The not-so-expensive 'burbs
Still, if $250,000 is your ceiling, you could look at it as a glass-quarter-full sort of deal and check out the one-in-four ZIPs that are in your price range.
Here's the list, which shows sales averages for the first half of the year:
ZIP codes are included if they had at least five sales reported to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which runs the region's multiple-listing service.
Bottom line: Average prices were higher in almost all these communities during the first half of last year. Nine, in fact, were over $250,000. So your geographic options are growing if you're looking for a home in that price range, though I realize that properties in need of work -- foreclosures among them -- could be pulling down the sales averages.
No doubt you know this already, but you can find homes for less than $250,000 in other places where the averages are higher. And you can find pricier homes in the communities on this list. (One home in Joppa, where the average was about $248,000, sold for more than $600,000 in the first half of the year.)
Do any of the ZIP codes on the under-$250 list surprise you? Are there any you expected to see but didn't?
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