Take your home equity and run

http://biz.yahoo.com/brn/070208/21029.html?.v=1&.pf=real-estate

If you live in a high-cost metropolitan area, the equity in your current home can buy a heightened lifestyle somewhere else. While in certain parts of the country home prices have leveled off or headed south, housing price disparities in different regions mean that some people have more equity than others by virtue of their locations.

Extra equity is an added benefit to the American dream. You can manage this equity in one of several ways. You can sit on it and hope that the real estate market in your area doesn't tank. You can tap your equity and use it -- generally not a good strategy since you have to pay it back. Or you can cash it out and move to an area where the housing dollar buys more for the buck. If you purchased property in a lofty market such as California or any of the regions in the Northeast, Southeast or Southwest that experienced strong appreciation, you might still be sitting on equity in excess of $100,000.

Particularly if you're working too hard to make the mortgage payment each month or if you just want more space -- whether indoors or outdoors -- an out-of-state move may be a solution. "This is a wonderful strategy," says Sandy Abalos, CPA and managing partner at Abalos and Associates, a CPA firm in Phoenix. Several of her clients have done this recently with success. The National Association of Realtors reported stark contrasts among several regions of the country in its third-quarter 2006 median existing-home prices.

2006 3rd-quarter median existing-home prices

Midwest: $170,500
South: $187,300
Northeast: $276,000
West: $349,000

Other areas of the country run higher and lower. In San Francisco, for example, the median home price is a whopping $749,400, and in Bridgeport, Conn., it's $466,600. Meanwhile, median prices are approaching the $120,000 range in Charleston, W.Va.; the $150,000 range in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., and $140,000 in Columbia, S.C. In certain parts of the country, you can still find homes well below $100,000 -- for instance, in Decatur, Ill., Youngstown, Ohio, and Elmira, N.Y.

Californians suddenly found that their houses were worth sometime five times what they paid for them. Many of them sold their homes and moved to Washington and Oregon, buying up the cheaper properties there and in essence driving up the prices of the homes so high that the ordinary working class schmuck couldn't afford them.

I don't like the idea at all.

saw them skyrocket in value

bit*hing about the damn Califorians destroying theability to buy a house in WA. Prices that the avg. person could afford suddenly went crazy!

Hey folks, I have a nice house here in Ga. 1700 sq ft 3 br 2 bath ranch, dbl garage,3/4 acre corner lot, fenced back yard, and 1/2 hour from Atlanta. What will you offer me?

and the rest of northern New Mexico

and turned it into one giant Scottsdale strip mall.

But I'll bet salaries are low there also. For a while, here in FL we had a pretty low COL that at least made low salaries livable. Past 6 years though, housing, taxes, and insurance have all sky-rocketed, while salaries have remained somewhat stagnant. Unless you're sitting on top of a hefty retirement account, FL houses aren't that cheap.

edit - spelling

FOr the most part, you're looking at around 80-100 per square foot, depending on the neighborhood, and salaries are in line with other large metropolitan areas. I know a couple who sold their home in Monterey, CA and moved here. They had THREE mortgages on the home in CA (and it was small, about 1000 square feet), held it for 2 years, then sold it about 18 months ago and made $250,000 on it. They now live in a beautiful 3000 square foot home and have a very manageable $50,000 mortgage after putting $200,000 down.

since you need, probably, employment in another area first, and that area may in fact have lower employment or fewer employment opportunities which is why housing prices are lower in the first place

So if the market crashes, there is less chance we'll be hurt if we were to sell it?

so now I have plenty of time to work on Health Care For All-California,

protest the war and do various other things that are much more important than paying a mortgage!

I did manage to buy my house w/out a realtor on either end and got a great deal, and really only downsized a few hundred square feet.

I love being at the edge of town (in a somewhat depressed area), but it is much easier to get things done without having a 20 minute commute to town to do them. :)