of those open kitchens and I love it.

All of those tall, super skinny building are going up on the south end of Central Park. Land is really expensive, so you can make use if a small lot by going even higher. Usually you own a whole floor or two on Billionaire's Row.

1:16 The supertall skyscraper you're looking at is 432 Park Avenue. One of the Central Park area's modern "ultrathin" skyscrapers. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue

Most of these places, you can get a nice 3 bedroom home in the suburbs for half a million or cheaper. I lived 20 minutes from DC and my townhouse only cost about 260k.

$500,000 will buy you a big, luxurious house in most places in the US.

You can get 154.4 acres of good hunting land in Arkansas for $300K. land is cheaper in undeveloped areas, so living in a place like Arkansas is a dream if you can find a good source of income.

Not entirely sure but I think the island you were looking at at the very start is Ellis Island which was the place where most immigrants came through to the US. The entire island has been maintained and is a museum now.

Looked up 500k in my area. Only place listed for that much is a 90 acre (364,217 square meters) 3 bed 3 bath farm with a barn. Northern Ky

If you go to rural parts of the USA, you can find nice & big houses for under $200k. I paid $190k for a 4 bedroom house with 3 car garage.

Location is almost everything, but timing is key. I bought my house about 12 years ago in an area just outside San Diego, CA. A 3br 1 bath ranch style for 270,000.00. This was shortly after the US housing bubble burst and the home values had gone over a cliff. The previous owners had paid over 400k for the house just a few years earlier. Now the same thing is happening again where the prices are going up to record numbers and houses in my neighborhood are topping 700k.

A late friend of mine used to live in the Penthouse apartment of a 35 story building. While it was extremely nice and the view was great it had it's down sides.If you wanted to go grab a pack of smokes you wait for the elevator then most likely stopping a few times on the way, having to make small talk with others. Then passing the security guard and desk, ect. We often hung out very late and would have women over. It was weird having people know of your coming and going. He later sold it and bought a gorgeous five bedroom home for the same price.

I live within 2 hours of DC. The house I live in is about 4000 square feet, and we have 2 acres of land. We have 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, with a fully finished walkout basement with a bar and media area. This house cost us about $450k. The closest city is about 20-30 minutes away, so not bad at all.

1:35 - I believe that is 432 Park Avenue. It's ratio of height and width is very extreme. Builders accomplish these heights by buying air rights from neighboring buildings. Those windows are huge; floor-to-ceiling in fact. As part of "Billionaire's Row", apartments here can be VERY expensive.

Open Floor Plans are a blessed curse. Think Spanish Tile floors, backyard pools.

The reason Houston, Dallas, and Las Vegas are inexpensive is they allow the housing supply to keep up with population growth. Zoning is lax so you can build large houses and tall apartment buildings practically anywhere. The problem is the sprawl out forever so you have to drive long distances, and all that sprawl is environmentally damaging. Other inexpensive cities are inexpensive because they don't have jobs or high-paying jobs and people don't want to live there.

You should see the homes in Provo, Utah area; like $300k will get you one of those Houston ones

What you haven't covered are the old historical farm homes. Often the property has been in the same family some since late 1700s early 1800s . My relatives still have a ranch deeded 1789 yep still ours the house has gone through many renovation. Beautiful wrap around porch windows floor to ceiling. Not for sale visit there in summer takes you back to a different time.

That weird building in NYC you commented on , if I'm thinking of the right building it has apartments that are tens of million of dollars .

If you come to the southeast, you can have all that and land to boot for half a million dollars. In the USA, it all depends on where you are.🐝🤗❤️

Used to live 2min from downtown Houston as a kid. We had to move bc prices were going up. Now Californians are shooting the prices up all over Texas😂